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On Almost Meeting Alice Walker
By Mary Weems
She is stature-small, wears
the universe
and comfortable shoes. Center stage,
the ancestors dance around her like the fire
next time, their spirits the light coming
from the ceiling, the voices that echo
when the distance-learning children
ask their questions.
I am listening to the white and black people
address her as Alice, wondering if they think
they are lost in the looking glass
of a fairy tale where respect disappears
in the drink that takes that Alice
to the Mad Hatter.
In the live audience, all
of us reach for her breath; a wisdom
of purple, solitude, and love
slowly reversing evil, one word at a time;
like a water drop on a mountain
timeless, and as much a part of the world
as her wire rimmed glasses, her poignant
morality, a wildflower—unbowed.
7 December 2007 |
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My parents met
and fell in love in Mississippi during the civil
rights movement. Dad [Mel Leventhal], was the
brilliant lawyer son of a Jewish family who had fled
the Holocaust. Mum was the impoverished eighth child
of sharecroppers from Georgia. When they married in
1967, inter-racial weddings were still illegal in
some states. My early childhood was very happy
although my parents were terribly busy, encouraging
me to grow up fast. I was only one when I was sent
off to nursery school. I'm told they even made me
walk down the street to the school.When I was eight,
my parents divorced. From then on I was shuttled
between two worlds—my father's very conservative,
traditional, wealthy, white suburban community in
New York, and my mother's avant garde multi-racial
community in California.
I spent two
years with each parent—a bizarre way of doing
things. Ironically, my mother regards herself as a
hugely maternal woman. Believing that women are
suppressed, she has campaigned for their rights
around the world and set up organisations to aid
women abandoned in Africa—offering herself up as a
mother figure. But, while she has taken care of
daughters all over the world and is hugely revered
for her public work and service, my childhood tells
a very different story. I came very low down in her
priorities—after work, political integrity,
self-fulfilment, friendships, spiritual life, fame
and travel. My mother would always do what she
wanted—for example taking off to Greece for two
months in the summer, leaving me with relatives when
I was a teenager. Is that independent, or just plain
selfish?
—How
my mother’s fanatical views tore us apart
by Rebecca Walker |
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Amazon's Alice Walker Page
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Kwansaba for James Brown
By Mary E. Weems
James Brown brought God some funk cologne
made his head tilt ace deuce, hair
fried, dyed, laid to the side, even
his angels wanted hats with chains, capes
a chance to make Maceo hit it!
At night brother Brown writes freedom! on
wings sends love
South—with some skin. |
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Mary E. Weems,
Ph.D. is an accomplished poet, playwright, author,
editor, performer, motivational speaker, and
imagination-intellect theorist. Weems has been widely
published in journals, anthologies, and several books
including
Public Education and the
Imagination-Intellect: I Speak from the Wound in My
Mouth (Lang, 2003), developed from her dissertation
which argues for imagination-intellectual development as
the primary goal of public education. She won the Wick
Chapbook Award for her collection white in 1996, and in
1997 her play Another Way to Dance won the
Chilcote award for The Most Innovative Play by an Ohio
Playwright. Her most recent chapbook
Tampon Class
(Pavement Saw Press, 2005) is in its second printing.
Mary Weems currently teaches in the English and
Education departments at John Carroll University,
and works as a language-artist-scholar in k-12
classrooms, university settings and other venues through
her business Bringing Words to Life.
Contact Professor Weems,
mweems45@sbcglobal.net, for readings and
more information.
Mary Weems is the eldest daughter of
four, the mama of one daughter, Michelle E.
Weems, and the
blessed-to-be-with-him-wife/partner of James
Amie. Proud to have been raised by her mama,
and to be from a poor, working-class
background, Mary started writing poems when
she was thirteen to learn to love herself.
This took a while. Since then, her creative
spirit-eye has turned more and more outward
to include her take on the African-American
experience from a personal and political
perspective as well as the universal
complexities of being a woman and anyone
alive in the world.
Mary E. Weems Table
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Report of the
Research Committee
on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
Thomas Jefferson Foundation
January 2000
Conclusions
Based on the
examination of currently available primary and
secondary documentary evidence, the oral histories
of descendants of Monticello's African-American
community, recent scientific studies, and the
guidance of individual members of Monticello's
Advisory Committee for the Robert H. Smith
International Center for Jefferson Studies and
Advisory Committee on African-American
Interpretation, the Research Committee has reached
the following conclusions:
Dr. Foster's
DNA study was conducted in a manner that meets the
standards of the scientific community, and its
scientific results are valid.
