Archive for July, 2009
Cousin Ricky and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
My Cousin Ricky had issues. He didn’t like getting wet, so he didn’t bathe. He didn’t like breaking a sweat, so he couldn’t keep a regular job. And clothes, well he didn’t like those either so he kept things to a minimum. One shirt. One pair of pants. And oh yeah, no underwear.
But that was [...]
Somerset Summer
THE ENDOWMENT
In the swampy backwoods of Washington County, North Carolina, I discovered my roots.
It was 1986. Unbearably hot. And infinitely momentous.
Michael Jackson, perhaps upon making some discoveries of his own blackness, had just set up the United Negro College Fund, UNCF, Endowed Scholarship Fund, in the amount of $1.5million.
I was a college student at the [...]
