I Got No Title

Intentionally, I did not watch the Rittenburg trial. I didn’t read about it in the newspapers or on social media. I didn’t watch the news. In 75 years, I have learned that this system will work as it is intended to work. On my way home from a doctor’s appointment today, I received a phone call from a friend. She asked if I had heard the verdict. I said no. She asked if I wanted to know. I said no. She asked if I should want to talk about it, to give her a call. I didn’t want to, and I didn’t call. I also didn’t want to expose myself to “social media” and stayed away from my email. I knew. I already knew, and there was nothing to talk about. I knew it would hurt.

During the earlier years, in the struggle for human rights, when churches and schools were bombed and burned; Freedom Riders and little black boys, men and women were disappeared, it happened in the dark of night. There was once some level of shame demonstrated by those who acted with such impunity by their  need to wear masks…hoods to hide their identity. Hate and the violence that came with it was not viewed as acceptable.

That is no longer the case. We have returned to a level of incivility where the lynching and burning of human beings was a spectator sport attended by communities including women and children. A time when violence and terror were an open and acceptable strategy for maintaining the status quo. So, they come unmasked. And they call themselves patriots. They march with American flag. They continue to carry with it the confederate flag and other gang symbols. They are armed with assault weapons. 

Make no mistake… what exists and where we are is by design. It is a system built around the perception of scarcity…that has resulted in greed. It is a system built around dualities…winners and losers…and winners take all. It is a system based on dominion…dominance and distorted perceptions of power over each other and every other living being on this planet. Every social, cultural and religious aspect of this system has historically been designed to hold that system in place. Everything.  The segregated “communities” in which we live, our segregated and unaffordable “educational” institutions, our segregated “churches”, our "social" clubs and organizations… literally everything. For America we could say that the foundation was laid down in 1691, however as it relates to the entirety of the human condition, we have to go further back to how this land property, and its people colonized.  And, if we examine the world wide phenomenon of enslavement and colonization it's not a pretty picture. It could present a hopeless picture for the future of humanity.

That being said, this is not an abdication of my responsibility to humanity…my own and others. My responsibility to those who came before me and those who will come after me…my responsibility to help image and create a world where we can all live. I know that there is no way for human kind to survive without hope…love…and courage.  And courage begins with the heart…”cor”. I know that I can no longer sing old litanies…with weaker and weaker voices. Love has to be exercised boldly and demonstrated with courage… if it is to be. If it is to be in this country…this world… love cannot be hidden in secret, in closets. Love has to be visible, conscious and intentional. Love requires work and many times sacrifice. In the struggle for love and the survival of humanity THERE ARE NO ALLIES!!! Indeed there is a lot to unpack about this trial but none of those murdered should be considered allies. They were human beings engaged in the struggle for humanity. 

I will go to sleep at some point tonight...rather...this morning and I will dream of Tamir Rice pitching a ball, or sitting in a dug out thinking about what he'll be when he grows up.

What Would He Say?

Whenever I am asked to write or speak about my father, or the men of the Negro League, or the Negro League in general,  I always have to ponder the question:  What would he say? What would THEY say? That’s the first thing I think about. What would he say? I do this because there is a certain amount of responsibility that comes with telling someone else’s story.  Even though I am a part of my father’s story it is his story. It always reminds of the tragedy of our myopic portrayal of history.  The old adage that “History is always told from the perspective of the “winners””.  When the fullness of our social evolutionary experience is not told through the voices of the many, and when we lose undocumented primary sources of our history, we lose our ability to be informed by the lessons of our past. We remain trapped in this endless cycle of half-truths, a breeding ground for bias, intolerance and self-righteousness. 

But what would he say?

I think he would say the story of the Negro League is a story of Black people in America, and their struggle not only to survive but to thrive.

