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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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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Having explored fusions of poetry and prose in works of my own with varying levels of success, I wondered how well Morneweg had met this challenge he issued to himself. Once I began reading in earnest, the chapters seemed to alternate like sequences in a film. They moved back and forth between flickering flashes of moments and extended scenes from the characters' private lives and America's public tragedy, also known as the Civil War. It soon became apparent the author has struck a masterful balance of historical detail, lyrical rhythm, and finely-nuanced emotional intensity.
The book begins with Alphonse's older sisters looking from a window down on him and Penthe, two former childhood playmates now entering adulthood, in a New Orleans courtyard reading poetry by Francois Villon. The delicate intimacy between them is apparent and alluring. But because he is categorized racially as white and she, in the language of 1800s American south, as a biracial "octoroon" (meaning "three quarters French and one black") their intense intimacy is also dangerous. In addition, despite racial categorizations, they are second cousins.
The kind of relationship Penthe and Alphonse had during childhood was not uncommon for the time, but most children were expected to "grow out of it" as they matured and retreat to their respective black and white demographic niches. Alphonse's and Pense's relationship, however, continues to develop through a series of circumstances along a more sensuous, humane, and uncompromising trajectory.
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Distance Making Hearts Grow Fonder
Alphonse,
Penthe in Paris--A letter from a sweet girl to her
beloved friend back home in New Orleans.
You know I am not sweet.
Ha!
They want us to practice writing in a foreign language, so
I am writing this in English. We are trilingual, you and
I, -- our native Creole, French, and English.
That makes us complex...
Adieu,
Penthe
One letter comes from Alphonse after Penthe writes him to confess she may allow herself to be seduced by a "knucklehead...strapling youth" with a reputation for introducing willing young women to sex. It is not the response either Pense or the reader might have expected:
Penthe,
I will not come to Paris to save you.
Are you just trying to be funny with all of your ha-ha's?
Justine is barely a passing fancy. I cannot see you
with a knucklehead.
I will want you any way you are--
Je t'aime,
Alphonse
Exchanging letters becomes a practice on which they depend during several trials of separation. It is to the author's credit that he fashions this technique as deftly as he does into an already impressive collage of linguistic versatility.
Complications of Love, War, and Race
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Racism directed against Penthe is something Alphonse makes clear he will not tolerate. When another man calls her "a part-nigger whore," he challenges him to a dual and manages to shoot him without killing him. At the same time, he suffers through moral ambivalence when it comes to fighting in the Civil War, demonstrating how complex the issues behind it truly were: "If the Yankees invade, I will fight them. I will fight, but I am not too thrilled. I will not be morbid in front of Penthe Anne." Such reasoning brings to mind the song by Sade: Love Is Stronger Than Pride.
From one minimalist chapter to the next, they love their way through war, two epidemics of Yellow Fever, race riots, the demands of grandchildren, and old age. Looking at a printed copy of Penthe & Alphonse, or even just the cover on a screen after reading the book, gives the feeling of staring at an optical illusion because Morneweg has managed, somehow, to deliver much more than what appearance promises. The range of time covered, scope and depth of emotions engaged, and intricacy of styles employed seem too much for the pages containing them.
What Geek Bookaholics Often Do
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In the course of reading Penthe & Alphonse, I began to do what geek bookaholics often do when sensing that within their hands is not just a good book but a rare and beautiful kind of priceless mind. I began attempting to discern who the author's strongest literary influences had been. I could hear William Faulkner's spirit wandering between lines while meditating on the nature and traumas comprising the identity (or should we now say identities?) of the American south. But who were the others?
The answer came one day when I was discussing the title with a friend and she loaned me a copy of a booklet about one Mark Louis Morneweg published by El Portal Press. In it, he noted his passion for "Miss Emily [Dickinson]"along with deep appreciation for others who had also helped stir to action my own pen. Among them: Federico Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda, James Joyce, Shakespeare, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, and Albert Camus.
He shared these words in regard to his approach to writing fiction: "Unplanned adventures in literature. An idea pops into your head and you go from there. Nothing structured or laid out beforehand. Just one word comes and you have an entire chapter to write and that is great..." (The only time I had ever allowed myself that kind of compositional freedom was while writing Christmas When Music Saved the World, later titled Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player.)
Maybe even more importantly for the purposes of this essay, he told us this: "...I am a prose stylist with some amazingly short chapters. Some chapters that are poems. Prose poems." And added: "Penthe is about taking risks. Artistic risks. Passion..." The risk was one that paid off extremely well because ultimately Penthe & Alphonse succeeds as both an epic poem and an amazing novel.
Moreover, in addition to taking risks, it is also about what Lady Gaga refers to as the right to curate one's life as one sees fit. Along those same lines, Morneweg chose not to douse the flames of his startling creative literary inventiveness. He chose instead to feed the fire with boldness sufficient enough to increase its light and heat so others could gather around and savor the prize of unexpected beauty.
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By Aberjhani
Harlem Renaissance Centennial
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
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The fourth star is for the fact that Mr. Armstrong was 91 years young when he released this book at the end of 2018 and is currently looking forward to turning 92 years old on St. Patrick's Day, 2019. What the age factor means in this case is that as an African-American man born in rural Texas in 1927, the military veteran had to survive quite a bit before he could even think about publishing a book, his third, at the age of 91. A lot of the memories through which he had to navigate to tell his stories are the kind many Black men his age, he tells us, do not enjoy recalling or discussing.
Moreover, his meditations are surprisingly much more inclusive than many might assume. As with classic autobiographies and memoirs by such authors as Maya Angelou and James Weldon Johnson, Armstrong does make some hard unflinching observations when it comes to topics like the history of slavery, racial segregation in Texas and his adopted home of Savannah, Georgia, and the historic bias against interracial relationships. However, he goes a big step further in "Bloodlines: Interview with Miss Pilgrim Cottonwood."
An actual interview, "Bloodlines" tells the story of a Native American Hopi woman whose tri-racial ancestry included Natives, Whites, and Blacks. It is a rare authentic document of its kind. Constructed from an interview which Armstrong conducted in 1966 when his subject was 66 years old, the author presents her dialect as she spoke it. Cottonwood is candid about both her struggles to survive and the heartbreak over losing the love of her life. Particularly significant is her account of relationships between African Americans and members of her tribe during and after slavery.
In "A Place for Old Black Men" Armstrong writes with moving poignancy about the paradoxes of aging in a society that continues to advance technologically but appears to regress when it comes to issues of social justice. At the same time, in "Back to My Roots" and "My Trip to Africa" he rejoices in the discovery of his cultural inheritance and celebrates the potential which he believes the future holds for everyone.
Aberjhani
January 2019
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