My father always kept me informed about the politics of white supremacy. When I was sixteen he returned to Ghana and we corresponded regularly. He sent me a newspaper photograph of white mercenary soldiers in Angola with African heads impaled on their bayonets. His influence had a profound effect on me as it enabled me to take away the focus on my individualistic concerns and place my problems in a wider global context which helped me survive school; life even. On my last day of school, I spat on the building and walked away.
My children led me back to the school environment and to my own studies. I had very light-skinned children. People often believed that I was a child carer or nanny to my own children. A concern was the false portrayal of Africa and the invisibility of African world achievements in the school syllabus. Little had changed since my childhood except that there were more of us. Our melanin cannot protect us from the imposed debased, demeaned and demonised ideas about Africa and her people. The dehumanisation of my image and identity naturally affected the development of my children’s perceptions. It was critical to counteract the attempt to alienate my children from me. Thus, I became involved with the Supplementary School movement. “Education” would thus become a battleground for truth against lie in the international African-centred and Afrocentric school movement that I would be a part of. Personally, I wanted my daughters and son and other girls and boys to grow up to respect and recognise their relationship to their African ancestors and fight against racism, sexism and all injustices.
Bonnie Greer
Born in Chicago, the eldest of seven children, she has lived since 1986 in the UK, where she is best known for her significant role as a cultural critic. She is a playwright (winner of the Verity Bargate Award), author, critic, broadcaster and Chancellor of Kingston University, London. She was formerly Deputy Chair of the British Museum, and has served on the boards of RADA, the London Film School, and Theatre Royal, Stratford East. Her plays include Munda Negra (1993), about black women’s mental health problems, Dancing on Blackwater (1994), Jitterbug (2001) and the 2008 musical Marilyn and Ella, and have been produced on BBC Radio and in the West End theatre. Her first novel, Hanging By her Teeth, was published in 1994, and her other books include the memoirs Obama Music (2009) and A Parallel Life (2014). She was awarded an OBE in 2010 for services to the Arts.
Till
I am looking at the papers my late Auntie Ree left me. They have been meticulously bound and sealed.
She left the following instructions:
“Read my notes and then write something in response to these notes. While you read, play Chaka Khan and Miles Davis duetting on ‘Human Nature’ at Montreux, 1989. Then that 1969 video of Miriam Makeba asking people ‘how can your enemy write your history?’ Read first. Then write your thing.”
And so I will.
Notes on a Work About Vengeance
Short sharp.
The description of Emmett Till and his death and the coffin and how Auntie Ree’s mother (Grandmamma) came home determined to kill a white man and how she (Auntie Ree) took up that call herself and hooked up with Jackson Pollock in New York and learned about his work and worked him to the point where he was in that car looking for her but he had two other girls (white girls) in there and then hit the tree.
But he was on his way to her: my Auntie Ree.
Auntie Ree’s Notes and Thoughts
“I knew one thing about Jackson Pollock and it is this: I understood what he was doing. And I knew that he wanted to be the receptacle of my vengeance. So I worked in a dime store, even though I could have been a teacher. Even a painter like him because that was in me. But I decided to go to New York City, find him, and use my beauty.
What else do you do when you discover that you are the Angel of Death?
Let me begin with the facts, the roots of my journey of acceptance: Emmett Till, a teenage “Negro” as they called us, was murdered in Mississippi at the age of fourteen, after doing what they called flirting with a white woman. That summer of 1955.
Till—from where I’m from: Chicago—was visiting his relatives when he spoke to twenty-one-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married proprietor of a small grocery store.
A white woman.
Several nights later, her husband Roy and his half-brother J.W. Milam went to Emmett’s great-uncle’s house. They took Emmett away to a barn. They beat him up badly, pulled out one of his eyes, then shot him through the head. Then they took his body to the Tallahatchie River, tied a seventy-pound cotton-gin fan around his neck with some barbed wire and threw him in the river.
They found him three days later. They returned his body to Chicago.
His mother, Mamie, wanted a public funeral with an open coffin. So that the world could see his water-bloated and mutilated body.
That picture you’ll find wrapped up in black cloth next to my writing is the picture I took of his body.
Child, you could smell that boy’s corpse two streets away.
Younger than me, and you know, at that age you don’t expect people to die.
Death and that smell. Like somewhere inside you knows what it is even if you’ve never smelled Death before.
It took me burning down the playground of my old grade-school to get that smell out of my nose.
I didn’t mean to kill the junkyard dog who slept in it. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.
I left my First Holy Communion rosary for him.
In the cinders.
I stared at it there.
The cinders looked like splashes, drips-errors on the floor.
Like Christ all twisted up.
Chaos.
Maybe that was my first connection to Mr Jackson Pollock and his art and way of life.
And the things Jackson told me about that painting called “The Scream”.
My dear niece, did you know that the sky in it is red because a volcano erupted: Krakatoa, in Java, thousands of miles away from the painter of that painting? And that volcano was the loudest noise ever heard on earth at the time.
