Dear Nairoha,

     I hope this letter reaches you in higher spirits than I am in as I write it. I miss you and home more than you can imagine; planet Ankhem has just about everything I’ll ever want and need. Whose bright idea was it for my mom to visit this strange planet Earth? We're in a country called America. Historian’s jobs bring their children to the worst places. I’m counting down the days until I am on my way back to Ankhem. It’s so depressing to see the oppression faced by some of the different groups of people here, specifically our ancestors, African Americans. I’ve been doing lots of reading inside our host home since outside is insane chaos, literally. Some sort of ‘Occupy’ protests are taking place, dangerous in some places. Anyway, from what I’ve collected through my readings, Americans seem to think their country is built on the value of a prosperous life and liberty, which seems strange since there has been a history of severe oppression for African Americans. I question who this prosperous life and liberty they speak of was meant for.

     During my first week here I got a hold of some poetry. I was introduced to the work of two poets I’d never heard of. Allen Ginsberg was one of them, and he wrote a piece titled “America”. The tone of this piece is very serious, and it’s almost as if he’s airing the ‘dirty laundry’ of the country with the mention of conflicts and/or events of the country’s past, which just so happen to be very contradicting to the ideas of [a prosperous] life and liberty ‘for all’. In the poem ‘America’, there is a line that reads, “America I am the Scottsboro boys” (L 65). The version of the poem available to me just so happened to be an annotated copy and had a hyperlink for the reference to the Scottsboro boys. Upon taking advantage of the link I learned about the sinister events surrounding the Scottsboro boys, the background information came from a webpage titled, The Case of the “Scottsboro Boys”. “Accused of raping two white women (Ruby Bates and Victoria Price) on a freight train near Paint Rock, Alabama, nine young black men (Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson, Andy and Roy Wright, Eugene Williams), ages thirteen to twenty-one, were arrested on March 25, 1931” (The Case of the “Scottsboro Boys”). Race unfortunately played the biggest role in the case and lives of the nine young black males. The fact that, “All but Roy Wright were sentenced to death” and “a 1935 U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the defendant's constitutional rights were violated because blacks were systematically excluded from the jury rolls” (The Case of the “Scottsboro Boys”), tells you the depth of  race during this time and gives some insight into race playing a large role. It’s important to note that at this time in America’s history African Americans faced saddening racist conditions they were forced to endure on a daily basis.

     The webpage goes on to say that, “The Scottsboro case was not simply an isolated instance of injustice, the Communists argued, but represented a common manifestation of national oppression and class rule in the South. Maintaining that a fair and impartial trial was impossible, the Party and its auxiliaries publicized the case widely in order to apply mass pressure on the Alabama justice system” (The Case of the “Scottsboro Boys”) which gave me more insight into what African Americans were facing in this particular place. Racism in the south was a real issue and the case proved to be difficult for that very reason, “After failing to win the defendants' release in a 1936 trial, the SDC”, Scottsboro Defense Committee, “agreed to a strange plea bargain in 1937 whereby four defendants were released and the remaining five endured lengthy prison sentences--the last defendant was not freed until 1950” (The Case of the “Scottsboro Boys”).The mention of this specific event sank in the seriousness of each individual event or happening touched upon in Ginsberg’s poem. It speaks to a bigger picture, the theme of the poem becoming that America can seem as great as it wants to seem on the outside, but our hands as a country are dirty as we hide them behind our back and smile for the rest of the world.

     There was a second poem written by a man named Lawrence Ferlinghetti, titled “I Am Waiting”. This piece also had a serious tone to it, but it felt kind of playful in the syntax of lines, almost as if it was a song being sang or a story being told. It’s a great poem and a few things stuck out, but specifically a part that pertained to African Americans. Lines 112-122 give us another glimpse into America’s race issues, “and I am waiting/for the deepest South/to just stop Reconstructing itself/in its own image/and I am waiting/for a sweet desegregated chariot/to swing low/and carry me back to Ole Virginie/and I am waiting/for Ole Virginie to discover/just why Darkies are born”. This example has a lot of words in it that don’t mean anything unless you know something about America’s history. With a little help from the website site Wikipedia, I found out that ‘Ole Virginie’ and ‘darkie’ are words used in a song which was at one point in time the state song of Virginia (Wikipedia, Carry Me Back to Old Virginny). The webpage goes on to tell more about the state song and how it is debated for in its interpretation, and touches on African Americans in slavery and their emancipation. The ‘deepest South’ reminded me of the Scottsboro boys and the combat of racism in the south; the severity of the state of the ‘deepest South’ echoes in my mind. American history touches on reconstruction after the civil war, and African American history in relation to religion gives insight on the influence of gospel music and songs like ‘swing low sweet chariot’ (hence the mention of ‘a sweet desegregated chariot/to swing low’).

     During my second week I was introduced to a writer by the name of Gwendolyn Brooks, powerful writer. A poem she wrote titled, “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters In Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon”, is one of the most captivating poems I’ve ever read. It starts off with a simile, “From the first it had been like a/ Ballad. It had the beat inevitable. It had the blood./A wildness cut up, and tied in little bunches” (ll 1-3), which really pulls you in as a reader. You want to move forward to know ‘what exactly’ had been like a ballad, where blood was coming from, and the wildness mentioned. She delivers, with the entire poem being a mix of the topic being presented ‘straight up’ and metaphorically from the perspective of the woman involved. “Pursued/ By the Dark Villain. Rescued by the Fine Prince./ The Happiness-Ever-After” (ll 7-9), here we see symbolism and metaphors coming to play. The poem is about the death of a young black boy named Emmett Till, whose death was well known; he was murdered by two white men for allegedly whistling at a white woman (pbs.org, American Experience | The Murder of Emmett Till). Reading on the PBS webpage more, I discovered the fact that this young boy was kidnapped from his great uncle’s home at 2:30am, brutally beaten, then shot in the head, weighed down with a fan, and thrown into a river. My heart ached upon reading this, because his killers, who admitted to their actions, served no time in prison. The south was a brutal place for African Americans to be, far too unjust in many ways as we see from the no prison time being served.

