My Father Is Dead

Books by Tom Dent

Southern Journey / Blue Lights and River Songs / The Free Southern Theater

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Books by Kalamu ya Salaam

The Magic of JuJu: An Appreciation of the Black Arts Movement / 360: A Revolution of Black Poets

Everywhere Is Someplace Else: A Literary Anthology / From A Bend in the River: 100 New Orleans Poets

Our Music Is No Accident / What Is Life: Reclaiming the Black Blues Self

My Story My Song (CD)

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my father is dead, again

(for my father-friend tom dent)

i was thousands of miles away

when tom's tree fell

the weight of missing him

answers the age question

because

his aftershock's tremble

reverberates within

the chamber of my skull

at all

the oddest moments

like discovering a special person

within the skin of a child of time

and discerning at the same time

a lady i used to be

a lady whose love

shaped me

there are periods

when our ability to perceive

presence and potential

is predicated

on having been groomed

by those who have gone before

on having been shown

how to see beyond

what is now

what is known, how

to appreciate the shape

of things to come

all this prescience a product

of learning the living wisdom

some come from a brusque old man

whose gruffiness was so tender

so touching

in its honest intimacy

as he suggested that

there was something beyond

what ever was

and is, and yes, even will be

there is always

something more

something better

to be/come

english words were never meant

to adequately articulate

the anguish in our mouths, our hearts

when we lose the stretching part

of our selves--the stairs we climb

to see further, to descend deeper

as we look out and over

past the limits of horizon line

our vision is improved when we stand

on the shoulders of elders

whose height hoists us higher

than we could ever grow

if we remained flat-footed

married to the ground

the view from these human

balconies enables us to eye

not just near and far

but also back and down into the wells

of our own personalities

if we are fortunate

we have fathers

who help us

clearly see

depths

as well as distances

perhaps a moan

is the most profound

sound one can make

when a father is gone

when my first father died

i cried publicly

this death time my tears

for tom are silent

words on paper

the two times

a man is most

alone

are when

he loses

a father and when he

loses his own

life -- his

beginning his end

in the new orleans

that tom knew

old griots die singing

they do not go silently

into some lonely night

in his new orleans

we do not kill our fathers

to prove that we have arrived

but rather we learn

from them that we can

crack open the kernel

of our becoming

only by completing

the final maneuver

of life's ultimate passage rite

the step of accepting the torch

and making of ourselves a light

volunteering

to lift the father spirit

to shoulder the responsibility

of becoming beacon

for those newly born

and those yet to come

in our new orleans we do not stop

at simply burying aged bodies

we also dance forward from funeral line

and accept the awesome

task of filling father shoes

if i really come from

a house of the rising sun,

if i really believe

in resurrection

if i am really

my father's son

then i must be reborn

be his life

after life

in earth ways

my father is dead, again.

but yet again

he lives

the older i become

the more people i contain

another of my fathers

is dead

long live

my father

long live my father

in me

long live

my many fathers

long live

all the fathers

i am

and all the fathers

i will ever be

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Audio: My Story, My Song (Featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)

The Katrina Papers, by Jerry W. Ward, Jr. $18.95 / The Richard Wright Encyclopedia (2008)

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Marcus Bruce Christian

Selected Diary Notes / Selected Poems / Selected Letters

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Ratification

The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788

By Pauline Maier

A notable historian of the early republic, Maier devoted a decade to studying the immense documentation of the ratification of the Constitution. Scholars might approach her book’s footnotes first, but history fans who delve into her narrative will meet delegates to the state conventions whom most history books, absorbed with the Founders, have relegated to obscurity. Yet, prominent in their local counties and towns, they influenced a convention’s decision to accept or reject the Constitution. Their biographies and democratic credentials emerge in Maier’s accounts of their elections to a convention, the political attitudes they carried to the conclave, and their declamations from the floor. The latter expressed opponents’ objections to provisions of the Constitution, some of which seem anachronistic (election regulation raised hackles) and some of which are thoroughly contemporary (the power to tax individuals directly). Ripostes from proponents, the Federalists, animate the great detail Maier provides, as does her recounting how one state convention’s verdict affected another’s. Displaying the grudging grassroots blessing the Constitution originally received, Maier eruditely yet accessibly revives a neglected but critical passage in American history.—Booklist

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American Uprising

The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt

By Daniel Rasmussen

In January 1811, a group of around 500 enslaved men, dressed in military uniforms and armed with guns, cane knives, and axes, rose up from the slave plantations around New Orleans and set out to conquer the city. They decided that they would die before they would work another day of back—breaking labor in the hot Louisiana sun. Ethnically diverse, politically astute, and highly organized, this slave army challenged not only the economic system of plantation agriculture but also American expansion. Their march represented the largest act of armed resistance against slavery in the history of the United States—and one of the defining moments in the history of New Orleans and the nation.

American Uprising is the riveting and long—neglected story of this elaborate plot, the rebel army’s dramatic march on the city and its shocking conclusion. No North American slave revolt—not Gabriel Prosser, not Denmark Vesey, not Nat Turner—has rivaled the scale of this rebellion either in terms of the number of the slaves involved or in terms of the number who were killed. Over 100 slaves were slaughtered by federal troops and French planters, who then sought to write the event out of history and prevent the spread of the slaves’ revolutionary philosophy. With the Haitian Revolution a recent memory and the War of 1812 looming on the horizon, the revolt had epic consequences for America. Through groundbreaking original research, Daniel Rasmussen offers a window into the young expansionist country, illuminating the early history of New Orleans and providing new insight into the path to the Civil War, and the slave revolutionaries who fought and died while standing up against injustice. This book represents a significant contribution to African American history and the struggle for civil rights in this country.

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Southern Journey

A Return to the Civil Rights Movement

By Tom Dent

A black youth reared in segregated New Orleans, Dent went to Mississippi for the civil rights movement, and that experience stuck with him. So in 1991, he decided to work his way south from Greensboro, N.C., to Mississippi, skirting both large cities and important officials, to talk to (mostly) black folk and to assess the movement's legacy. At times, Dent's meandering approach lacks depth and is unwieldy, but his personal connection to his inquiry informs his story with commitment. In Greensboro, the unresolved gap between blacks and whites, exemplified in an anniversary celebration of the city's historic sit-ins, remind Dent "of the strained interracial meetings of the 1950s."

In Orangeburg, S.C., a black academic tells him ruefully that many social-work students go into "criminal justice" lacking the broader awareness of the politics behind the new programs. In Albany, Ga., Dent discerns signs of material progress but deep divisions not only between the races but also within the black community. In Mississippi, where he sees black political victories as having had a relatively small payoff, he becomes convinced that a new black organization is needed to supplant the NAACP to address national political issues of special concern to blacks (education, unemployment) and to monitor cases of police and official abuse and discrimination. Though not quite a complete plan, it's a constructive response to Dent's conclusion that the civil rights movement opened up doors, but "once inside, well, there was hardly anything there."—Publishers Weekly

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The White Masters of the World

From The World and Africa, 1965

By W. E. B. Du Bois

W. E. B. Du Bois’ Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization (Fletcher)

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Ancient African Nations

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Negro Digest / Black World

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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan / The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll / Only a Pawn in Their Game

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery / George Jackson / Hurricane Carter

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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg

The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804 / January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of Haiti

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BLACK CLASSIC BOOKS

BCP Digital Printing

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updated 9 April 2008