June Jordan_Her Life and Letters

by Valerie Kinloch

  Unfortunately, the work with the youth came to an abrupt halt because public funds to support the program were cut. On this latter point, Bush, one of the teachers in the program, responded, “The children were really doing very well and showed real writing talent. . . . But it became difficult to go on without the proper staff and support.”10

  It can be assumed that The Voice of the Children—the group and the book—

  motivated Jordan to do even more work with youth as a teacher and research assistant, especially as she came increasingly to notice that the politics of movements, including the Civil Rights Movement, and legislation in this country ignore the rights of children. At a 1978 conference for America’s Child Welfare League, Jordan presented a narrative-based position paper on the neglected, abused, and forgotten children in the world, from “the desolate fixity of the Puerto Rican teenagers who sat on my stoop, on 20th Street in Manhattan, trying to make babies to the sound of plastic radios . . . [to] the torn-up gut quandaries of my son, a Black man at Harvard University.”11 It should be noted that Jordan never fully reconciled sending her son to Harvard University, given her mixed feelings about Ivy League universities, her own involvement with them, and her political disposition concerning the education of students of color in America. In a moving keynote address entitled “Old Stories: New Lives,” the poet tells of why young people will not grow to adopt the common adult way of thinking and behaving and will not allow our failures and heartaches to become theirs: “In the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and en-snare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways.”12

  Once they are “tricked,” they eventually grow into older people who either believe that they are hated “and that nobody really liked [them],”13 or struggle with their identities in relation to other people.

  The position paper she presented at the America’s Child Welfare League conference and the publication of The Voice of the Children are benchmarks of Jordan’s development as a teacher, writer, activist, and intellectual. Her primary stand was a concern for the welfare, protection, and education of all children, affirming that youths are “legitimate human beings”14 whose voices must be heard. Adrienne Torf articulates this message best when she insists that Jordan had faith in young people’s abilities to collaboratively instigate social and political change that can greatly impact all of humanity.15 E. Ethelbert Miller echoes this sentiment as well, by informing me that on the rare occasion of meeting the poet’s son, June Jordan and Christopher David Meyer appeared to be as close as a mother and son could be.16 Clearly, Jordan’s dedication to children stems, in great measure, from her relationship with her son, her own childhood upbringing—one scarred by possible abuse, name calling, and

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  family and school-based fights—as well as her early experiences with love, and her youthful experiments with sex.17 Her dedication to young people, and thus her drive to return home by examining her own multifaceted identities, signifies Jordan’s desire to reclaim life and living spaces for all people, including the youngest of us. This message is expressed in her poems “Moving Towards Home,” “Home: January 29, 1984,” and “Calling on All Silent Minorities,” works that are crucial to one’s understanding of the poet’s social activism, freedom fights, and children’s and young-adult writings.

  Sheep-eye Sheep eye

  where yo’ little lamb?

  Way down in the valley. . .18

  In her 1972 biography titled Fannie Lou Hamer, written for children of all ages, Jordan recounts Mrs. Hamer’s life by addressing disparities between rich and poor, black and white, and boss and employee. As mentioned in a previous chapter, the biography demonstrates that racism and hunger should be challenged by ordinary, loving, conscious visionaries, such as Mrs. Hamer, who are willing to organize and work for social change, even under the threat of death.

  Throughout the book, Mrs. Hamer’s voice is portrayed in rhythmical Black English Vernacular, which does not diminish Mrs. Hamer’s experiences.

  Rather, it makes available a language of belonging, protest, and love used by Civil Rights activists in the Mississippi Delta and other black communities during the 1960s and 1970s. The loving portrayal of Mrs. Hamer’s Black English Vernacular represents her humanity and tolerance, as captured in the activist’s belief, “Ain’ no such a thing as I can hate anybody and hope to see God’s face.”19

  It is significant to note that Jordan celebrates Mrs. Hamer’s intelligence, courage, and ability to affect positive social and political change because of the invaluable influence she had on the poet’s life. The book’s portrayal of the activist as a heroine is, nevertheless, out of the ordinary. Traditionally, young people are made to identify heroes as academics, athletes, and political leaders who are, for the most part, male. Mrs. Hamer is a woman who had few educational opportunities: “Her family was so poor, Fannie Lou soon had to help out, full-time. She had to leave school, at the end of the sixth grade.”20 She learned how to create her own opportunities by taking advantage of the limited resources at her disposal: “As a teenager, she would go around to her friends, and she would say, ‘Now what you think? Black people work so hard, and we ain’ got nothin’ to show for it. . . . You know one thing: that ain’ hardly right.’”21 Mrs. Hamer’s activist efforts were greatly impacted by the systematic denial of civil rights and equal opportunities for black people in America. At the same time, she continued to develop a powerful, steadfast voice cultivated from her childhood encounters: “When she was thirteen, a white man had

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  poisoned and killed her family’s favorite cow, Della. . . . Fannie Lou never forgot the murder of her cow. Right then and there, she decided that, whatever it would take to overcome this white hatred, she would do that thing.”22

  Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer fought in every imaginable way to secure civil rights—mainly voting allowances—for Southern black people. Her fights inspired Jordan to quite literally follow in her footsteps: Jordan’s indomitable spirit led her to Mississippi and other places in the American South on many occasions. Later, the poet traveled to, and wrote about, the Middle East, Bosnia, Nicaragua, Northern Ireland, Cuba, and other politically devastated places with committed revolutionaries. Jordan believed that all forms of injustice are connected and, therefore, all such forms of injustice should be eradicated: “The difference between South Africa and rape,” Jordan once stated,

  “and my mother trying to change my face and my father wanting me to be a boy was not an important difference to me.”23 She believed wholeheartedly that all such sufferings are violations of the human spirit and the right to live a safe, threat-free life everywhere and at all times.

  Jordan’s values, connected to her mentor and mother figure, Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, defined for her the significance of international protests and organization, and the necessity of international campaigns to rescue all people, especially children, from abuse, poverty, and hunger. The children’s biography of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer serves as a testament to Jordan’s admiration of the activist and her commitment to the struggle.

  In a New York Times review titled “Can’t hate anybody and see God’s face,”

  Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker24 writes of Jordan’s biography of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer: “Yes, this book is short and slight,” begins Walker,

  “and the illustrations are pale and soulless, unlike their subject or the vivid, vigorous language of the text. But happiness is the first full-length book about so great a woman as Mrs. Fannie Lou. Read on, children.”25 If Jordan always had her way, then all children would be reading books that affirmed the beauty of their identities—a point reaffirmed by Jordan’s travels throughout the Mississippi Delta in the 1960s and 1970s, and e
ventually to Nicaragua in the 1980s.

  Jordan’s admiration of Mrs. Hamer stayed with her long after the activist had died. In her poem “Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer: In Memoriam,” Jordan opens with the following:

  You used to say, “June?

  Honey when you come down here you

  supposed to stay with me. Where

  else?”

  Meanin home

  against the beer the shotguns and the

  point of view of whitemen don’

  never see Black anybodies without

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  some violent itch start up.

  The ones who

  said, “No Nigga’s Votin in This Town . . .

  Lessen it be feet first to the booth”

  Then jailed you

  beat you brutal

  bloody/battered/beat

  you blue beyond the feeling

  of the terrible

  And failed to stop you.26

  Jordan ends the poem with “of love,” which both honors Mrs. Hamer’s undying commitment to black life in Mississippi and the entire South, and immor-talizes this important heroine who was obviously a role model, mother figure, and mentor to Jordan. In Mrs. Hamer’s political likeness, Jordan continued to teach, write, fight, travel, and love. The poet’s various other writings attest to her commitment to honoring the struggle of past heroines, such as Fannie Lou Hamer and Phillis Wheatley, by acknowledging the power of young people.

  Her text Dry Victories (1972) is a perfect example of Jordan’s pursuit to continue Mrs. Hamer’s work. It begins as a conversation between two young black boys Jerome and Kenny, about misunderstood elements of U.S. history during and after the Civil War and Reconstruction. The conversation, written in the form of an interview and in preparation for a performance that the boys are planning at a local community center, establishes strong parallels between those earlier periods and the political events of the 1960s and 1970s. Images invite comparison between the Civil War and the Vietnam War, and between the lives of black people in the 1870s and the 1970s. Young Jerome and Kenny reflect on how people lived over one hundred years before. They also discuss revisionist history, facts, and events excluded from their formal public-school education. While this conversation occurs between the boys, Jordan employs various illustrations—a copy of the Declaration of Independence, images of war, depictions of the lives of sharecroppers, and pictures of burial sites—to prove to readers that not much has changed over the course of a century. This is the overall message of Dry Victories. In the “Note to the Reader” at the beginning of the book, Jordan writes the following brief message:

  “We” is poor and tired of poverty, Black and white, right here, in America. “We”

  is poor and bored by piece a papers don’t hardly mean nothing at all. “We” is poor and want to change the paper into land and liberty and like that, no delay.

  We hope you dig the pictures and get into the truth behind them terrible things you need to know. And, if you don’t know, right away, what these pictures mean, then check them out.27

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  Although the book was written over thirty years ago, the images are so well captured and placed in the book that a present day reader can readily understand the points Jerome and Kenny make about social and political struggle: Jerome: What you think the parents and them other folks will do? After they hear all this?

  Kenny: Hard to say, brother. But maybe they do something. Be about time.

