My father’s life course changed dramatically after he met my mother. Afro-centric, proud Bahamian-American, he was not disposed to out-marrying. But fate will sometimes take you and shake everything up. So how did you meet mom. At the University of Chicago. This was January of 1947 (my mother was not […]
We started this conversation with me asking if my father had been a “race man” (a precursor to Black Nationalism where Blacks valued and uplifted people of African descent and supported aggregation of the race. Race Men Carby is an interesting look at people she considers race men.) It was […]
You never know what action will set your eyes towards courage, resistance. At some point there is a choice to make and we make it and it defines how straight and tall we will stand. My father sees one episode in the navy as his first adult act of real […]
My father said he got familiar with a few brigs while he was in the Navy. This is his first experience caused, as it often was, by his response to ignorance and racism. He was barely eighteen years old. I got into a very nice rhythm at (Oakland, California) Naval Supply. It was […]
Growing up my father told us many stories of accts of successful resistance. Some serious, some sad but the Navy man in basic training who peed his way out of the Navy and out of World War II was definitely one of my favorites. Peeing the bed as an act […]
My father was inducted into the Navy at seventeen years old. He was definitely not “military material” so I was surprised, despite World War II and the general national patriotism, that he would have signed up that young. But my father did not enter the Navy waving a flag, he […]
My father mostly defined himself as an anarchist. Not the cliché definition of those who want chaos and violence but the idea of a freedom from hierarchy and the idea of freedom for the individual with social responsibility as a part of the construct. We needed to be brought up […]
This is the time of years when many parents and children start thinking about the possibility of summer camp. I remember my overnight summer camp experience, a Quaker camp that watered and fed the seeds of peace already planted in me. My father’s camp experience gave him his own […]
I trained with and then worked for California Lawyers for the Arts as a mediator. When I began the training it was not so much an altruistic way to help the arts community, but a skill I needed to develop for myself- listening better, hearing more. The idea of helping […]
We travel our life paths, picking up experience, finding teachers and lessons everywhere. And sometimes if we have been attentive to the lessons they pay off in unexpected ways. That is part of the story of my father getting admitted to the University of Chicago after the end of […]
