I am the product of a love supreme.
Whether it was given by my late brothers, Marius and Tore, and my grandfathers, I am here because they were caring enough to make sure I knew I was valued. I saw my grandfather, Daddy Brooks, get on his knees every night to pray for me until he died in 1984. He told me ‘not to trust white folks because they would kill me.’ He prayed they would not ‘get’ me, too, as they had my Grandpa Anthony Crawford.
I’ve read when John Coltrane wrote those famous words he was considering how much the world needed God’s grace. His backdrop was a very violent America, and so he crafted one of the most famous ‘tunes’, as my Uncle Joe would say.
Today, I am fortified by a love supreme. My friends have become my family in many ways, since my brothers’ absence from the physical world. “Fictive” families have been the foundation of Black survival since the culture of evil violently tore us from our land, language, DNA and Gods.
Books and laughter have probably saved my life. The ability to stop working in corporate America and spend five years on fellowship with the most brilliant cohort of graduate students and professors invigorated me. The times we spent laughing meant just as much as learning about the theories of folks like Anna Julia Cooper, Frantz Fanon, and Stuart Hall.
My time at “Camp Jiandaa”, a camp just for Black children founded by some of the most progressive Black Nationalists in the country, frames almost everything I think about today. Jiandaa means “making one’s self ready.” We were visited by many great thinkers from Stokley Carmichael to John Henrick Clarke, and had daily access to the brilliance of Iva and Jake Carruthers. We learned basic Swahili, environmental survival skills, weapon training, and how and why we must love Africa, each other, and ourselves, supremely. I had no idea the impact Camp Jiandaa had on me until the day I described it to my academic advisor who sat back in her chair and said, “no wonder.”
I appreciate Black people with a love supreme.
I will name and attempt to deconstruct oppression without hesitation. I will seize every opportunity to use my training as a historian to provide exploration, connectivity and context about current forms of tyranny and neo-imperialism. Moreover, the history of resistance remains the locus of my analysis.
I am in deep awe of the young folks who are leading our demands for liberation like #CharleneCarruthers, National Coordinator of the Black Youth Project, a young sister who puts her body in the way of oppression in Chicago, and #EricaGardner, daughter of Eric Gardner who participates in ‘die-in’s, and #KeithBeauchamp, activist and filmmaker who forced the government to reopen the Emmett Till case, and #MartinezSutton, brother of Rekia Boyd who refused to remain silent about his sister’s murder by an off-duty Chicago police officer, and #KevinSprings who survives childhood and adulthood imprisonment and is changing the conversation about the pervasiveness and evil systems of U.S. mass incarceration in Miami, and #PhillipAgnew of the Dream Defenders who refused to leave the Florida capital after the murder of Trayvon Martin by vigilante George Zimmerman. These folks, and many others, are leading the charge, and I hope to feature their efforts here.
Finally, I understand the need for Black women to write as often as possible. Audre Lorde said for Black women “poetry is not a luxury”, and I stand in that tradition.
I hope to update this blog several times a week, and more when our village is on fire.
In deep solidarity!
Cocoa Hue 