The DNA study,
combined with multiple strands of currently
available documentary and statistical evidence,
indicates a high probability that Thomas Jefferson
fathered Eston Hemings, and that he most likely was
the father of all six of Sally Hemings's children
appearing in Jefferson's records. Those children are
Harriet, who died in infancy; Beverly; an unnamed
daughter who died in infancy; Harriet; Madison; and
Eston.
Many aspects of
this likely relationship between Sally Hemings and
Thomas Jefferson are, and may remain, unclear, such
as the nature of the relationship, the existence and
longevity of Sally Hemings's first child, and the
identity of Thomas C. Woodson.
The
implications of the relationship between Sally
Hemings and Thomas Jefferson should be explored and
used to enrich the understanding and interpretation
of Jefferson and the entire Monticello community.—Monticello
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Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: A Brief Account
Thomas
Jefferson (April 13, 1743 –
July 4, 1826) was the principal author of the
Declaration of Independence
(1776) and the
Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom
(1777), the
third
President of the United States
(1801–1809) and founder of the
University of Virginia
(1819). He was an influential
Founding Father and
an exponent of
Jeffersonian democracy.
Sarah "Sally" Hemings (Shadwell,
Albemarle County, Virginia,
circa 1773 –
Charlottesville, Virginia,
1835) was a
mixed-race
slave owned by
President
Thomas Jefferson
through inheritance from his wife. She was the
half-sister of
Jefferson's wife,
Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson by their father
John Wayles. She was notable because most
historians now believe that the widower Jefferson
had six children with her, and maintained an
extended relationship for 38 years until his death.
When Jefferson's relationship and children were
reported in 1802, there was sensational coverage for
a time, but Jefferson remained silent on the issue.
Four Hemings-Jefferson children survived to
adulthood. He let two "escape" in 1822 at the age of
21 and freed the younger two in his will in 1826.
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Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American
Controversy
By Annette
Gordon-Reed
Attorney
Gordon-Reed (law, New York Law Sch.) presents a
lawyer's analysis of the evidence for and against
the proposition that Jefferson was the father of
several children born to his household slave Sally
Hemings. Gordon-Reed is not concerned with Jefferson
and Hemings as much as she is with how Jefferson's
defenders have dealt with the evidence about the
case. Her book takes aim at such noteworthy
biographers as Dumas Malone, who has been quick to
accept evidence against a liaison and quick to
reject evidence for one.—Library
Journal
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The Women
Jefferson Loved
By Virginia
Scharff
According to historian Scharff,
Thomas Jefferson’s “most closely guarded secrets,
the most fiercely maintained silences, all had to do
with the women he loved.” It stands to reason that
in order to fully understand a man as tremendously
gifted and as deeply flawed as Thomas Jefferson, one
must also understand and appreciate the women who
collectively formed the foundation of his life and
shaped the nature of his legacy. Although
Jefferson’s mother, daughters, granddaughters, wife,
and enslaved mistress were all fascinating women who
played distinct roles in his life and legend, they
were also creatures of their time and place, living,
enduring, and playing by the rules of a patriarchal,
male-dominated society. By studying these women
Scharff not only opens a window to the heart and
soul of one of our nation’s founders but also
resurrects their own contributions to our nation’s
history.—Booklist |
 |
The chapter on Sally
Hemings does not add much new information, but it certainly lays
out the facts we know in a comprehensive and well organized
fashion. Much like Professor Gordon-Reed, the author carefully
explains the strange dual-family existence that prevailed at
Monticello, and how servants integrated with the Jefferson
family as they all lived together. As regards the two daughters,
they too emerge from the historical darkness and we learn a
great deal about them and their important role in TJ's life and
activities. As I read each chapter, I learned all manner of
things of which I had not been aware, and I have read a lot of
material on TJ. So women are central to the story, but there is
also an abundance of additional facts and perspectives that very
much enhance the book. —Ronald
H. Clark
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The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
By Annette
Gordon-Reed
This is a scholar's
book: serious, thick, complex. It's also fascinating, wise
and of the utmost importance. Gordon-Reed, a professor of
both history and law who in her previous book helped solve
some of the mysteries of the intimate relationship between
Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, now brings to
life the entire Hemings family and its tangled blood links
with slave-holding Virginia whites over an entire century.
Gordon-Reed never slips into cynicism about the author of
the Declaration of Independence. Instead, she shows how his
life was deeply affected by his slave kinspeople: his lover
(who was the half-sister of his deceased wife) and their
children. Everyone comes vividly to life, as do the places,
like Paris and Philadelphia, in which Jefferson, his
daughters and some of his black family lived. So, too, do
the complexities and varieties of slaves' lives and the
nature of the choices they had to make—when they had the
luxury of making a choice. Gordon-Reed's genius for reading
nearly silent records makes this an extraordinary work.—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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Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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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
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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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posted 9
December 2007
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