President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., declared Juneteenth a federal holiday in celebration of the official end of legalized slavery in the United States of America on June 18, 2021. More than a decade before that momentous event, the late author Robert T.S. Mickles, Sr. (1953-2021) published the novel Blood Kin, A Savannah Story. Mickles’ novel takes readers inside the painful ambiguities of slavery as his ancestors, some of whom were slaves, and some of whom were slave traders, experienced them. The following foreword from Blood Kin is the first of two statements scheduled to acknowledge Mickles’ enduing literary legacy, and, in observance of Juneteenth 2022. Foreword to Blood Kin, A Savannah Story As this book goes into publication (2007), the city of Savannah is involved in the process of reinterpreting the significance, artifacts, and impact of slavery that was practiced here during the 1700s and 1800s. This reinterpretation is not so much about dredging up the pains and shames of an inglorious past as it is about setting straight the historical record of people who lived daily through “the peculiar institution of slavery.” As much as facts tell us about specific events and practices in history, they rarely give us the full story of the human hearts beating in the shadows of those events. Blood Kin is a story of those human hearts as told by Robert T.S. Mickles, Sr., great-grandson of former slaves on his father’s side of his family and a descendant of Portuguese slave traders on his mother’s side. Born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1953, Mickles moved with his family to Washington D.C. just three years later. Growing up in Washington, he knew nothing about his deeper southern roots. That changed when he turned thirteen years old and his mother sent him back to Savannah to live with his father in the city’s historic community of Sandfly. In Savannah, his grandmother, Mrs. Beulah Tremble, told him stories of what life had been like for slaves in the region. Having been born in 1888, first-hand accounts of slavery were typical subjects of conversation while she grew up herself. She kept and shared the knowledge passed on to her until her death at the age of 100 in 1988. Mickles recalls that many of her stories were about harsh times, but a lot were about days of memorable joy. In addition to his grandmother, many others shared their stories with Mickles throughout his teen years, entrusting to him a rare treasury of valuable folk history. With the legacy of his grandmother’s stories and his community’s history, Mickles stepped behind Savannah’s fabled “moss curtain” to reveal an original literary vision of human beings discovering their deepest humanity in the midst of war, racial oppression, individual fear, and individual hope. Although Savannah for a period was a major location for the import and sale of slaves, Mickles shows how it was also a place where the line between those who were “free” and those who were enslaved was sometimes a bit more relaxed than in many rural areas of the South. This is not to say that the author excuses an institution ultimately responsible for the death of untold millions, or that he views slavery through proverbial rose-colored glasses. It is, however, to say that he is willing to examine the cracks and crevices of history in order to tell a story others might not be willing—or even able, for that matter—to tell. It is the story of how Blacks and Whites stumbled across the dividing lines of race and slavery only to discover that each was as flawed, needy, and human as the other. Above all, Mickles provides us with an insightful novel of how our sense of humanity preserves itself when assaulted with the degradation of denial, shame, and physical brutality. His Blood Kin is a story that retrieves dignity from the trash pile of disgrace and restores it to a place of honor and value. It is one with which many can identify and which, quite possibly, all should embrace. Aberjhani |
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“Loving, Happy, Untamed, Passionate"
Somebody call the cops!
My muse has been stolen
I repeat my muse has been stolen…
The pain of this crime is felt in each stanza as she dramatically describes the sleep deprivation and loss of creativity it has caused. Yet there is also gentle self-deprecating humor while observing:
I feel too normal
I need my abnormality back…
The depth of her need is amplified with the following simultaneously pleading and demanding lines:
I want it back the way it was taken
Opinionated, LOUD, wild, confused
Loving, happy, untamed, passionate
Smart enough, encouraging, kinda shy
Uncorrupted by the norms of society
Unpierced by the actions of my peers
AND ALL MINE
In the poems which flow immediately afterwards, titled “Nicking,” “Lost Scared Afraid,” and “My Muse,” the poet’s attachment to what most inspires her can be understood at different times in different ways. In one moment, it is an addiction of a healthy variety rather than a destructive one. In the next, it reads and feels a lot like a love affair brutally interrupted by the kind of heinous disregard which too often in our current over-technologized world leads to tragic consequences.
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In the Tradition of Baring One’s Soul
Instead of offering strategies for navigating the painful uncertainties of her personal journey, the Savannah, Georgia-born poet simply presents her own efforts at balancing them. In this way, she self-identifies with humanity as a whole rather than with a single segment of it. Near the end of the volume, she notes the following in a letter to herself:
I know you
From your favorite color
To your deepest secrets
From your untold feelings
To your wildest dreams
I care about
Your every word
Simplest request
Smallest dreams…
There is a tremendous amount to appreciate in this first edition of Aurie Cole’s debut volume as her pen makes its free-styling way through shock and despair toward hope and self-determination. However, it has to be said as well that serious readers of poetry are likely to find a number of typographical errors distracting. These are understandable enough because talented young poets rarely receive the kind of publishing support which ensures the absence of such mistakes. (How many, after all, such as the celebrated Amanda Gorman are likely to receive an invitation to recite their poetry at a presidential inauguration and subsequently get Oprah Winfrey to write a foreword for their book, basically guaranteeing its status as a number 1 bestseller?)
Other critically-minded readers may question the absence of poems dealing with such timely issues as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, or Black Lives Matter. In a way, it may be argued that the more deeply personal writings inspired by the poet’s muse are a kind of response to these very concerns as they illustrate the power of sheltering within the integrity of one’s own sanity in a world knocked off balance by myriad forms of chaos. The important thing may be the knowledge that Talks Between My Pen and Muse is only a first important literary step for Aurie Cole and readers hopefully can look forward to many more writings from her pen and muse in the future.
