To fully appreciate reading former Savannah mayor Otis S. Johnson's From 'N Word' to Mr. Mayor, Experiencing the American Dream, you might want to note some important clues he shares at the book's beginning. The first is his identification of himself as a "scholar activist." Take that for exactly what it sounds like: he has long been devoted to the cultivation of knowledge within himself and others, as well as to the reversal of heinous social and political injustices.
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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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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![Picture](/uploads/1/2/9/1/12911471/published/mark-morneweg-penthe-alphonse-bookcover.jpg?1551726532)
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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Powerful Authorial Voice
To read part 1 of this article please CLICK HERE. Part 2 begins now:
In fact, the political component expressed in the pages of Nigger was not something in which publisher E.P Dutton, according to Gregory, was interested at all. As explained in conversation with the late Dr. Marable Manning (1950-2011, author of the biography Malcolm X, A Life of Reinvention) just before receiving the Hung Tao Choy Mei Leadership Institute's 2006 Paul Robeson "Here I Stand" award, the publisher expected the comic to deliver a manuscript showcasing his ethnic “wit and wisdom” with minimal focus on the racial realities of the time. What they wanted, essentially, was a joke book which left no room for expansions of consciousness.
However, having already received an advance of $200,000 for the proposed work, Gregory opted to partner with white author Robert Lipsyte to produce a book which could simultaneously: 1) help raise people’s awareness about the effects of racial disparity in the United States; 2) share humor based on the human condition as he lived it; and 3) inspire participation in the Civil Rights Movement. This unexpected gamble at first stunned both the publisher and the public but ultimately yielded across-the-board rewards for all stakeholders involved.
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Partners in the Struggle
Sometime later, she took Gregory’s place on the front lines of a protest in Selma, Alabama. There, she was arrested and spent a week in jail while pregnant with twins.
Prophetic Inclinations
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That specific aspect of his demeanor is particularly noticeable in chapter seven of Nigger . The section contains a transcript of his response to a startling discovery. Preparing to address activists gathered in a church in Selma to coordinate the registration of Black voters, Gregory observed that the front row of the church had been “filled that night with policemen pretending to be newspaper reporters and taking notes” (p. 200). Rather than becoming dismayed or frightened, he used this development to address the infiltrators directly:
“…What do you think would happen to Christ tonight if He arrived in this town a black man and wanted to register to vote on Monday? What do you think would happen? Would you be there? You would? Then how come you’re not out there with these kids, because He said that whatever happens to the least, happens to us all… Let’s analyze the situation…” (p. 202).
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Getting Stronger
“Those of us who weren’t destroyed got stronger, got calluses on our souls. And now we’re ready to change a system, a system where a white man can destroy a black man with a single word. Nigger… When we’re through, Momma, there won’t be any niggers any more” (p. 209).
Although it appeared America had reached a kind of final goal when former POTUS Barack Obama occupied the White House for eight years, Gregory knew we had not. He nevertheless retained faith in the American people’s ability to one day achieve such a goal.Sitting on the sidelines and dreaming or complaining about it could never be enough to make it happen. An accomplishment of that magnitude would require––as demonstrated by his own amazing life example––an unwavering dedication combined with a willingness to make sometimes painful sacrifices, and, a sustained belief that ultimately the benefits of the long hard struggle will come to outweigh all untold anguish endured.
About Aberjhani
On any given day of the week, the creator of Postered Chromatic Poetics and co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Aberjhani, may be found wearing any number of hats descriptive of multiple pursuits: historian, visual artist, poet, advocate for compassion, novelist, journalist, photographer, and editor. Having recently completed a book of creative nonfiction on his hometown of Savannah, Georgia (USA) he is currently working on a play about the implications of generational legacies as symbolized by efforts to rename the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge.
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Biography Presents Compelling Portrait of Life, Times, and Mind of Jean-Paul Sartre (part 2 of 2)
7/11/2017
To read part 1 of this article please click here.
In this, he was much more a world citizen, or internationalist, than a nationalist. Cohen-Solal demonstrates as much through accounts of his physical and psychic immersion into different cultural and political environments as a traveler, and through applied adjustments of his literary focus as an engaged philosopher. Referring to the aftermath of a 1945 trip to the United States:
“What Is Literature?, Anti-Semite and Jew, The Respectful Prostitute, these are some of Sartre’s works that in the months to come, deal with the reality he has discovered in America. His recent awareness of the black problem [Jim Crow racism] is enhanced by his friendship with the American writer Richard Wright, whose autobiographical novel, Black Boy, was published in March 1945” (Cohen-Solal, p. 242).
And, as philosopher and social justice advocate Cornel West points out in his introduction to the biography, despite any criticisms of the man:
“Sartre will always be remembered as the most visible and influential European intellectual who put a limelight on the struggles against U.S. and French imperialism in Africa and Asia and against white supremacy in the United Sates. This is no small matter and it took great courage to do so. His support of freedom struggles in Morocco, Algeria, Vietnam, Cuba, South Africa, and the United States—regardless of the outcomes that resulted—was heroic” (West, p. xviii).
In Closing
Author-Artist
Aberjhani is an American poet, historian, essayist, editor, journalist, social critic, and cautious artist. His many honors include the Choice Academic Title of the Year Award, the Notable Book of the Year Award, Outstanding Journalist Award, and Poet of the Year Award. He is currently completing final edits on a work of creative nonfiction about the cultural arts, race relations, immigration, and human trafficking in his hometown of Savannah, Georgia.
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