And, too, I’ve come to see that we coloured, we Negroes, become alive because of what’s happened to us. What we have witnessed. And what we will do with the happenings and the witnessing. Especially us women.
Before that, we’re just invisible.
After Till, I decided to become visible.
As simple as that.
Simple.
My attempt at Auntie Ree’s notes. CHAPTER ONE
1955. Late summer. South Side of Chicago. The Black community—the Ghetto.
The body of murdered African American teen Emmett Till lies at the biggest funeral home in the community. Murdered in Mississippi while visiting relatives because he had spoken to a young white woman. The Klan came for him.
The uproar over his murder is massive and kick-starts the next phase of the Civil Rights Movement.
Musicians sing his praises; preachers preach; etc.
And the queue to see his body stretches for almost a mile in the hot late summer sun and heat.
Sheltered, eighteen-year-old convent school girl, Dido Pygmalion Brown joins the queue, defying her parents who want to keep her sheltered. She can smell the body two streets away. Till’s mother had refused to have him embalmed. She wants everyone to see the real thing.
People start dropping out of line because of the stench.
Dido feels strangely empowered.
She moves past an old bluesman serenading the crowd. Later on, he comes to where she works and tells her that she inspired him to make a new composition; he made it the very night of the Till funeral. He called it “The Angel of Death”.
“I’m keepin’ it till I see you again,” he sang to her.
Dido sees the body. It is horrible, and people are fainting and getting sick all around her.
She overhears the story of what happened to Till—how he went to the local penny-store to get some candy; how he made a cheeky remark to the cute white girl who sold liquorice sticks to him; how there was a knock
on the door of his grandmother’s house at midnight; how masked white men came for him; dragged him to a barn; put his eye out (for not looking down when talking to a white person); beat him to death, and threw his body into the Tallahatchie River. After his grandma found him, Till’s single-parent mom insisted that his mutilated and rotting corpse come back to Chicago—and that the whole world sees.
Two days later, the Blues Man comes back to the store Dido works in and serenades her with his “Angel of Death” blues. Suddenly he asks her to come to his apartment. Dido has never done anything like this before, but she accompanies him. It is pristine and also like a voyage behind the Looking Glass: baroque furniture; ancient books and scrolls; a figure of Nefertiti.
She looks out of the window and in the back is what looks like a cemetery. He tells her that all of the women in his family are buried there. He asks her to take off her clothes and stand before him. She does it, even though she has never been naked before anyone, except her mother.
The Blues Man gives her a New York City address. He tells her that she has to go there. She has work to do for Till.
Dido returns to her nice, orderly middle-class home. Her father is a doctor, her mother a society queen.
A few days later, Dido goes to the cotillion for black society girls. It is stifling; unreal; phony. She tries to talk about Till to her stuck-up fellow debutantes, but they’d rather talk about boys, dresses, cars, money, etc. When her name is called to “courtesy to the cake”—a ritual adopted from English Society (the cake represents the Queen)—Dido stands up and tips over the table, knocking the cake, the champagne, all of it over. She walks out into the night.
Dido makes her way to the Blues Man’s apartment to tell him that she’s leaving, but she sees him carried out on a stretcher. He’s dead. The neighbours begin pilfering his apartment.
An Old Woman comes in and fires a pistol in the air. She announces that she used to be in a Wild West show, and before that she had lived in Paris, France. She’d met some women there who had taught her how to shoot. She turns to Dido and tells her to get going. Then the Old Woman turns and shoots as many as she can. In the pandemonium, the police arrive and shoot her dead. Her last words are: “Harriet Tubman said: ‘I freed as many slaves as I could. I could have freed more, if they’d known they were slaves.’”
Dido sleeps surprisingly soundly that night, waking occasionally to hear bits of the panic-conference her parents are having about her.
She leaves without them knowing it, taking a small bag. She sweet-talks a white man into letting her get on a train bound for New York City. He talks about his life—its futility, his fears. She listens. He buys her food and drink. The black porter looks at her disapprovingly. Dido tells him in a loud voice that she is not a prostitute. The porter asks her if she knows that Mr Barker, the white man, is a regular and that he has five children and a wife on Long Island. Dido tells him that a white man named Pygmalion freed her mother’s ancestors, and that he had come from Long Island.
Dido eats well and drinks well and listens well on that train.
As the train pulls into NYC, the man asks if he can kiss her. She allows him.
Walking through Grand Central, trying to find her way, she notices a small crowd. She goes over and it’s the man from the train. He looks at her, smiles and dies. He’s had a heart attack. The porter glances at her with a look of wariness and respect.
Dido makes her way to an address in Greenwich Village. It’s above a soul food restaurant. She is greeted by the waitresses dressed in frilly pink dresses, serving plates of soul food. There’s a juke box blasting away and what looks like a stage behind a huge curtain. She is given a uniform and told to start serving. Dido has never served food in her life, and she messes up, but soon gets the hang of it. All of the customers are Greenwich Village types.
