Deep Sightings & Rescue Missions

by Toni Cade Bambara

  At Kentucky Fried Chicken, Jordan (Branford Marsalis) leaves the table in search of the salt. A shaker is on a table occupied by local working-class brothers. A local in a cap (Samuel Jackson) is relating some off-the-wall anecdote about how he had to get some “bitch” straight. (A few sisters in the audience suck our teeth. We’ve been assaulted thus far by “freak,” “pussy,” “tits and bootays,” “meow,” “bitch”—and the night is still relatively young.) Jordan asks for the salt. The locals look him up and down and continue to talk. Dap calls Jordan back to the table. The local in the cap calls over in falsetto, “Is it true what they say about Mission [limp wrist] ‘men’?” This is the umpteenth antigay remark. Dap suggests they leave; Da Fellas grumble but get up. (Members of the audience holler because Da Fellas are leaving behind all that chicken!)

  In the parking lot Dap leads Da Fellas to the car. Edge (Kadeem Hardison) does not want to retreat; he’s ready to throw down. In seconds the two groups are lined up in a face-off. The guy in the cap lets it be known that the locals are sick and tired of college boys coming on their turf every year and treating them like dirt. On-campus distinctions between Jigaboos and Wannabees are of no importance to the locals; all college types are Wannabees and ought to stay on campus where they belong. “On account of you college boys, we can’t get jobs, and we were born here,” the actor Jackson says, cutting through the artifice of the staging. The actors strain to stay on their marks, adding to the electrical charge of the scene. Stuck, Da Fellas go for the short hairs. Dap cracks on the “‘Bama country ass” locals’ shower caps and Jerri curls and casts aspersions on their manhood. Jordan chimes in with “bitch” here and “bitch” there. The local in red leather (Al Cooper) endures it all with a stony gaze. His partner (Jackson) resumes his assault—“You’re all niggers, just like us.” He and Dap are face-to-face. No student council president is present to intervene. Dap steps in closer and says, “You’re not niggers.” There’s a helpless quality to the delivery; there’s a vulnerability to the moment. What is at stake for the entire community that refuses to wake up is sounded here. The scene shifts.

  Da Fellas are quiet and reflective in the car. So are spectators in the movie seats. Monroe (James Bond III) breaks the silence: “Do we really act like that?” Dap swears it’s a case of mistaken identity. Jordan launches into a “I’m Bennett and I ain’t in it” routine. Grady has no sympathy for “losers.” He is challenged on the class issue. Things are about to disrupt, but Monroe makes a cornball remark that gives them an out. Da Fellas, relieved, pound on Monroe while Booker T maintains a grip on the steering wheel. Spotting Julian and Jane, Dap jumps out and jumps right in Julian’s chest, saying Julian better make sure that Half-Pint gets into the frat. We’ve now seen Dap blow the opportunity to develop political clarity three times: with Rachel, when she challenges him on the color question; with Da Fellas, when they suggest that one of the reasons they won’t back him is his personality; with the locals, when they let it be known that the debate between the Greeks and campus revolutionaries has no explanatory power in the lives of most Black folks.

  The film’s finale begins moments after Half-Pint beats on Dap and Grady’s door to announce that he is now a “real man.” The next scene takes place in hazy yellow light. Images are stretched. Movement is slowed down. In a wide-angle close-up, Dap shouts “Waaake Uuuupp.” Fishburne here displays his vocal register in the exact way that Esposito has done in previous scenes. Does this signal concord between the two male groups? The college bell is ringing. The entire school rises and goes to the quad. Julian gets out of bed where he’s been sleeping with one of Jane’s sorors (Jasmine Guy). He is the last to arrive. The camera adopts Julian’s point of view as he moves through the crowd toward Dap. Actor Esposito has a particular expression; it may imply that the character has become aware of his ability to change. As the camera ascends, Dap and Julian turn to us and Dap says, “Please, wake up.”

