“You are smart,” I said to him. “These clothes are just a declaration of that.”
They were never the same after that day. They walked differently, with a certain scholarly swag. Even the way they sat in their seats, erect and attentive, was different. Now they felt too fresh to slouch and squirm. When I greeted them as scholars, they smiled like they believed it. Being smart looked so fashionable that they even wore their outfits to school. Most kids hate uniforms, but we did what Black people do best and sprinkled some seasoning on their ensemble. Their dress shirts and blazers were the perfect color contrast of red, navy, and white. The boys complemented their dotted bow ties with flamboyant socks that peeked out above their shoes. They walked down the hallway in packs, like they were strutting for a GQ magazine cover shoot.
They were the only Black kids wearing dressy tailored blazers to school. The unique style earned them a badge of popularity. They looked like a movement, like they belonged to something bigger than themselves. Lynchburg began to buzz with word about “that new program for Black kids.” More kids showed up, and I was eager to teach them all. We had no enrollment system at first, so it was come one, come all, until we ran out of space.
Local news media even caught wind of the movement. But my first interview with a reporter was unpleasant. She attended one of our Saturday classes to interview a few students and me. I was a nervous wreck. I had not been interviewed since high school basketball. The cameraman gave the on-air reporter a signal that we were live. I clenched my armpits because sweat was seeping through my suit jacket. She asked me a few questions about the program and its inception. Then she asked me a question that almost made me lose it on camera.
“These are at-risk kids that you are serving,” she said. “So what made you decide to call this a scholars program?”
I hesitated for a moment as I stared at her. But I kept my composure. I firmly responded, “Because that’s what I see in them.”
I did not care what other people felt about them, the ones who marked my kids with “at-risk” and other labels. I did not need everybody to believe in what we were doing. I had enough faith for us all. I could not explain the magic that was happening in that room each Saturday. But it was working.
Meanwhile, I was still a full-time English major at Liberty. I enjoyed my American Lit class, and Flannery O’Connor was one of my favorite authors. But one day in particular, I had a hard time focusing as we analyzed “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” It was an ordinary day on the first floor of DeMoss Hall, but for students in the local high schools, this was report card day.
In my Saturday classroom, I did not badger them about grades and test scores. I wanted them to find pure joy in learning. But I worried in private, because I had learned that the kids had about a 1.2 GPA as a group for the previous quarter. I wanted us to have a good time at our Saturday school, but I wanted more than that. I wanted them to grow. I wanted that joy and excitement and intellectual progress to shine forth from the church lobby and illuminate their everyday classrooms. I made surprise visits to their schools. Sometimes they’d spot me peeking through the door window, confirming that they were sitting in the front row like I’d told them. Other times I showed up with McDonald’s, which was caviar compared to their school lunch. I wanted them to know that my commitment to them was not limited to Saturday mornings. I desperately wanted them to show the world what I already knew about them. That’s why I sat in my English class thinking about their report cards, not about a traveling salesman and an artificial leg.
English was my first class of the day and met at 7:45 a.m. I knew high school report cards were distributed during first period, which fell somewhere between 8:00 and 9:30 a.m. Waiting to hear from them was more suspenseful than the wait when I first got tested for STDs. My entire life felt like it hinged on this one moment.
I was sitting on my hands, trying to keep still, when, suddenly, my phone vibrated. I grabbed for it so frantically that it nearly slipped to the floor. It was Ben. I jumped up so quickly that the screeching of my desk and chair caused everyone to stare.
“Sorry, it’s an emergency,” I said to the professor as I excused myself.
I burst through the door and answered the phone as soon as I was in the hallway.
“Hello?” I said. “Hello?” I repeated. My heart was pounding so hard I could barely breathe. Suddenly, Ben’s response from the other end told me everything I needed to know.
“Let’s goooo!” he yelled from the other end like he had just scored the game-winning shot. He did not have to say another word. I already knew what his elation meant. Tears began to fill my eyes. We hung up and he sent me screenshots of his grades. My phone started pinging incessantly. First was Shontae. Then Ryan. Then Cordell. Then Angel. Then TJ. More than twenty text messages with screenshots of report cards flooded my phone.