He would no-doubt speak about the joy of the game and the fellowship of like travelers. He would talk about the brotherhood stronger than could be expressed using words like “team” or “team mates”. You would know and understand the strength of their connection as he described their relationships. He would smile at the remembrance. He would find excitement, as he leaned forward to tell anecdotal stories that he wanted to make sure you heard. He would laugh, and the joy of the experience would be reflected in the vibrations of his body. He would lean back and take a draw on his cigarette and then move on to the next story. He, like all the other men who played in the league, were marvelous story tellers.
But they told very few about what it took to move through the streets of America at a time when violence and terror were open strategies used to maintain the “racial” hierarchy. This was a time when Black men would go to war and come home to live through another. It was a time when the economic and legal systems created other mechanisms (red lining, disparate banking practices etc.) that ensured that returning GIs would soon understand that the GI bill didn’t include them. So Black communities did what they have always done. They created their own reality parallel to the country that turned its back on them.

I cannot imagine all that it took to continue to dream into anything beyond what existed, but they did—and generations learned it is possible.  Pioneers like Rube Foster were models for anyone wanting to create something out of nothing. 

Little Black boys learned that they could not be denied the right to exercise their talent and skill at thehighest level of play. And,  like their white counterparts  in the “Major” Leagues, they could make a living doing it. Though their compensation was less, their play was magical and inspiring. 

The robust level of play they exhibited evolved from an existing community coloring their language with “trash talking”,  being “called out”, and the “opportunities to improve” that looked and felt more like a challenge or dare. They bought all of who they were to the game. They filled stadiums (with Black and white patrons) and when playing in large cities, leading parades. Professional, organized baseball with Black players who put their own brand of magic on the game.  Players who would find their way south of the border, to Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Puerto Rico. There they would find themselves on teams with white counterparts from “Major” League teams in the US. They would then return sometimes never seeing them again. 

But I doubt, if not asked, he would ever say much of that. 

He would be too busy telling the stories of a kind of magic more difficult than pulling a rabbit out of a hat. The magic of maintaining your humanity in a place that would deny it. 

The magic of knowing your worth and expressing the fullness of your human potential; and the joy that comes from doing just that.

Reflecting on Love

I’ve been sharing the this advent season with a community of Christian faith at the Ocean Heights Presbyterian Church.  It’s been a wonderful, enlightening few weeks following the story of Hosea through scripture passages like the one below ...and guided through its telling in sermons by Blake Spencer---a truly gifted Christian leader.  No, I’m not a Presbyterian...that’s a story for another day.  But this passage, and this story is quite different from the one usually chosen by Christians for this time of the year.  This is one of the reasons it has intrigued me...because it is so appropriate.  Anyway I’m pairing it with Leonard Cohen...Steer Away...a song fitting for this third Sunday as we approach this season of giving...Hanukkah and Christmas...  Stories of love..the gift of love...are important reminders for me of the true meaning of this season and this year when it seems so illusive.  Remembering that love cannot truly be experienced without forgiveness is my constant learning.

Then God ordered me ”Start over.  Love your wife again, your wife who has cheated. Love her the way I God, love the Israelite people, even as they flirt and party with every God that takes their fancy. “I did it. I paid good money to get her back. It cost me a steep price. Then i told her. “from now on your living with me. No more cheating.  You’re living with me and I’m living with you.”  The people of Israel are going to live a long time stripped of security and protection, without religion and comfort, godless and prayerless.  But in time they’ll come back, these Israelites, come back looking for their God and their David-King.  They’ll come back chastened to reverence before God and good gifts ready for the end of the story of his love.   Hosea 3: 1-5

 This song was first published as a poem in the New Yorker Magazine in June of 2016.  It appears in his final album "You Want It Darker".

"Steer Your Way"

Steer your way past the ruins of the Altar and the Mall
Steer your way through the fables of Creation and The Fall
Steer your way past the Palaces that rise above the rot
Year by year, month by month, day by day
Thought by thought

Steer your heart past the Truth that you believed in yesterday
Such as Fundamental Goodness and the Wisdom of the Way
Steer your heart, precious heart, past the women whom you bought
Year by year, month by month, day by day
Thought by thought

Steer your way through the pain that is far more real than you
That's smashed the Cosmic Model, that blinded every view
And please don't make me go there, though there be a God or not
Year by year, month by month, day by day
Thought by thought

They whisper still, the injured stones
The blunted mountains weep
As he died to make men holy
Let us die to make things cheap
And say the Mea Culpa, which you probably forgot
Year by year, month by month, day by day
Thought by thought

