I recently found out that a visitor to my home considers me a racist ...

[BumRushDaShow]

203. What is cool is that one book I have is "Before the Mayflower"

by Lerone Bennett, Jr - and my sister actually met him some time ago and told me she mentioned how we had his book in the household when we were growing up and he was surprised, delighted, and humbled by it (we are in our 50s). I believe he is still releasing updated versions of it. My parents were in one of the "Book of the Month" clubs in the '60s and a number of these books were actually offered as part of that (that's how they got "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" and "Soul on Ice" when they first released).

You are fortunate to have that signed Baldwin! I can imagine the folks who "hung out with the crowd" back in the '50s. Alot of cultural innovation going on there not unlike in the 20s!

My Dad was into jazz in the '50s actually brought his portable reel-to-reel to tape some gigs when various artists were in town (I remember when I was little that he had a couple reel-to-reel tapes of bluesmen). We had one of Miriam Makeba's earliest albums where I first heard her "Click Song" & "Pata Pata" - my intro to the Xhosa language. As a child, I would just sit there transfixed listening to her pronounce the clicks and sing. My sisters and I were always "hits" when bringing in stuff during "Negro/Black History Week" for show and tell.

I was honored to meet Dr. Ivan Van Sertima a little over 20 years ago (before he died) at a lecture that he gave and had him sign my copy of his "Nile Valley Civilizations". My mom had him sign her 1st edition hard cover of "They Came Before Columbus". What was funny was that I told him that we had every single one of his books and I started naming them off - including ones that he forgot about. lol

My father passed 40 years ago this year but I tell my Mom that the 2 of them were just "quiet radicals" (and my Mom will say - hee hee hee).

As a side note, as yesterday was the 46th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination, I was in 1st grade when that happened and I remember the school having a special assembly in honor of his life. And since the school really had nothing to use to honor him, that fell to my household, where my Mom had actually purchased a print from neighbor whose niece had created a multi-panel series of silk-screened images from the Civil Rights movement since the '50s. The framed print that she had purchased had a historical vignette printed on the back summarizing the Montgomery bus boycott spearheaded by Rosa Parks and segued into the "current", with MLK and others continuing the struggle. And the print itself had an abstract screened image of MLK and I think Ralph Abernathy, front and center, with abstract images around them of dogs attacking a group of people and other images of women standing or kneeling. This framed print ended up on on an easel at the center of the stage in the school auditorium, with a black sash draped around the top and sides.

No matter the controversy about the memorial, the fact that one of MLK does now exist on the National Mall, is a testament to the struggle and passing on the history to the next generation!