I was overwhelmed and slid to the floor with my back against the wall. I put my hands over my face to conceal my sobbing. They did it. Together, they went from a 1.2 GPA to an astounding 3.5 for the group. Almost every one of them made A/B Honor Roll for the first time in their lives.
What started as five kids, a circle of plastic chairs, and a college student with a whiteboard became a movement that took the city of Lynchburg by storm. News reporters came in droves. Teachers and administrators were confounded. They all asked the same question: How did you transform these kids so quickly? My answer was simple: I met them where they were. I helped them find their voices. Just as someone once did for me.
CHAPTER TEN
A LEADER BORN
Although we still lived in a decaying apartment and feeding myself and my brother was a struggle, I worked without pay at the Anne Spencer House & Garden Museum. This Lynchburg landmark was once the home of a full-fledged member of the Harlem Renaissance, a much-admired poet whose artistic friends from New York often visited this very house.
Volunteer work was one thing; getting academic credit for studying Anne Spencer was a bonus. In my final year of college, I discovered that there was such a thing as an independent study course. So I proposed to study and write about her work, the chair of the English department approved my request, and we developed a syllabus.
Every time I set foot on the black-and-white-checkered walkway to the front door of her Queen Anne–style house, I felt like I was stepping onto holy ground. Inside, I was greeted by the spirits of Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, Marian Anderson, George Washington Carver, and the many Black Renaissance leaders she hosted as they traveled through the Jim Crow South. In these same rooms, Anne Spencer and other leaders launched the local chapter of the NAACP.
The vibrant, brightly decorated interior of the house has not been changed since Anne Spencer died in 1975. It is a shrine to Anne and her loving husband, Edward, who designed and built the house in 1903 and added to it for decades. When visitors came, I led tours as part of my volunteer internship. When I was alone, I transcribed original documents written by the famed poet and curated archives, work that benefited both the museum and my own independent research.
It was sometimes hard to focus in this setting. On occasion, I went upstairs and studied The Cocktail Party, a mural that artist Dolly Allen Mason had painted on Anne and Edward’s bedroom wall. When I held an original letter Du Bois wrote to Anne, the paper now the color of weak tea, my mind traveled to the 1920s. Luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance gathered in the same parlor where I combed through documents. If I could join them, I would not say a word. I would listen and take notes as Alain Locke reclined on the floral chesterfield, one leg crossed, cigar in hand, expounding on The New Negro; as Du Bois sat across the room in the cherry wingback chair, self-satisfied and amused, stroking his chin after explaining the concept of double consciousness; and as Langston Hughes slicked back his wavy hair and sermonized the weary blues. Maybe we’d all sip a little moonshine. Maybe Zora would tease us with early notes from Their Eyes Were Watching God. Maybe inebriation
would set in and we’d laugh hysterically when James Weldon Johnson separated us into sopranos, altos, and tenors and scolded us for being off-key when we attempted to harmonize on “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Then Ella Fitzgerald would yell, “Play that record!” and we’d frolic around the room to “It Don’t Mean a Thing.” Maybe I’d introduce them to the Nae Nae or “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” and they’d tell me to sit my simple ass down. I imagined hearing three knocks at the door and Anne yelling, “Who is it?” From the other side we’d hear a loud, “Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho!” as we laughed and shouted, “Let Cab on in here!” I could see it. I could feel it. So I spent hours basking in the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance.
I climbed the same staircase that Countee Cullen and Thurgood Marshall mounted to the same room where Martin Luther King Jr. slept when he spoke in Lynchburg in the 1960s. Behind the house, I sat in Anne’s writing cottage in her legendary sun garden. I tended the pond where water spewed from the mouth of a cast-iron sculpture made by Ebo artisans. Du Bois gave it to Anne after spending time in Ghana. I never wanted to leave this place. Several times a week I stepped into this time machine and journeyed to the Jazz Age that shaped me.