Steer your way, O my heart, though I have no right to ask
To the one who was never, never equal to the task
Who knows he's been convicted, who knows he will be shot
Year by year, month by month, day by day
Thought by thought

They whisper still, the injured stones
The blunted mountains weep
As he died to make men holy
Let us die to make things cheap
And say the Mea Culpa, which you gradually forgot
Year by year, month by month, day by day
Thought by thought

For Monte

It is said that history gets recorded by the “winners”.  It resides in the half-truths of books that we feed to our young and around which they, and we, construct our reality. So it’s important that as we learn better, as we understand better, that we do better.  We must fill the empty spaces of our past so we can construct a reality that honors all that is our past and all of those who forged it.

When I read writer, Jerry Izenberg’s tribute to Monte Irvin today, I remembered that day at the Newark/Bears stadium.  Monte in his wheelchair, Ray Dandridge’s son, Geraldine Day (the wife of Leon Day), Larry Doby’s son, Red Moore and me with my father’s great-grandson on my lap.

                    



I also remember the last conversation I had with Jerry when he spoke of Monte Irvin’s declaration that he couldn’t die because there would be no one to tell the story.  When I heard that Monte had passed, I waited for Jerry’s story because I knew it was coming, and I knew there was no one who could write it as well as he.  I knew he could capture the essence of the man and what was important to him.  I was not disappointed. You can read his tribute here.

There are few left who can articulate the stories of the men of the Negro Leagues.  And because their history for years remained largely unrecorded, it is left to those of us who were privileged enough to sit at their feet, who store those stories, images and memories in the libraries of our hearts and minds to tell them and live them day-to-day.  My father met Monte Irvin when they were both freshmen at Lincoln University.  They were both on the baseball team.  They both wanted nothing more than to play baseball.  They both left to try out for the Newark Eagles and both made the team, the youngest members at the time.  Until the day my father died, I could tell when he was talking to Monte on the phone because I could hear him laughing the minute I opened the door.  A loud raucous laugh similar to men telling each other dirty jokes.  Although Jerry describes Monte Irvin as the last of the Newark Eagles, there remains one more...Red Moore, who lives in a small town outside Atlanta.  Red left the Eagles early in his career.  He went on to play with the Baltimore Elite Giants. He was missing from the roster of the dynamic team of the ‘40s; the legendary winning team of the 1946 Negro League World Series.  That team included: Larry Doby, Leon Day, Monte Irvin and my father, Max Manning.  It was managed by Hall of Famer, Biz Makey.   Ray Dandridge, Don Newcombe and Willie Wells, who would also find there way into the Hall of Fame, had left earlier.  There are no members of that 1946 team left.  With the exception of Red Moore, there are no Eagles left.  They have flown to higher ground.
                

They would come together for gatherings at card signings and the meetings of the Negro League Player’s Association.  Before the NLPA formed in the early ‘90s, they would share conversations on the phone or with brief visits.  
                           
For 20 years, they would sit together at their beloved Pop Lloyd Weekends here in Atlantic City with other former league players from the Philadelphia Stars, the Kansas City Monarchs, and the Birmingham Black Barons to name a few.  They would talk way into the night with guests like Congressman John Lewis, Bob Feller, photographer Gordon Parks, Earl Woods, the father of Tiger and most importantly the children of this community.
           

     












They were remarkable men, not because of how they played the game, even though their sheer talent would have been enough to win them distinction.  They were remarkable because of how they lived their lives...refusing to allow anyone to take their joy and by creating a parallel universe that was filled with it...to the brim.
                                

As I have mark each passing, another crack appears somewhere deep inside me.  Although I know that is how the light gets in, I’m also aware that I become more fragile.  We all become more fragile.  When our stories, the fullness of stories of our nation and our world, are not explored and told by those that lived them, all of us become defined by those that are considered the “winners”.  Those pictures, those images, those representations are and will always leave us less than we can be.  They leave us as incomplete as they are.  As Monte would say:  “...true story.”  And tonight I say: "Good Night, sweet prince. One of the sweetest of them all.  TRUE STORY!

