My father wrote the book, A Panther is a Black Cat. Of course I wanted to know how he first met the Panthers. As with everything else in his life it was almost organic. He knew, hung out with, and kept the company of people who were looking and thinking […]
In 1966 my father’s life changed profoundly. It was in his words a “primal moment.” He had quit working for the California Department of Vehicles a year earlier and took the family to Europe where we lived in a tent for a year and, as my father said, “Got to […]
With Nat Burbridge as President and my father as Education Chair, the San Francisco Chapter of the NAACP kept promoting change in the early 1960’s. Some of it was more political, getting S.F.’s first Black firemen trained and hired, getting the principal at John Muir Elementary School fired after he, […]
Dr. Thomas Nathaniel (Nat) Burbridge was one my father’s best friends in San Francisco. Together the two of them led an effective and lasting impact improving various sectors through, to my father’s mind especially, and unlikely organization, the NAACP. How about we go to the last thing that we did […]
In redacting the tapes many of the stories are very small connecting stories jumping from one idea to another. There were so many moments some terrifying and some sublime, many funny. Often we talked as father and daughter more than me being a thoughtful documentarian so in time and subjects […]
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 […]