  Within weeks of its release, Daze became the subject of extravagant claims by folks who’d seen it and loved it, who’d seen it and not liked it, and who hadn’t checked it out yet but had their ear cocked to Communitysay: School Daze is going to do more to increase enrollment at Black colleges than an army of recruiters could; School Daze is going to outshine “A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste” campaigns for gift-giving to Black institutions; School Daze is going to revitalize our fraternities, and brothers are going to be stepping all over Harvard Yard. By summer—without recourse to stats or surveys and frequently without recourse to a screening of the film—Peoplesay dropped its prophesying tone, and the statements rang with conviction.

  Conversations in neighborhood movie houses focused briefly on the apartheid theme and the range of contradictions treated in Daze. Most of the excitement had to do with Lee’s original impulse to make use of his experiences as a Morehouse College undergraduate. Aysha Simmons, former Swarthmore student, recalls that despite passionate dissatisfaction with the film’s sexism and heterosexism, the overwhelming feeling within her circle was envy: “We envied the social life of a Black campus.” Elvin Rogers, formerly of the University of Pennsylvania, echoes Simmons: “The hazing practices were horrifying, but after seeing the movie we wanted to enroll in a Black college.”

  Communitysay’s claims weren’t far-fetched. Many Black colleges and organizations actually did raise funds in a direct way with screenings of Daze. And Black Greeks did commence to step all over the quads at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. And although the various federal agencies and foundations that commission studies of Black colleges and universities can’t support a causality theory, preliminary reports from the United States Office of Education, the United States National Center for Education Statistics, and the Carnegie Foundation do show an unprecedented spurt in Black college enrollment, in Black student enrollment, and in gift-giving in the past two-year period. And according to television newscasts during the Thanksgiving holiday of 1990, the Atlanta University complex has been overwhelmed by applications from transfer students and first-year enrollees. In all probability, the 1990 report from the Research Department of the United Negro College Fund will tell the tale more precisely.

  The rest of the story is for the audience to report. The Lee films insist on an active spectatorship by the kinds of questions they pose. School Daze asks, So what are we going to do about this color/class thaang? Or as the student council president demanded to know at the homecoming parade confrontation, “What do you want to do—kill each other?”

  Special thanks to a number of friends for good talks: Louis Massiah; Cheryl Chisholm; Mantia Diawara; Clyde Taylor; the screeners of the Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia and the African American Culture Institute of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Black Student Association at the University of California at Santa Cruz (Oakes College); students at Howard University, Spelman College, Knoxville College, the University of Ohio in Columbus; Mrs. Beatty’s senior English class at East Austin High in Knoxville, Tennessee; the sisters with the cassette player at the laundromat on Chelten Avenue and Pilasky Street in Philly; and the brothers with the VCR at the Metropolitan Pool Hall near the Intervale Avenue El in the Bronx.

  HOW SHE CAME BY HER NAME

  An Interview

  with Louis Massiah

  I think of this gathering as an inquiry into culture as well as an inquiry into the possibilities of what it means to be fully human as we come to the end of this century. If the problem or the question of the twentieth century is the color line, then the question in the era we are going into is really how can we be fully human? The struggle is between forces of inhumanity that push us further into alienated states against forces that really work for humanity, work for us to gain greater understanding of each other, understanding our possibilities in the world. It’s really in this context that I locate Toni as a force for humanness, helping us to try to realize our human potential. As a writer, as a teacher, as an organizer, as a media-maker, Toni has made remarkable contrib
utions to world literature, to the independent Black film movement, and also to political movements around the country. Toni’s strength comes from her clarity, her ability to understand and define essential issues of our time.

  I would like to start by asking Toni Cade Bambara how she came by her name.