                            

For Mahlon

I don’t know what happens when the last Star goes out.  I can only imagine how very dark the night sky will become.  I remember some time ago being in Washington State lying on my back in an open field, and watching stars appear one by one.  As the sky grew darker, I watched and counted them until they began to appear too quickly for me to count and they literally covered the sky.  I remember the feeling of peace and awe that filled my body.  As far as I could see, from the North to the South and from as far as I could see from the East to the West I was covered by the grace of the night sky.  I was blanketed by its stars.  My soul was reminded how important they were in the universe.  There are even songs which speak to the significance of the stars as we once “Followed the Drinking Gourd” (A Negro Spiritual which was code for slaves to follow the big dipper North to freedom.) My entire body remembered to give thanks and acknowledge them.  I was filled with overwhelming joy.  I cried.

Although I know that there is no difference but place, those stars are harder for me to find here in South Jersey.  The fact is:  I rarely look up at night.  I know the stars are there but it is a more difficult reach for me to see them because they are obscured.  We have replaced them with street lights, neon signs and the glow coming from security lights left on in high rises and homes.  We use them now as markers to guide our paths.  They mark our “way”.  A way once guided by the stars.  

These are the thoughts that have filled my mind this week.  This is the conversation that churns in my heart and takes me to my bed.  Another Star has faded farther from our view.  The sight line is dimmer, and I feel the void.  I remember when I first met Mahlon Duckett and some of members of the former Philadelphia Stars.  There were quite a few of them then.  They would come together with other members of the Negro Leagues to form the Negro League Players Association. My father was president.  I remember typing up the pages of a directory that was printed by Atlantic Electric, the company where I used to work.  Yes, there were pages. (I add these things for my own benefit.  It’s just part of my internal conversation ... my remembering.)  I remember being surrounded by these men and their hearts melded in shared struggle and joy.  I remember feeling blanketed by their grace and loved by them for simply being. It was very much that same sense of being that I felt on an empty field in Goldendale, Washington.

I don’t know how you explain the beauty of a night sky filled with stars to children/people who have never seen one.  I don’t know how you tell the story of Mahlon Duckett to people who have never witnessed that infectious smile, or the tender gentleness and smoothness with which he would call your name...as if it were his own.  

I don’t know much today except that I need to have this conversation here because I can’t yet speak it. (Can’t even speak his name yet until I figure out how to honor it.) I need to know that real stars/Stars don’t just “go out” even though we can’t see them/it.  I   need to remember that stars/STARS are light and real light is always present. (It’s only the artificial stuff that loses is radiance.)  I need to find a way to look up more, to reach out more, to search the skies for those STARS that really are still there to guide us/me. I need to remember to use my discernment to separate the real from the false.  I need to remember that beyond the sodium vapor street lights and the neon signs, which only provide a false sense of security, there is real light that the universe alone can provide. 

I need to remember that Mahlon Duckett died in the way that he lived:  surrounded by his loving family, and I need to remember that we will continue to tell his story because that’s how stars/STARS continue to shine and light our way in the darkness.

On the Friday before his death, I was speaking with my friend Michael making plans to go see Mahlon.  We never got there. 

You can read read more about Mahlon here:  http://www.csnphilly.com/baseball-philadelphia-phillies/negro-league-philadelphia-stars-mahlon-duckett-dies-92

Mother Emmanuel

In reading the various “news” accounts of the yet another terrorist attack at “Mother Emmanuel” (Almost 200 years ago it was defiled and burned to the ground because of its reported connection to a planned slave revolt.), there has not been much talk about those who physically survived this assault.  It has been reported that one was a five year old girl who was in attendance at the prayer meeting with her grandmother.  Her grandmother reportedly covered her with her body and whispered to her to pretend that she was dead.

I can only imagine the pain of this grandmother as she covered this child’s body praying that she be spared.  I can only imagine the strength of her prayers of intersession, knowing that only her body and a merciful God stood between the child beneath her and the ultimate of evil.  There is probably not one of us who has brought a living being into this world, or cared for one, who cannot imagine the pain of feeling powerless to protect them.  Our prayers for their safety always occupy a portion of who we are.  Sometimes we articulate those prayers and sometimes we push them to the background of our mind because the pain of believing that they wouldn’t be safe in their daily journey is far too much to carry with as we move about our day. 