     The theme of the piece seems to be how ironic it was that pain in the shadow of ignorance can shatter a person’s image or frame of mind pertaining to ‘right’. The poem goes on to display the feelings of the woman who one could ‘attribute’ all the events that transpired. “The fun was disturbed, then all but nullified/ When the Dark Villain was a blackish child/ Of fourteen, with eyes still too young to be dirty,/ And a mouth too young to have lost every reminder/Of its infant softness” (ll 25-29) seems the character here is acknowledging the wrongfulness in the act of the young boys life being taken away due to hatred. “It occurred to her that there may have been something/ Ridiculous in the picture of the Fine Prince” (ll 37-38) and again here. The innocence of a child, the senselessness in the act at the time, seems to have escaped the clutches of her logic, until the aftermath. One of my moms’ colleagues was familiar with Brooks’ work and explained that, “The dramatic event shakes her understanding of these fairytales, as well as characters' roles, and it's not always happily-ever after” (McGie, “Brooks’ Ballad”) which I couldn’t agree with more.

     The reality of the story hitting news reels worldwide opened her eyes. Yet the PBS webpage sinks in the reality of race in America, a timeline tells us that on September 19, 1955, “The kidnapping and murder trial of J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant opens in Sumner, Mississippi, the county seat of Tallahatchie County. Jury selection begins and, with blacks and white women banned from serving, an all-white, 12-man jury made up of nine farmers, two carpenters and one insurance agent is selected” (pbs.org, The American Experience | The Murder of Emmett Till). The fairness, considering race issues at the time, isn’t considered. Echoing the experience of the “The Scottsborro boys”; race had not changed from then to now. The idea of liberty rings far away from the unjust trial, the ‘innocence’ of the two murderers, and the treatment of African Americans.

     The latest piece of work I was able to get my hands on was a short story titled, “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, an African American author who was very influential in the African American Arts community. The story tells the woes of two brothers who are disconnected, as they’re affected in two very different ways from their environment and childhood. Baldwin uses vivid descriptive words and a simile to paint a picture of their surroundings, “So we drove along, between the green of the park and the stony, lifeless elegance of hotels and apartment buildings, toward the vivid, killing streets of our childhood. These streets hadn't changed, though housing projects jutted up out of them now like rocks in the middle of a boiling sea” (Baldwin 7). The effects of this environment were detrimental to the progression of many, “boys exactly like the boys we once had been found themselves smothering in these houses, came down into the streets for light and air and found themselves encircled by disaster. Some escaped the trap, most didn't. Those who got out always left something of themselves behind, as some animals amputate a leg and leave it in the trap” (Baldwin 7) the pain seethes through this thought on the narrator’s mind.

     The story takes place in Harlem, a city that is to thank for what our ancestors knew as the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a time when Black musicians, entertainers, and writers were flourishing; writers were being published on a larger scale.  From what Baldwin writes, Harlem seems as if had drifted far away from the paradise it once used to be during such times as the renaissance. The narrator is Sonny’s older brother, a teacher. Sonny is addicted to drugs and music; music is what has kept him going. The story goes on to display their relationship in a tug of war kind of manner. They don’t quite click always bumping heads. Age is a contributing factor, and so are the effects of their environment in their adulthood.

     In the story the narrator’s mother, tells him a story about their father’s brother being run down by a car full of drunk white men. “‘This car was full of white men. They was all drunk, and when they seen your father's brother they let out a great whoop and holler and they aimed the car straight at him. They was having fun, they just wanted to scare him, the way they do sometimes, you know. But they was drunk’” (Baldwin 10). It’s almost as if she said it in an excusing way, although it probably wasn’t. But their definitely was a sense of power, and place, and it lied in the matter of race. They were just young men, and no one ever served time for the death. She was telling him that he needed to look out for Sonny, because once she was gone the narrator was all Sonny would have. The mother lets her son know race issues still existed and it’s not only seen in their surroundings, “‘I ain't telling you all this. . .to make you scared or bitter or to make you hate nobody. I'm telling you this because you got a brother. And the world ain't changed’” (Baldwin, 10).

     I was reading a discussion online through a college here, and a student by the name of Lindsey Lorsung stated that, “Sonny is a very lost person throughout Baldwin's story. Sonny seems lost in himself and maybe a little bit terrified by the real world” (“Sonny’s Blues”). I don’t know if I’d describe Sonny as lost, more of a victim to the circumstances of their race. I don’t think after reading everything I’ve read I would say Sonny was terrified of the ‘real world’ because his world was real, just a second America. If anything Sonny was terrified of ‘their world’—the white American world, because there was proof everywhere that it would just chew you up and spit you out.

     I’ve enjoyed learning more about the people from which we descended. I’m enlightened, elated, and delighted on so many levels. I don’t recommend ever visiting the planet though if you’re presented the opportunity because it’s disheartening to learn about our ancestors in these ways. Everything they endured, without a choice, bringing us into today. The current struggles and injustices that still live here haunt me as I read all of this. I guess my mom’s job is pretty important; history is more important than most people understand. Especially for us, we have to look at what we as a people came from to prosper and appreciate the little things back home. Although that could definitely be universal, I guess I mean with oppression in mind because of the color of a group of people’s skin; that isn’t the real meaning or idea of a prosperous life or liberty.

With love to my motherland Ankhem,

Zambine

(Edairra M.)