  I earned it, and I worked hard for it. I’ve had several names. When I was an undeclared music major in college, my name was Tonal Cadence, or occasionally Tonal Cadenza or Tonal Coda. When I was in the psychiatric community, my given name, Miltona, was changed to Miltown. At my fiftieth birthday celebration in Atlanta I was given a new name and in a very serious manner. My feet were bathed, my head was anointed with oil, and a group of young women called Sisters in Blackness gave me the name Hanifa. For the last five years I have been trying to get comfortable with that name, but whenever I look at the name there are two scenarios that unfold, neither one of which I can get with. One is Hanifa on horseback dressed as a man during the Crusades, brandishing a sword and shouting “Death to the Infidels!” In my postmenopausal journey toward wise womanishness, this is a little bit too martial for me. The other Hanifa is Hanifa the Hidden, moving from safe house to safe house, trying to get to the waterfront in order to sneak aboard a ship and get away from the mob of mullahs who are out in the street brandishing swords yelling “Death to the Blasphemer!” since Hanifa the health worker has been speaking publicly on the rape of the young children who wind up in her clinic. For the most part I’ve been living my life out loud, so I don’t think I need that lesson in particular. So, for five years I have been trying to get comfortable with the name Hanifa because I take it very seriously when a sector of the community that names me “daughter, mother, sister” takes the trouble to find some other name to call out some other aspect of me that they see.

  I was born with the name Miltona Mirkin Cade. My mother informs me that my father, Walter Cade II, intended to have all his children named after him. My brother became Walter Cade III, but when it came to Walter Mae or Walterina, my mother put her foot down. So my father then named me after his employer in that great plantation tradition. Those of you of my generation who grew up in Harlem or who are older than I am can remember hundreds of people who came up on the Dixieland Express to work on Colonel Black’s plantation, also known as Chock Full O’ Nuts, and how those workers always named their first- or second-born after Colonel Black or his wife, Page. Every time I run across a Page, I ask, “Did your folks work for Chock Full O’ Nuts?” Once a season Colonel Black would have his namesakes and their families up to his estate in Tarrytown, near the Rockefellers. There would be watermelon and fried chicken and stuff. He would sometimes hand out a savings bond to his namesakes. Milton Mirkin, the person I was named after, was not forthcoming with any savings bonds or any watermelons. I didn’t even know the man, except I think I met him once. It is just a shred of a memory, which I will share.

  Whenever I come through the garment center or whenever I see a really well-made Milano straw hat, I get this little memory. Or whenever I see the film Klute. Whenever I am in a place with clothing racks and tailoring tables, I get this memory. I am walking down the aisles between tables, and I am around four years old. I have on patent-leather Mary Janes and frilly socks. I have on my navy blue swing A-line coat with brass buttons, and this most wonderful red Milano straw hat with a satin sash tied at the side. I am trying to hold my daddy’s hand, but he is using his hands to talk. There is a white man way at the end of this aisle of tables wearing big pants and standing astride like he’s somebody. My father’s voice is not familiar to me, and as we walk to the White man my father gets smaller and smaller. So I let go of his hand and step away from him. He turns to look at me and I pretend to loosen the sash on my hat. This is just a shred of a memory, but I bring it up by way of indicating what my relationship to that given name was. At some point, around kindergarten age, I accosted my mother, who was trying to take a bath. I was leaning against the hamper, and I announced to Mother that my name was Toni, and it was not short for Miltona, it was Toni, period. She was very indulgent and said, “Yes, sure, Honey.” I guess like any other kid, I was always coming up with names. Whenever you get a new doll, you start coming up with names, and sometimes the names are too wonderful for your dolls, so you take them for yourself. I don’t know where the name Toni came from, although in those days there was Toni home permanent. In second grade I did have a Toni doll, which had legs that didn’t move, it didn’t do anything, but you could comb the hell out of its hair, set it with sugar and water, and the staples would hold!

  My friends and my family began calling me Toni, but at school it was still Miltona, which I tried not to answer to. I tried to make people call me Toni. Years later in the fourth grade, I am in Brooklyn and there is a singing star named Toni Harper who is singing a song called “The Candy Store Blues.” Once again I struggled to make this name my own. In the fifth grade we moved to New Jersey; I got possession of my school record, and with ink eradicator and a nib-point pen I did some choice forgery, but I didn’t do it completely, so there were still papers and cards with the name Miltona Mirkin Cade, so I was still struggling with the name. By the time I got to college, it was all over. It was Toni Cade.

