Twenty Years Ago,
July 8, 1997:

I boarded a flight from Jackson, MS to Detroit, Michigan to work for the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development.

Mrs. Parks liked a poem I had written and recited in her honor when she traveled to Jackson a year earlier (1996) and sent me a message via Theresa, the then manager of Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center, offering me an opportunity to work with her youth program, Pathways to Freedom' the next year, if I was interested. I was interested. During her 1996 visit, she requested information about how to reach the Attorney Chokwe Lumumba. She had followed his career from his time in Detroit. Since Nubia Lumumba had taken me under her wing when I was an intern at New Stage Theater, I had his phone number and Mrs Parks had dinner with the Lumumbas while in Jackson. Rukia Lumumba and Mayor Chokwe Lumumba may have memories and images from that dinner.

Flash forward, back to July 1997 --

My Aunt Rosie picked me up from the airport and took me to the Institute. It was on Wildemere Street, the same street name my Aunt Rosie and Uncle George had lived on for decades. I had spent a few summers with them and my cousins Belinda Rogers and Anthony, since I was 3 years old.

This would be a bus tour  from Windsor Canada into Detroit and through several States in the U.S retracing some places and spaces on the Underground Railroad. This would be a 30 day bus tour with Black children ages 11 to 17 whose parents entrusted the Institute with educating them about their heritage as Black American and Black Caribbean children ( two students were from the Bahamas).

I was to be artist, educator, and the person Jethro and Helen Anderson raised. And that is who and what I was.

35 of us set out on this glorious opportunity. Only 34 of us made it back to Detroit alive.

Twenty Years Ago,
July 7, 1997:

I witnessed the first Black Mayor, Honorable Harvey Johnson, be inaugurated in Jackson, MS. I remember two things very clearly about that day.

One, I wanted to read a poem but was told no by the organizers, only to realize why on that day. I witnessed Dr. Margaret Walker Alexander recite a poem for the occassion. I was so humbled and grateful to even be taken seriously as a poet in the same city as Mother Margaret. I bowed down in full genuflect to her with a smile on my face and in full acceptance of my place as one who wanted to be one of her 'literary children'.

Two, the White man with a sign, a placard, that said "No good ever came from letting the slaves take over the plantation!" He was being protected by two JPD police officers, I suspect so no one would whip his ass. Both officers were Black.

Twenty Years Ago,
July 5, 1997:

I was opening act for Patti LaBelle at Thalia Mara Hall in Jackson, MS, the Flame Tour!

The poems I recited had migrated from the Jackson club scene, where I opened for Karen Mus'sang Brown at the Snooty Fox to a 2500 seat, sold out crowd.

I did that gig for free because I recognized opportunity when it knocked on my door.

Thank you Arden Barnett!

Thank you Jackson, Mississippi (too many people to name)!