  About time to do something.28

  Writer Janet Harris, in her New York Times review of Dry Victories, writes, “I could dig knowing Kenny and Jerome. They’re a couple of black teenagers having a rap about a show they want to put on at the Center.” Harris continues:

  “It’s called ‘Dry Victories,’ and that means, as Jerome explains, ‘ nothing-like-victory’ be taking place, ever, during Reconstruction days or in them other days, the days of Civil Rights.”29 Harris writes that throughout the entire book, from the boys’ conversations to the various images, Jordan rightfully captures many historic events, such as slavery and emancipation, and evokes human emotions, namely anger and bitterness. Though the end of the book is ambigu-ous, Harris believes that Dry Victories is an example of a call to social action and responsibility. Like all of Jordan’s books for young readers, Dry Victories rejects the argument that children of color from low socioeconomic backgrounds and urban communities are a part of a deficit model, that they are intellectually and emotionally inferior to their white counterparts, and that their perspectives are unimportant and undeveloped. In this rejection, Jordan reaffirms both the rights and the privileges of young people, including those of her own son. Published in 1975, Jordan’s children’s book New Life: New Room focuses on familial love by emphasizing the elements of compromise and collective responsibility between siblings as they prepare their home and lives for the addition of a new baby: “On top of Momma getting so big and so sleepy, the apartment was beginning to be small.” Jordan continues by turning attention to the young characters in the book: “Rudy [ten-year-old], Tyrone [nine-year-old], and Linda [six-year-old] were not ready for a small house. But they had to get ready because, if they didn’t, one night, the new baby would come home.”30 The story is told through the eyes of a young girl, Sister Linda, whose family lives in a two-bedroom apartment. Since her mother is about to have a baby, Linda must give up her space on the living room sofa and share a room with her two older brothers.

  The story centers, in part, on Linda’s efforts to work with her brothers to determine how they will make the transition to sharing the small space of the room, from organizing the beds to decorating and deciding which toys to keep so that everyone is satisfied: “Linda couldn’t understand. No matter who told her, again and again, she couldn’t understand why she had to give up her place.”31 In time, Linda and her brothers come to understand the importance of sharing space and making room for the new baby, and they eagerly celebrate

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  the change: “And they [Linda, Tyrone, and Rudy] were off, painting, bumping, spilling, dabbing, dripping, poking, streaming, splashing, red and yellow and blue over the glass [the window].”32 Jordan asserts that the situation presented in New Life: New Room is a common one for many children, especially in New York City—large in population and building size, but small in living space.

  This children’s book represents another of Jordan’s attempts to showcase the ability of young people to take on responsibility and to collaborate on important decisions. Around the time that Jordan wrote this book, she was working on other pursuits, leading writing workshops and teaching college-level courses. She was also writing plays. In the Spirit of Sojourner was produced at the Public Theatre in New York City in the late 1970s; the documentary The Issue was performed in the 1980s and For The Arrow That Flies by Day had a staged reading at the Shakespeare Festival in New York City in the early 1980s.

  With musician Adrienne Torf, Jordan completed Freedom Now Suite in the early 1980s as well as The Break and Bang, Bang Uber Alles in the mid 1980s.

  These collaborations are discussed in greater detail in a later chapter. Kimako’s Story, published in 1981, is a short book inspired by and dedicated to “Rebecca Walker Leventhal [Alice Walker’s daughter] and to Little Valerie on West 20th Street in Manhattan, New York.”33 Kimako’s Story is a stream of consciousness tale told from the perspective of a seven-year-old girl who lives in Harlem, New York. It opens, “My name is Kimako. I am seven going on eight. This is the best way I always like to sit./On the bottom step of the stoop and in front of my mother I can see everything and everybody.”34 Through Kimako’s descriptions of her daily activities—having her hair braided, playin
g in the park, walking Bucks, her friend’s dog (not surprisingly the name of young June Jordan’s dog), or interacting with people in the neighborhood—readers gain insight into how one young, curious, black girl conceptualizes her world in a large metropolitan city. The inclusion of pictures, poetry, puzzles, and maps enhances the narrative style and illustrates Kimako’s actions. Readers connect to Kimako easily because of the vivid language Jordan employs to describe Kimako’s surroundings: The park was full of trees and bushes and dogs and men who wore the same shirt and the same pants, and no socks, day after day, while they played checkers on the concrete tables or they passed around brown paper bags of wine and whiskey.

  That was one end of the park.35

  Readers also hear the seriousness and concern in Kimako’s voice upon discovering a sleeping man in the park:

  One morning, on Bucks’s first walk for the day, it was raining hard. We went over to the park to look at everything, and do you know what we found? Inside the concrete monkey jungle there was a regular man, a real man, squeezed up into one of the holes! The man was fast asleep. He must have been there all night long. Bucks and I stood there for a minute, to see if he would snore or wake up, but he didn’t, so we left him alone.36

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  At the story’s end, Kimako reluctantly returns Bucks to his seventeen-year-old owner, Bobby, who has just returned from a wedding ceremony in Puerto Rico.

  In a voice of hope and care, Kimako says,

  I never stopped loving Bucks. And I never forgot the way the two of us did everything, or what we did. And this is my plan. When my mother asks me what do I want for my birthday, which is coming up in August (I’m a Leo), I am going to tell her I want a little Bucks.37

  With Bucks, Kimako felt protected as she ventured throughout her neighborhood; she never felt lonely when her mother went to work, leaving Kimako and her younger brother Charlie alone in the house.