aka sorority president

I know I wrote of this in another recent post (and NO, I do not have a slow form of dementia, thank you!) You know how some parts of a conversation come back to you? You were listening but the really important point essentially ’snagged’ itself cognitively…for digestion later. I was talking to my Father on October 16th, I had not talked to him practically all summer and really…all my life, not like that day.

I had not spoke with my Father all summer because I was ‘birthing’ my book. Did I mention my forthcoming book? It is: ‘Notes From the Mothership The Naked Invisibles’ due out December 2007.

I called my Father to finally check on him after speaking with one of my brothers (I would get updates on how he was doing throughout the summer!) My Father had this to say about me and the book, “Now, I know my life had a purpose!” I was astounded when I thought of those words in retrospect. He seriously meant that! I am the oldest of nine children of Louis and Mable. My Mother died from breast cancer in 1989. And my Father, a survivor, an inventor, and a visionary, stated that my accomplishments have given his life purpose. I am blessed.

My Father is Louis Samuels. He was born in Albany, Georgia in 1933 on a 330 acre pecan farm which my great Grandparents and his Mother and Father and a village of extended family sharecropped on. As he reminisced he talked of the plentitude of food, and everything that he and the families consumed was raised direct from the soil and the animals on the farm. There was always plenty of food, the comforts of familial bonding, and of course plenty of work.

Presently, my Father is sinking slowly, very slowly into a mild form of dementia. He forgets or maybe there is not much he wants to remember. Yet, his memory for ‘those days’ is like it happened yesterday. He talked of the time when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and all the Black men on the farm and the surrounding farms heeded the military call to action. He recalled with a stark poignancy how farm boys and men lined up to enlist for the military in bare feet. You see, many of the farm boys and men were mainly sharecroppers, and had NO shoes, except one pair, their ‘Sunday best’ shoes which were brogans! My Father said there were lines and lines of Black men, standing in the hot Georgia sun,waiting and willing to serve this country in their bare feet and farm clothing. It did not matter that unconscionable atrocities of racism (lynchings, stark injustice, they could not vote, and Jim Crowism) were realities that these MEN and my Father (as a young boy) lived with and under in ‘that’ America. Those men chose to defend and believe in even that America!

What my Father said of his growing up in an America where HE could not vote for a period of time, where HE could not drink from any water fountain he pleased, or go wherever HE wanted to go as an American is this, he wants to see a great Black President in his lifetime! My Father believes in the greatness of Obama. Without hesitation he is voting for Obama. My Father a wise man told me that there is NO WAY any Black person in his generation would not vote for Obama.

I mention all this because this is truly the demographic that will support Mr.Obama to no end. These older Black folks, the survivors of an America that no one in their right mind can ever imagine are the unheralded (?) well of support and love for the promise of America and America’s future. I did not realize this fact fully until I listened to the stories of my father, one of many survivors of the recent past of Jim Crow,lynchings, and stomped out human and civil rights. As his memory softens many bits deferred pain leak out. Right now I am grateful that I am listening.

I think this story is one that we as supporters of Obama can take inspiration from. My Father from that sharecropping farm in rural Albany, Georgia is one of Obama’s strongest and staunchest supporters. We are winners!

Professor Watkins discusses the Economy, President Obama and More, Part 1