And, I CANNOT imagine what it must have been like for this child lying beneath her grandmother.  The incomprehensible horror of bearing witness.  The sense of guilt, loss and fear as she listened and felt her grandmother’s life slip away... as she struggled to hold on to her own.  No, I CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE!

Just like I cannot imagine what it was like for those fearless souls who stood in the halls of “Mother Emmanuel” before these.  Those who rebuilt it from the ashes left when it was torched by the hands of racism and slavery that still loom like a ghost stench in the very air that we breathe.  They were fearless souls. Like those that bear their legacy and invited in a stranger, trusting his intentions.  Without benefit of weapons other than their belief in goodness of humankind and the strength of an Almighty God.  They let him into a sanctuary, which was not theirs to exclude him from.  They let him into their hearts because that’s who they were. 

“Mother Emmanuel” and all that she is and represents will continue to move forward in the march towards freedom and a better world for us all.  She is fearless in the face of these many years of hate, racism and oppression.  She will continue to guide us as she has done in the past.  She will shelter children and adults as she did former slaves separated from their children, grandchildren, husbands and wives.  We will stand with her as she continues to call out and confront the ghost stench of racism that strangles this nation so that none of us can truly breathe.  We will stand with her as she calls it out from the hidden corners of our nation shrouded by an unhealthy and misguided allegiance to a legacy born of half truths and lies.  We will  She will call it out fearlessly until it falls away.     

The Poem

For friends coming here from my facebook page, this is the poem in its original form as submitted and judged for the NJ Wordsmith Competition.  It has gone through many iterations and I still don't consider it "finished".  The first change was a title change when I completed the digital art for a mixed media project.  You can see it as the photo under the original.  I also made some format changes when I included it here.  Not sure of the next leg on this particular journey BUT...  I know it ain't done.  Thanks for checking it out.   By the way, if you've appeared here from somewhere else.  I hope you enjoy it.

The Long Journey Home

I watched her forget--

at first they were just “little” things

keys...directions...dates...times...commitments...

“That’s no big deal”, I would say

“That happens to us all”, I would say

“You just have a lot on your mind, you’re tired”, I would say

Then the forgotten things 

became not such “little” things

like when the call came from store security that she had been wandering through the parking garage 

for hours 

she couldn’t find her car...she couldn’t remember what it looked like...
please...come for her

like when my father called to ask me to go find her

after she had been gone all day...
leaving early that morning to take a friend to the store 

I found her in her beloved red corolla...puttering ever so slowly... down the middle of the street...

I followed her home.

I took her keys.

I watched her forget that filters were important especially in public places

that elevators are close quarters and you don’t have to comment on the odor of the people standing next to you...no matter how offensive 

that clothes are necessary when leaving the house

that the living room was not the bathroom...
that chairs were not toilets.

Then it was her name...and then my name

I watched her forget that there were people who loved her

And when she forgot my place in this world...I too struggled to find my place

I tried to make a place for us

Some place that would be familiar to her...Some place where I could still be beside her

Like in the kitchen baking sweet smelling rolls like she used to do for holidays using her mother’s recipe...or at the piano where her father had taught her to play

But she had forgotten how to do all of these things

And I had never learned.

In the end she had even forgotten how to speak...
not how to to tell me how she hated me touching her...
not to use her sharp and stringent tongue to let me know that she hated me bathing her, changing her...
because I was the one who had taken away her keys.  
I was the one who uncovered the “secret”.

In the end I would spray her bed linens with lavender... something that I had read somewhere was relaxing... each night I prayed that the lavender would calm and bring her enough peace to sleep for the night, 

I would lift her lifeless and burden filled body from her wheel chair and lay her on her side of the bed I would lay there next to her...until it was too painful to watch her cry... 

soundlessly...motionlessly

I would wipe her face..Tell her I loved her...and leave...for the night.

Of the end, I can only say there was something in me that was glad it was the end

But then endings only transform themselves into beginnings

for another ending...

“It's no big deal” she says.

“That happens to all of us”, she says.

“You just have a lot on your mind, you’re just tired”, she says.

And as SHE now speaks ME...   

to ME 

my heart cries.

click on image to enlarge

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