I'll Never Be Able to Pay Her Back

I'll never be able to pay her back. It's a few days before Christmas and I drive to my mother's house before rushing to the office. Usually I jet to the campus to get an early start. But this particular morning I drove downtown near the bridge where my mother lives in an apartment complex. I wanted to drop off some money because I know how much she always enjoyed buying even smallest of things with her few cents, hoping to bring joy to twelve children. We never had much in the way of material things--only those pleasures that came with a close-knit family. Mom taught us that we were all in it together.

"I want you to spend this on yourself," I said. She's never asked for much, only that we take care of ourselves and one another. I know that she'll spend the money on what makes her happy. She'll make it go far, but not for herself. Making others happy is all that she knows and that's what she'll do--until the last penny is spent. It's been that way ever since I've been her son--and long before then.

My debt to her is not measureable. I'll never be able to pay her back.

Morgan Freeman: Re-thinking Black History Month

So, the man who drove Miss Daisy doesn't like Black History Month? Morgan Freeman, in a 60 Minutes interview, tells Mike Wallace that black history deserves more than a month. "You're going to relegate my history to a month?" he asks. "I don't want a black history month. Black history is American history." I've agreed with that for a long time. When my oldest daughter was in seventh grade, her English teacher asked if I would be a guest speaker for Black History Month—in February. I went and explained the African slave trade, using a triangle to illustrate how blacks were carted between Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. The teacher invited me again the next year, but I wouldn't go. Well, I agree with Morgan Freeman. I didn't want my history relegated to one short month either (February is the shortest of the year). I hoped to make my point by not coming back in February and suggesting to the teacher that I'd come any other month.

That was some fifteen years ago, and here comes Morgan Freeman--saying the same thing. I saw the headline early in the week forecasting what he told Mike Wallace. It was a sensationalized headline--Morgan Freeman Criticizes Black History Month--making it sound like Freeman was conservative--a black man who doesn'tsupport the teaching of black history. I read closer, and then watched 60 Minutes on Sunday evening. Freeman is a proud black man, born and raised in Mississippi. He is 68 years old. That makes him a survivor of the toughest times in America for black folk. Freeman is speaking a simple truth, but some people will get it twisted. Conservatives might say, "See, here's a prominent black who doesn't think that special attention should be given to black history." Freeman is no Uncle Tom, but some blacks may think that he is turning his back on the black community. Neither of these reactions get to the core of what he's trying to say. When Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in 1926, he believed that in a few decades schools would find ways to make the concept obsolete. The impact of the month can't be underestimated; had it not been for the concept, many would know little about the history of African-Americans. We still have work to do.

I'd like to see schools put black history where it belongs---in American history, as I told my daughter's English teacher. At the same time don't dismiss all that Black History Month has given the world. It's just time for something different.

Legendary Funny: Richard Pryor

Richard Pryor
(1940-2005)


The man was funny. I was nine years old the first time I heard one of Richard Pryor’s jokes. It was 1968 and there was no cussing in our house, so the Saturday afternoon that my older brother Jimmy put the LP vinyl on the hi-fi, my mother immediately told him to turn that mess off. But my father was laughing too--and we kept listening. At the time there was another comedian named Wild Man Steve who also had a dirty mouth, telling jokes mostly about sex. But Richard Pryor's comedy took things to another level. Threads of black pride, resistance, and politics weaved in and out of his jokes about sex, black masculinity, drugs, white people and the usual material that comics exploit. Pryor was no saint, but he gave us something else to think about.

White? Black. Negro? Whitey. Colored? Redneck. Tarbaby? Peckerwood. Spearchucker? White trash. Junglebunny? Honkey. Nigger? Dead honkey. Many will remember this word association exchange from a Saturday Night Live skit with Richard Pryor and Chevy Chase. This was one of the first Pryor introductions to mainstream white people (if there is such a thing). In a sense, Pryor put honest talk about race on the table like no other comedian.

After returning from a trip to Africa in 1979, Pryor said he would not use the nigger word again. Everybody in Africa was black, he said, and there were no niggers. He felt a kinship to those who looked like the average black person back home, in Harlem, Cleveland, Mississippi, Detroit, and elsewhere. Pryor left the continent with somewhat of a spiritual conversion, vowing to never use the word again. That was big for a comic who virtually copyrighted the word in his stand-up routines.

I could name a few names and say that they are following in Pryor's footsteps, but those steps are too big to fill. You know who they are. Let's just honor him by remembering the good laughs he gave us. Nothing else is needed. He was legendary funny and conscious.