She is introduced to Gency, the Boss.
Gency is in her middle thirties; very beautiful. She has a withered arm that she hides in her sleeve and black eyes like night diamonds. Dido asks Gency what happened to the Blues Man who had directed her to New York.
Gency replies simply that his time was up.
After her shift, Dido is taken to Gency’s apartment, where she will be temporarily housed. If she does well, she’ll move to the main restaurant located on 125th Street, Harlem.
Gency’s apartment is even more elaborate than the blues singer’s back in Chicago. When Dido asks where all the furniture, the books came from, Gency replies: “Paris. About 1871.”
Dido tells Gency that her name is unusual.
Gency repiles: “It’s short: for ‘Vengeance’.”
Dido is the fried-chicken maker. Her chicken is exquisite, and this surprises her because she is an indifferent cook. She calls her parents who are frantic with worry. They beg her to come home. She listens. She hesitates.
She walks through Central Park against all warnings. It is dangerous; dark; primeval, but she loves it. She returns and rings her parents. She tells them that she has to stay. She has work to do.
One day Gency tells her that she is promoting her to the main restaurant. Dido tells Gency that she did not come to New York City to cook.
Gency tells her that this is exactly why she came, and that she cannot turn back. She has walked through the Park and must now go over to the River.
Dido does as she’s told and takes a walk to the East River. For a moment, she thinks that she might throw herself in. But she sees the body of Emmett Till.
Floating along.
Till.
Jane Ulysses Grell
A teacher, poet and storyteller in the African-Caribbean oral tradition, she was born and grew up on the Eastern Caribbean island of Dominica. She has worked extensively with audiences of all ages and cultures, and was teacher-secondee to BBC School Radio, advising on its multicultural content, as well as writing and presenting. She is a regular contributor as writer and reviewer to scholastic publications, and has had work included in several poetry and prose anthologies. Her books include, for children: A New Life in Britain (Macdonald Educational), Dr Knickerbocker and other Poems (Hawthorn Press), Mosquito Bounce (Papillote Press); and for adults, Praise Songs and White River Blues (both published by Papillote Press).
Whatever Happened to Michael?
From his balcony on the seventeenth floor of a London tower block
an old black man sits flying paper planes.
He launches them with great dexterity
then through thick binoculars he follows their descent
and smiles with satisfaction as they zigzag crazily to the ground.
From the top of his mountain on Montserrat
Lord Vulcan too amuses himself
sitting on his haunches in a state of undress
leaning forward to perform such an unmannerly display
of belching, throat clearing and spitting
that the devil himself would cringe.
I knew a man named Michael once, who had but one ambition
to build a “back home” island dream house of his own
high up on a hill, with the sea as his front lawn
wild woods as his back yard and mountain ranges for a fence
and he did.
With his lifetime’s savings and his own two hands
he built this house
now nothing but a faint memory, blurred by billowing black smoke
the sulphuric smell of red hot ash and the acrid taste of volcanic
soot.
Now as I watch this frail Elder while away his days
from the confines of this concrete height, I remember Michael
and cannot help but wonder . . . whatever’s become of him?
Queen of the Ocean Rose
Her retirement home is the Ocean Rose, perched on the crest of a smug plateau;
a pink and white pearl, gleaming in the white-hot sun.
It’s early morning as she steps out unto her verandah, warm tiles under bare feet
waves of well-being tingling up her spine.
Two slender palms guarding the front lawn swish their heads in greeting
while gaudy crotons dance their splendour.
From the mango tree within her reach, a gentle rustling of leaves,
exuberant bird song and . . . a seductive scent.
With tentative fingers she lifts and parts the dark green leaves
to discover . . . oh joy!—a blushing, fully ripened fruit.
And right there in her night dress, in full view of a winking sea and approving mountains
she sits on the stone steps; sits her down to breakfast
not on bacon and eggs nor milk and cornflakes
but on her first mango of the season.
She savours the pulpy treat, as sticky yellow juice runs down her chin
she sucks slowly, a carefree, country girl again
and unbelievably,
—Queen of the Ocean Rose.
Rashidah Ismaili
Born in Cotonou, Benin, she married at 16 and moved to the US with her husband. She studied music, then went on to obtain an MA in social psychology. After separating from her husband she worked to support herself and her son while doing graduate studies, earning a PhD in psychology. A poet, fiction writer and playwright, she participated in the Black Arts Movement in New York in the 1960s and was a member of the Umbra collective of young black writers. Her poetry collections include Cantata for Jimmy (2004) and Missing in Action and Presumed Dead (1992). Her Autobiography of the Lower East Side: A novel in stories was published in 2014. She has taught at Wilkes University and Rutgers University and has served as the associate director of the Pratt Institute Higher Education Opportunity Program and as vice president of Pen & Brush, an arts organisation for women. She lives in New York City.
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