Aberjhani
Author of Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle
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She followed the novel Wise Blood with a collection of short stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find, in 1955; the novel The Violent Bear it Away in 1960; and the short story collection Everything That Rises Must Converge ––a book on which she worked virtually right up until her death–– published posthumously in 1965. In between the writing and the publishing, she marshaled her strength to travel (aided by crutches) and lecture, write articles for popular magazines (for which she was generally well paid), and write numerous letters to friends, supporters, and critics.
(To read part 1 of this story please click here. For part 2 click this link.)
The O’Connor readers and scholars now know would not have been possible without a tightly woven network of friends and family members who supported her work through belief in, and out of love for, her. After illness derailed her plans to live the life of a postmodern New York author, she famously surrounded herself with peacocks at Andalusia, her family’s farm, and allowed the world to come to her just as much as she continued to embrace it on the page and through speaking engagements. Fellow authors, theologians, aspiring writers, general admirers, and would-be lovers in the form of men as well as women often made their way to her front door.
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Mother and Daughter Together
As such, she did the kinds of things caregivers tend to do when committed to ensuring as high a quality of life as they can for someone they love: setting aside a thermos of hot coffee at night to share with Flannery in the morning, running a farm to secure an income, tolerating the droppings and cries of beautiful but annoying peacocks, traveling abroad with her daughter even when she herself was ill, and standing guard at her hospital room door to ensure a chance at rest and possible recovery.
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In Praise of Those Who Wait
Then, approached by an editor in 2003 about a biography on O’Connor, it clearly was not an offer he could refuse. A dream which had been deferred for more than two decades finally saw the light of day in 2009 and by most accounts it was very much worth the wait.
Author
Aberjhani is co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance as well as author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah and Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind.
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A second shared hint is his struggle over whether to spell out the word "nigger" in this book's title or employ the more politically-accepted abbreviation. Following his publisher's suggestion, he chose the latter but felt the original more "symbolic of my struggle as a black male in American society." With that in mind, the book in general, he states, "documents my struggle to achieve the American Dream while having to confront the vicissitudes of being black in a racist society" (p. 11)
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A Timeline of Powerful History
For its precisely-balanced combination of social history and personal memoir, Johnson's book under any title is one of the most valuable written in recent years by an African-American man, and one of the most important for any time by a native of Savannah, Georgia. Being the former dean of Savannah State University's College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, and current Scholar in Residence and Professor Emeritus that he is, Dr. Johnson's text often reflects the language of his intellectual leanings. That allows him to place his life and his times within an analytical context similar to important works by some of his scholarly heroes, like Harlem Renaissance strategist W.E.B. Du Bois and political scientist Hanes Walton Jr.
Yet, at the same time, he is a very down-to-earth writer who engages readers with stories of his family's Gullah culture heritage, what it meant to lose his father at an early age, learning about racism for the first time, falling in love and getting his heart broken, discovering the world as a young sailor, and confronting the challenges of leadership within a demographically-evolving community.
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Anti-racism Activism
Of his position in this history, Johnson writes, "My life has been full of being in places where I shocked non-blacks with my presence" (p. 88). One such place was on the campus of Armstrong State College (now Atlantic University) where in 1963 he famously became the first African American to enroll in the school. Another was the campus of the University of Georgia, Athens, where he was the first Black from Savannah to attend that institution. At UGA, he walked out of one class after a white professor discussing the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision proclaimed the only reason African-Americans wanted to integrate schools in Georgia was to marry white women.
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Most of the kind of anti-racism activism Johnson chronicles is to be expected given the time-frame. In his chronicling, however, he provides important snapshots of black leaders in Savannah, like Wesley Wallace "W.W." Law and Hosea Williams, in political action. But his reportage goes beyond the dynamics of blackness clashing with whiteness.
Through his account of how segregation laws prevented Whites from attending the historically black Savannah State College, founded some 45 years prior to the establishment of Armstrong (as a junior college) in 1935, he demonstrates how racism has caused grievous injury on both sides of the color line. It has also been extremely absurd when considering that in order for him to become the first African-American to integrate Armstrong in 1963 for sake of racial progress in the name of democracy, he had to switch from Savannah State's senior college program curriculum to Armstrong's junior college curriculum.
Navigating Major Changes
By the time Dr. Johnson took office in 2004 as the sixty-fourth mayor of Savannah, and its second consecutive black mayor (after the late Floyd Adams), the city was well on its way to navigating major changes in its multicultural and economic make-up. His determination to meet that challenge at every level resulted in 2006 in a major heart attack experienced while attending the National Conference of Black Mayors in Memphis, Tennessee. Consequently, he writes, "How I approached the job of being mayor during the period before and the period after my heart attack were two very different periods" (p. 291).
"In 2011, we were still in the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. We had to find a way to continue providing all of the services to citizens with about $8 million less than we had in 2010...while the 2011 budget was extremely difficult, it was balanced with minimal impact to our citizens and without an increase in property taxes. That was due to strong leadership, clear priorities, and tough resolve by this council, which chose not to spend wildly when times were good" (p. 325).
Candidates lining up for the 2020 presidential race in America could take a few helpful lessons from this former mayor's playbook. One might be committing to running a campaign based on proven abilities and a strategic comprehensive vision rather than one based on negative personal attacks. In fact, though he won his first election to mayor before former U.S. President Barack H. Obama won his first election to the White House, their campaign styles bore striking similarities. (The president and mayor met when Mr. Obama visited Savannah in 2010.)
Conclusion
Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
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