The museum was a gem nestled in the center of Lynchburg, but it was barely seen, touched, or talked about. Apparently, the Harlem Renaissance was dead as far as people in Lynchburg were concerned. Yet it was powerful and magical to me, and its resurrection became my mission. Sitting in Anne’s inner parlor, where my heroes had argued and laughed nearly a century earlier, I thought about what mattered to me and what mattered to the people who had no idea why I cared about these artists and thinkers. How could I bring our interests together? I wanted to do something bigger than a Black History Month program or a class project, something that would reach a whole community.
I knew from personal experience that many people would rather be entertained than educated. So whatever I came up with had to do both. That’s when it hit me. What if I threw a festival to bring the Harlem Renaissance to life? I thought about all the festivals I had seen over the years: Caribbean festivals, pride festivals, music festivals, and so many others. How hard could it be to plan, fund, and build a festival?
I was excited and ambitious, driven by an impulse that I did not understand. But I still trusted it. I was ready to dive into the deep end, blindfolded and without a life vest, giving no thought to risk. My zeal to educate the people of Lynchburg about the Harlem Renaissance blinded me to rational caution. I did not consider the cost of hosting a citywide festival. I did not consider the challenges of planning and marketing such an event, securing a space, finding and contracting with vendors, and organizing the community. I had no idea where to even begin. But I was determined, and that was all that mattered.
My only partner was Shaun Spencer-Hester, Anne Spencer’s only surviving granddaughter and director of the museum. She’d set up the foundation that operates the museum and found nonprofit partners to care for the gardens. She had been instrumental in getting the house listed on the National Register of Historic Places. She’d been doing it alone, and now she was delighted to have join her someone young, energetic, and passionate about her grandmother’s place in history.
The morning of Saturday, September 22, 2012, was beautiful. The sun glowed, the wind was calm, and the temperature was in the comfortable sixties. More than a month had passed since I’d had the idea, a million details had been sorted out, and I hadn’t really been scared until now. This was the first time I’d organized a public event, and Shaun and I were the only staff.
We had planned what seemed like a great program, but there was no guarantee that people would actually show up. We didn’t sell tickets or ask people to RSVP. Like a DJ or a little-known band, I had stapled posters to light poles and slid flyers under the windshield wipers of cars in every public parking lot in the city. The flyer read, “Anne Spencer Museum Presents: Harlem Renaissance Festival 2012” and promised an art exhibit, games for kids, open mic, and live entertainment.
We’d gotten permission to close two blocks of historic Pierce Street, from Thirteenth to the ruined tennis court near Fifteenth where Arthur Ashe once trained. Vendors started to arrive around 10 a.m. and soon the area looked like the prelude to a Mardi Gras parade. There were ice-cream trucks, face-painting stations, art for sale, and barbecue tents along the road. The main assembly area was a grassy open lot next to the museum. It featured inflatable bounce houses, a dunking booth, and an elevated plywood stage that we had hammered together for performances. The local fire station brought over a truck to amuse kids. The radio host from Hot 103.9 played music that carried through the whole neighborhood. Everything looked great. Everything was in place. Except for the people. And I thought, What if nobody shows up?
I walked past the barbecue tent. There was one man on the grill. His apron draped over his pot belly, he wore basketball shorts with Jesus sandals. Anytime a Black man is on the grill with shorts and Jesus sandals or off-white New Balances, you know it’s about to go down. This was the uniform of a southern grill master. He yelled over the music, “All right now!” which meant both hello and goodbye in his southern dialect.
Shaun saw me pacing frantically from vendor to vendor and said, one hand lightly patting my back, “Don’t worry, the people will come.” Her optimism was comforting, and it proved justified about thirty minutes later. Waves of children, teens, and adults poured from all directions. It looked like the Johnson family reunion. Kids were running around and jumping in the bounce house and playing double Dutch. Teenagers were on the mound hurling baseballs and trying to strike the bull’s-eye at the dunking booth. Adults were dancing the Electric Slide with a drink in hand. The DJ played some old-school jams. Grown folks shuffled and two-stepped and yelled across the yard, “You don’t know nun’ ’bout dat right there!” to the young folks who were not paying them any attention. I looked around at our community. It was perfect. And it got even better when the program began.