  The Bambara is in many ways more complicated to talk about, but I’ll give the short version. It’s 1970 and Mom and I are in Atlanta, which was where she grew up, and she is trying to find her mother’s grave, and I am toting around an African art book. I am also “tumbling big.” For the last few months I had been trying to find a name for this child. I hit on Bene as a middle name. Jane Karina and Barumba kept giving me these complicated Harero names that I couldn’t spell or pronounce or remember without calling them up. Bene, which means “child of,” became a middle name. Then Karma, which was her first name, was on everybody’s lips: “This is your karma, this is my karma.” So I said, “Karma!” Then there was the problem of the last name. I didn’t know what “Cade” meant, but I always liked Cade. It was short, but not too blunt, kind of mysterious. It wasn’t “Johnson.” I felt very at home in the name Toni Cade. So I am looking around for a name, but I didn’t want to change the name completely because I wanted people from kindergarten to remember me.

  I have always been very fond of the Chiwaras. The Chiwaras are made by the Dogon and the Bambaras. I tried out Dogon first: Karma Bene Dogon. Well, that sounds like, “Karma Bene, well doggone!” That didn’t work and Toni Cade Dogon definitely did not work! Then it became Bambara. Karma Bene Bambara. That worked. Toni Cade Bambara—the minute I said it I immediately inhabited it, felt very at home in the world. This was my name. It is not so unusual for an artist, a writer, to name themselves; they are forever constructing themselves, are forever inventing themselves. That’s the nature of that spiritual practice. Maya Angelou changed her name. Toni Morrison definitely changed her name—Chloe Wofford?!! Audre Lorde changed the spelling of her first and last names. It’s not all that peculiar. So that’s where my name comes from.

  As a very young child growing up in New York City, you did something that most of our parents told us not to do. You talked to strangers.

  Yes, and I went into their houses too.

  Could you talk about what gave you the freedom to talk to strangers, and who were some of those people you talked with?

  We lived on 151st Street between Broadway and Amsterdam, which is a very long block, and there were thousands of families on that block. There were also thousands of families in my building. Many people kept their doors open, which I thought was wonderful because I was very nosy! There was a family up on the fifth floor, and I used to pass their door going to the roof. There were thousands of relatives in this apartment, and if you stepped in or even looked in they always said, “You want something to eat?” And I would say, “Yeah.” They would feed me things I would never eat at home, like liver and onions on a biscuit made with water and lard! They were wonderful people except that they beat their children. They beat those children!


  There were also some “ladies of the night.” (That’s what my mother used to call them.) They used to lend out their back room to Black longshoremen who were attempting to organize against Murder Incorporated. I used to hang out and listen to them. There were lots of meetings and rallies going on in that period. I was born in 1939, and the radical thirties were still spilling over in the forties. There was still that notion that an active political life was a perfectly normal thing. People had to organize against the crackdown forces which, in those days, was the police, the FBI, Immigration, the Draft Board, and the Mob, which are pretty much the crackdown forces today, except people don’t acknowledge Mob participation too much.

  I went to RS. 186 on 145th and Broadway, and I would walk to school along Broadway. As people were cranking out the awning in the morning, I would say “Hi” and stop and talk. Of course, I would be late to school, always. When I came out of school, I would come around the Amsterdam Avenue way, which was very exciting. There was the Brown Bomber Bar and Grill. There was Walker’s Barbecue. There were hand laundries that used to keep J. A. Rogers pamphlets in the window and would sometimes stick them in your laundry and charge you for them. There were wonderful barbershops, and the men would come out and do all that male choreography; hoisting their pants and the like. They would have hats, and gold teeth, and they would talk. I would always stop and eavesdrop. Sometimes they would recognize me as the kid who turns in at 151st Street where the brewery is. Sometimes they would send me on errands. They’d say, “Hey, you little honey, when you turn in, you know that house next to the brewery? Walk up the stoop, knock on the right-hand window, and tell the lady we are going to bring the petition around.” So I became this little messenger. Also on that block was this wonderful beauty parlor where everything got discussed. I mean everything! So I definitely used to lean against the window, and sometimes I would slide in and sit down and listen to stuff. That beauty parlor is not there anymore. A Dairy Queen is there now, with the most wonderful sign that says: