The Living Ain't Easy | About Black People, Literature, and the Digital Humanities The Living Ain't Easy About Black People, Literature, and the Digital Humanities RSS Feed Search 14 Sep Movement, Memory and Justice—Connecting the Story of the Gullah Geechee People, Land Loss, and Social Justice It is so great to host our first Institute at Morehouse College related to our 3-year Mellon Humanities For All Times Grant. Much of our early grant activities have been focused on recovering memory, particularly how certain historical “sites of memory”—the plantation, the jail, and sites that are a combination of terror, beauty and resistance like Emanuel Church in Charleston—help illuminate our current social problems. The question is always how studying our past can help us craft justice in our future. I am excited to share the work as we embark on the rest of this initiative. 1 week ago Short URL Comments Uncategorized 01 Sep Some Recent Appearances and Public Lectures I have been interviewed or given talks online in a few places over the past couple of months. Here are a few: 1. Black is King Discussion with Dr. Ifetayo Ojelade of A Healing Paradigm. One 2. My lecture on the Black Body mini course at Morehouse. “Black on Purpose: A Narrative about Sports, Integration and the ‘Beloved Community.’” My part starts at 10:18. Two 3. My appearance on The While Black Podcast discussing the N-word. It is available on all podcasts platforms. Here is the link to Apple Podcasts: Three 2 years ago Short URL Comments Uncategorized 31 Jul Senegal-South Carolina There are so many reasons that I want to go to Senegal. I feel a special connection to this place. I was excited about the play about Omar Ibn Said that hopefully will be performed at the 2021 Spoleto festival, after having been postponed this year. I also say that I feel like it is in my destiny to visit the artist retreat, Black Rock that the world renown artist Kehinde Wiley founded last year. It would also give me a chance to revel in the food and art of the African Continent. I often say that I have three favorite world cuisines: my favorite is Ethiopian, the Second in Senegalese, and the third is Gullah food. However to me Gullah food and Senegalese food are close cousins.They are all African. From Jollof Rice, which literally gets its name from Senegalese people, to the different ways in which they infuse fish, vegetables, and rice together in many dishes. It reminds me of home. The following is a picture that I took at an Oyster Roast at the Penn Center High Heritage Days Festival. What really sealed the food comparison between Gullah and Senegalese Food was the way that both prepare their oysters. I was really excited also to hear that Senegalese people from the Casamance Region cook oysters like we do in the Gullah Region ( or we have retained their practices!), over a bonfire and roasted in a shell and then they merely get a knife and eat it directly out of the shell. Senegalese Oyster Fishing. 2021 is the year that I go from South Carolina to Senegal. I know that Gil Scott Heron’s song is South Africa to South Carolina, but I am thinking about the reverse trip. Song here: Gil Scott Heron and Jackson, From South Africa to South Carolina 2 years ago Short URL Comments Uncategorized 26 Sep “The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nation’s Millennium General Assembly” and the Radical Sense of Place Thinking about the boundary between art and real life, I am reminded of seeing James Hampton’s “artistic work” for the first time at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. However the more I think about the aesthetics of Gullah Culture and what we learn about art from observing our surroundings, the more that it becomes clear that real life is art. James Hampton didn’t consider himself to be a visionary artist. He literally saw himself as an emissary from God who was building a home, this “throne,” for himself and Jesus in heaven. I think of the song that the Morehouse College Glee Club has arguably made famous: “I am Building Me a Home.” I like the idea of prayer and song as an active work and alchemy. I like the idea of art actually being able to build a home. Despite the fact that Hampton constructed his heaven within heaven for everyone to see, I think this work is more than art, it is visible prayer. Moreover, it is prayer which is practical at the same time. As the song says, “my soul’s gotta have somewhere to stay.” 3 years ago Short URL Comments Uncategorized 01 May The Legacy of Liberation This slideshow requires JavaScript. It was my honor to go to Duke University this past February and participate in a commemoration of the take over of the Allen Building on February 13, 1969 by concerned black students, two of whom were my parents. One of the great things about this weekend of programs, sponsored by the Duke University Department of African American Studies, was the ability to understand the impact on current thinking because of what these students decided to do 50 years ago. Most of what I learned about the takeover was through stories my mother used to tell as she listened to Archie Bell and the Drells or Aretha Franklin records. These stories were mostly apocryphal until I got to see the archival evidence compiled by undergraduates in Duke’s main library that let me know that my mother was even greater than she was in her own stories. Most importantly students found a letter written by my mother, on Duke University stationary, in the archives (which they included in the exhibit). I can hear my mother’s voice here and imagine what my grandmother’s voice would have been in response: Dear Mom, This is to inform you that I am presently sitting in the basement of the Allen Building or at the present time known as the Malcolm X Liberation School. I am doing fine, don (sic) not worry-incidentally if you have not heard we took over the building. As of yet, and I said yet there has been no violence, But if there is……well C.B. will protect me. We have lots of food, peanut butter, jelly, gum, life savers, candy, bread, coffee, sugar, coffee-mate, and water, all the essentials to or for surviving. Do not worry about my education, it is not being interrupted, we are playing cards, listening to the news, carrying-on semi-intellectual conversations, sleeping, play8ng ball, learning to work adding machines, telephones, and typewriters. Love, Your Liberation Loving Daughter Josie Of course my favorite part of the letter is the sign off, because I, too, am a “liberation loving daughter.” I am also aware of the importance of legacy. Here is what those who took over the Allen Building look like now (without my mother, because she is no longer living): There is also a great book about Malcolm X and student movements, including the liberation school at Duke, by my friend Richard Benson that a serious student of social justice should check out. Moreover, Dr. Howard Fuller, in commemorating this anniversary, reminds us of the importance to keep on fighting here: Dr. Howard Fuller 3 years ago Short URL Comments Uncategorized 14 Mar Reimagining African Worlds One Basket at a Time As much as the fictional Wakanda has been important in re-awakening many people’s connection to Africa in contemporary American culture, it is wonderful to think about how students are making this connection everyday through their own research. The following is an example of the work of a Morehouse student, Tareik Horne. His research on his own family history of sweetgrass basketmaking shows how important it is to think of the creative, imaginative possibilities of Africa. 5 years ago Short URL Comments Black Culture/Education/Geechee/Gullah Culture/The Digital Humanities/Uncategorized 27 Sep New Avenues of Research on the Gullah/ Geechee It is wonderful to be working with the Adept Project. There are so many exciting avenues opening up in Gullah Geechee Research. Look forward to further featured work from the folks at Coastal Carolina in conjunction with The National Park Service on Sandy Island. Also, I will be delving more deeply into the work of Alice Childress and her desire to keep her low country heritage evident in her work. 5 years ago Short URL Comments Geechee/Gullah Culture African American Culture/Coastal Carolina/Morehouse College/The Gullah / Geeche Experience 19 Mar Between Jordan Peele’s Get Out and the Extraordinary Life of Artist William H. Johnson Teaching our class on Gullah Geechee Culture for the second time at Morehouse College has me considering what ways that Gullah people see the world differently. The Gullah worldview is something that I know exists, in part, because it is something that I experienced growing up in South Carolina. It is a topic that I also recognize has also been written about in books. I could go on about the ways in which Zora Neale Hurston has talked about this way of seeing in a variety of works or LeRhonda Manigault Bryant recognizes that seeing ghosts or Talking to the Dead –as the title of her book suggests-is a key process, as is seeking and interpreting dreams, in the creative lives of lowcountry black women. However nothing has had me thinking more about having a different way of seeing, what W.E.B. Du Bois called having “second sight” or “double consciousness” than the recent movie Get Out. Although Jordan Peele is not Gullah, (I’m not sure what his father’s lineage is), his concept of the “sunken place” reminded me of this second sight or this Gullah way of seeing. The sunken place is both, of course, metaphorical and metaphysical. It is a place that people like the Gullah artist W.H. Johnson knew well. It might be a difficult jump to make –from a blockbuster movie to a black artist, who died 50 years ago, not known nearly as well as he should have been. However Johnson’s story as a man born in Florence, SC, who lived all over the world, married a Danish wife, and spent the last 20 years of his life in an asylum due to syphillis-related mental illness was the first thing I thought of after seeing the movie. What is so interesting is that his life repeatedly told him to “get out” when he was living overseas around all white people. More importantly, he had to return to his southern roots and African expression to even find inspiration for his art that felt real. I cannot imagine what his last two decades were like, separated from his source of creation and his family with white doctors and nurses managing his “insanity”–under the care of someone like the Catherine Kenner character, who manipulates the inner selves of Chris and other black characters in Get Out. What did Johnson feel? Could he see but not see, trapped behind the facade of blankness? Was that his sunken place? Most people do not study Johnson as a Gullah artist, but I don’t see how one cannot. The best book about him and his art is by Richard Powell, a Morehouse grad and Duke professor, called Homecoming: The Life of Art of William H. Johnson (see Here). I’m appreciative to this movie for being a” flash” that reminded me about Johnson and his paintings, which featured black people with color and strength. I hope that we continue to see what he saw, that we continue to insist on our way of seeing. Maybe with clear sight, Johnson might soon be the subject of his own movie. 6 years ago Short URL 3 Comments Black Culture/Geechee/Gullah Culture/The South Gullah/Jordan Peele/LeRhonda Manigault-Bryant/Richard J. Powell/William H. Johnson 20 Jun “We’ll Understand It Better By and By”: Black People and Rituals of Mourning I have been thinking and writing about grief in the African American Community this summer. Of course, over the past couple of months this grief is not only about the African American community, but also about how it has touched us as Americans–the Orlando Mass Shooting, a child facing a gorilla–the gorilla dead, a child snatched and killed by an alligator, a constant “red record” in Chicago of gun deaths, Muhammad Ali and Prince gone. Americans have had to process over and over death, calamity, destruction, and loss in a way that they don’t often allow themselves. However, this “weeping time” is a time when the rest of the country can learn from black people about how to move on from tragedy, because we know how to mourn. We are professionals. We are the only people who could have changed the noun funeral into a verb to funeralize. We funeralize instead of merely holding a funeral because our burial and mourning traditions need to do something, to move us forward and make us stronger. Karla FC Holloway’s wonderful book Passed on: African American Mourning Stories talks about how our burial traditions are integral to our culture. I remember that my grandmother’s daily ritual for 30 years was to make breakfast and then open the Florence Morning News immediately to the obituary section so that she could see who died, who had the body, and who would be going to what funeral to bear witness. It is like my grandmother literally had to plan her day around death. Because death was always planned for, it meant that she became very intentional about what she did in life. I have been thinking about the Charleston Shooting at this time that marks a year’s anniversary, and I have seen the way that Charleston has been, in some ways, able to get clear about what it is doing to move people forward. Clementa Pinckney’s televised funeral, the blackest Spoleto Festival on record, the ongoing ritual of commemoration in Charleston (see the mural below of Rev. Pinckney), and the Confederate flag coming down have made sure that SC hasn’t only been stuck in that moment of tragedy. This is not to say that means that South Carolina has all the answers and doesn’t have any problems still remaining around race. However the people of South Carolina understand that even without the answers, you still need to go through the ritual. I am also reminded of a hymn that we sung growing up in my segregated United Methodist Church, particularly the end of the first verse, which goes By and by, when the morning comes, when the Saints of God are gathered home, we’ll tell the story how we’ve overcome, for we’ll understand it better by and by. 6 years ago Short URL Comments Uncategorized 17 Nov #BlackonCampus Duke Take Over of the Administration Building 1967 I have been thinking a lot about revolution. I have been thinking about what it takes to truly change a people, a place, and a culture. More specifically, as a product of primarily white institutions for my education and having worked at historically black colleges for over 13 years, I am wondering