Our plan was to re-create the Cotton Club, the Harlem nightspot where many of the greatest Black artists performed. Corderius, my good friend from campus, was the master of ceremonies. He was dressed like a Jazz Age dandy, in a suit with suspenders, wing-tip shoes, and a classic fedora. He clutched the microphone stand with both hands and let out a great big “Good afternoon, everybodyyyy!” The crowd clapped and cheered as he said, “I would like to welcome you to Lynchburg’s first-ever Harlem Renaissance Festival!” What we had accomplished became real to me in that moment as hundreds of people cheered and clapped with joy, ready for a good time.
Many of my college friends were gifted singers and they were game to impersonate the brightest stars of the era. Cassie channeled her silvery, angelic voice into “Summertime,” Ella Fitzgerald style. Kristal took us to church with “God Bless the Child” by Billie Holiday. Walter transformed himself into the “Hi-de-ho” man himself, the great Cab Calloway. We danced and sang and grooved like it was the Roaring Twenties in uptown Manhattan. To close the day, we had poetry readings. A friend read “I, Too” by Langston Hughes. We all sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by James Weldon Johnson. And I ended with a tribute to Anne Spencer, the American poet who gave rise to the renaissance in Lynchburg.
The Harlem Renaissance Festival became a popular annual event in Lynchburg. I coordinated it for a couple of years. My first attempt at community organizing was a success and now I felt invincible. Bringing all those people together made me euphoric, but I knew this was just the beginning. Raising awareness of the Harlem Renaissance was great, but I had a bigger message to share.
As my senior year was coming to a close, I worked as a teacher assistant in the old education building next to the Hangar, one of Liberty’s old student centers. One afternoon, Dr. DeWitt, an education professor I’d had before dropping out of the teacher training track, peeked her head in as I was entering grades.
“You’re not coming?” she asked, one foot across the threshold.
“Coming where?�
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“Wait, you haven’t heard?” she seemed astonished.
“Heard what?” I was confused.
She told me there was a guest speaker today, some famous guy that everyone was hot to hear. “You have to come,” she said. “You can finish that later.”
I told her that I would try. Papers were stacked everywhere and I needed to enter more grades before I clocked out for the day.
“I promise you won’t regret it,” she said, closing the door.
I wasn’t convinced because the university’s most heavily promoted guest speakers were typically white, male, evangelical, and monotonous. I figured there was no way they would invite a fiery orator like Cornel West or Dick Gregory or Michelle Obama, so I was uninterested.
I kept pecking the keyboard with my index fingers, carefully entering each grade. The noise level rose and I saw that the hallway was now crowded with people, scrunched tightly together and all carrying copies of the same book. They were headed in the direction of the Hangar, and I could sense the buzz. I had never seen such commotion about a guest speaker.
Ultimately, I couldn’t resist. I walked over and slipped through the door into a huge banquet hall. Students and faculty were already settled around the big round tables, empty of food or drink for this daytime event. The speaker was already up. As I suspected, he was another white man, most likely conservative, just like the rest of them. But everyone was transfixed. My professor saw me and motioned me toward her table, which was unfortunately near the front. I hunched over and tiptoed toward her, squeezing between rows of round tables.
I sat down and started listening to the man and was immediately enthralled. He moved like a thespian: he was vivacious and theatric and pirouetted around the abandoned lectern. No one could take their eyes off of him. It was the most ingenious display of oratory that I had ever seen. He was an artist, a showman. He used voices that made people laugh. He told stories that made people cry. And when it seemed like it could not possibly get better, he used a chair as a stepping-stone and launched himself onto one of the round tables. Everyone gasped, shocked that he would stand on the white tablecloth. They gasped because they had never seen such a thing. I gasped because I thought only Denzel Washington and I did that. I looked down at the program lying on my table to find out who this man was. I needed to know his name because he had already joined my list of heroes.
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