when this battle for black people in the collegiate environment will finally be won. I tell my students at Morehouse that it is difficult to grasp the feeling of walking around campus when no one who is different (read as darker) is understood. But these students get it. I forget that many of them are fleeing these “privileged” upbringings, where they were likely the only black person in their class and on their blocks. I understand that Morehouse for them is a way to save their souls, to take care of their spirits, so that they can be reminded of who they are and who they could be. Morehouse, like other HBCUs, is a short respite before they are thrust back out into a world that seems hell bent on their annihilation. But even in these black havens we sit and burn and wonder what we can do to make white people finally get it too. But why is it that only now so many campuses around the country are erupting in the face of this unbearable whiteness? In many ways I think that it is the fault of the my generation, these 70 babies who are the children of the people who fought and marched and integrated schools, who moved our children out the suburbs and said that in some ways our economic achievement meant that we shouldn’t have to fight anymore or not as hard. My parents were literally the first in their families and in their communities to venture out of the nurturing spaces of the black college and black church. Looking at Missouri and what is happening on their campus reminded me of what my parents went through almost 50 years ago. As the third class of blacks admitted to Duke University and 2 of 12 in their entering class, they understood that to be black on campus meant that in some ways everything about their being there would be a fight. My father was the first black athlete at Duke, the first black basketball player there and the second in all of the ACC. He knew what it was like to literally be in spaces where blacks were not allowed (They held the annual team banquet at a whites only country club), but he also knew that he couldn’t complain too much because he had to be an example for all black people–so no outward anger and always making sure that whites couldn’t fault him on his academics or appearance. What is so interesting about the sit in above is that my parents and the rest of the black students at Duke are clear to sit there and study, not chant or sing songs, but study. The idea about claiming your space through passive resistance meant becoming the model student, not the model revolutionary. I whole heartedly support #blackmizzou and the the football players protest, which efficiently ousted their college president. I support any claim for voices to be heard on majority white campuses when so often it seems like blacks are there for purposes of diversity but are not really expected to be seen or heard. I am just wondering what we can do in order not to have to go through these same protests 50 years in the future. My parents fought for more black faculty and black studies programs. At Missouri, the main campus with little more than 3% black faculty, the black students had similar demands. They demanded that the ratio of black faculty be upped to 10%. This demand is not unreasonable given the fact that the faculty should be at this level given how long it has been since the initial increase in black faculty was first asked for. I guess we will continue to march, sit in, and shut things down until things change, but we need to remember not to get complacent even when one school meets these demands. We have to remain vigilant. This fight is really for all of us. 7 years ago Short URL Comments Uncategorized Recent Posts Movement, Memory and Justice—Connecting the Story of the Gullah Geechee People, Land Loss, and Social Justice Some Recent Appearances and Public Lectures Senegal-South Carolina “The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nation’s Millennium General Assembly” and the Radical Sense of Place The Legacy of Liberation Recent Comments samoryba on Between Jordan Peele’s G… corrieclaiborne on Between Jordan Peele’s G… samoryba on Between Jordan Peele’s G… corrieclaiborne on More Poems for Michael Brown:… Nezra's Opiate on More Poems for Michael Brown:… Archives September 2022 September 2020 July 2020 September 2019 May 2019 March 2018 September 2017 March 2017 June 2016 November 2015 October 2015 July 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 August 2014 July 2014 May 2014 March 2014 January 2014 November 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2011 Categories Black Culture Education Geeche/Gullah Culture Geechee/Gullah Culture Literature The Digital Humanities The South Uncategorized Writing Twitter RT @damonakin: Tennessee missed out on $22.5 billion in federal funding from 2013 to 2022. 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