 Welcome everybody, welcome to our reading from the new book Black Fire Volume One edited by Kim McMillan and featuring a host of illustrious writers from the past and present in this important collection continuing in the tradition of the Black Arts Movement. Before we get started, I have a few announcements so we can get to the more than a dozen pieces you're going to hear today. We are broadcasting from the area now known as San Francisco, which is on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Aloni peoples of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the original peoples of this land, the Ramaytush Aloni peoples, the Ramaytush Aloni have never ceded lost, no forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place. We recognize that we benefit from living, working, and learning on their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramaytush community. Today's event is part of Summer Stride, which is our annual reading and activity program. Read or participate in an activity for 20 hours and earn a read tote bag designed by this year's artist, Minnie Fan. You can sign up online for the program at sfpl.org where you'll also find a list of a ton of other activities that we're hosting through the summer or visit one of our 28 locations where youth can pick up a free book and where at the end of the program each location will be giving out a special prize, so please visit a location to join the wrathful. Every two months we host a program called On The Same Page and July and August selection is by Beverly Jenkins, Wild Rain. So please join our program, start reading the book. It's available at all of our locations and join the book club in August and a conversation with the author also in August. So just as a reminder that all of our libraries are open even though we're still going through this pandemic, come to the library tomorrow at the main library in the Coretta auditorium to hear Nathan Worth talk about nature photography as part of our theme for this month of the programs which is environment and climate change. Also welcome authors from Nomadic Press which will be next Sunday the July 24th where readers will also read about the environment and a post of new authors will be with us in August to talk about our next theme which will be food. On Tuesday here from author Dr. Jennifer Atkinson who will talk about the emotional toll of a warming world later this month after the Nomadic Press reading and in August when we celebrate food for our theme for summer reading, join us for a program on women of the Black Panther Party who and their fight for freedom with author Suzanne Kopia in conversation. I'm going to stop sharing before I introduce our host for the day Dr. Kim McMillan and before I read her formal bio I want to give much gratitude and thank you to Dr. McMillan who has connected us the library and its patrons through a collaboration with our my colleague John Smalley on a host of illustrious writers that we welcome to the library and to our online platform and you know I really can't we really can't thank you enough Dr. McMillan. So today we are so pleased to you know share your work again by hosting these readings from your new book edited by Dr. McMillan called Blackfire This Time which continues the legacy of the Black Arts movement promoting art for Black people's sake and providing a forum through the anthology to highlight the history of the movement and its writers both past and present. One of the great joys of reading this book is not only the poetry essays plays and writing but reading the biographies of all the writers that contributed to this anthology and where we can see the movement truly continuing. So thanks again Dr. McMillan. I'm going to go through your formal bio now before I let you take the stage. So Dr. Kim McMillan moderates a reading and public discussion with poets and writers from Blackfire This Time Volume 1 a powerful new anthology that explores the history and legacy of the Black Arts movement. While Blackfire This Time features the work of over 100 poets and writers the majority of this program's readers hail from the San Francisco Bay Area and we're so pleased to have you all with us today. So please join me in welcoming Dr. Kim McMillan. Hi. Before we... Is there some type of echo? Are we okay? Good. Okay great. Well I wanted to give thanks to the library without you know this incredible Anissa, Shana, John. You all have been like literary angels to us and we're very very thankful for that. And I also want to say that this book could not have happened without the brilliance of so many caring mentors and voices that were so much a part of the Black Arts movement from Ishmael Reed to Nicky Giovanni to Gwendolyn Brooks's daughter Nora Blakely to just all these voices that came out and said what can we do to help and how can we make this work for you? And so there's just so much gratitude because if it were not for those voices we wouldn't be here and so I'm very grateful to all of you. The first person I really want to thank right now is Heather Buchanan. Heather Buchanan had a lot of faith in this anthology and put her self forward as our publisher in a way that was very inspirational. And I wanted this program to start off with a few words from the publisher because as much as it is my baby it is definitely her child. This is a child that gets passed around a lot. I'd like you all to give a very warm welcome to our publisher, Heather Buchanan. Thank you. Hello everyone. Oh Kim that was such a beautiful sweet message. Thank you so very much. How are you all today? It's such a pleasure to meet many of you for the first time. Beautiful, beautiful faces, all of you. I'm so very proud of the opportunity and the collection that I consider is one of the high points of my career and I'm just considerate of blessing to have had anything to do with this gathering of over 100 poets and writers. Many of them award-winning, many of them laureates in their home states and they they heal from across even people in Africa and Kim will be able to tell you more about that and the Caribbean and it's just been just a beautiful experience and it was a timely experience when she came along. We knew that this was the right time to do something like this and it's just proving the stuff would be beautiful more and more every day and I want to thank the library. This is one of our biggest first big events because we have so many of the planning and creative team here with us today, the editors and the Dr. Margo Natalie Crawford wrote the introduction. She was so gracious. She wrote a beautiful introduction that tied everything together. She really did and you'll get to see that in the introduction and of course Ishmael Reeve who's given this project his blessing and has said so many beautiful things and brought the past into the present and made the connections for people like me second and third generations after the Black Arts Movement. So we're living you know the legacy of the hard work of brave brave people and it's such a beautiful honor to be here with you today so thank you you're going to truly enjoy today's reading. Thank you Heather. Our first author is Ishmael Reeve. I think I've known Ishmael at least 30 years and in that time I've seen incredible not just the outpouring of work but the support he gives to authors who are making it and then they become cute and you'll find people like Joy Harjo and so many other authors that that really were helped by Ishmael including Terry McMillan just so so many because there is this part of him that is very expansive particularly in helping others. He's been he's the MacArthur Genius Award winner and he also has a wonderful magazine that's online titled Conch. I'd like you to give a very warm welcome to Ishmael Reeve and before I do that I want to say the reason why I asked Ishmael to do the forward because he was there on the ground zero with so many of the people that were in the beginning stages of the Black Arts Movement and a lot of people don't know the contributions that he made including to Umbra and and to magazines that carried important voices like Al Young's so please give a very warm welcome to Ishmael Reeve. Thank you. Okay well I think this is a very important anthology because it sort of synthesizes all the stuff that occurred before in the past and going back to Elaine Locke's The New Negro and that ship in there is I forgot her name she did Harlem and a number of other anthologies is I think this is a culmination. I think a lot of people marked the Black Arts Movement is dead for decades and now there's a revival and I think it's very important that we give some recognition to the people who for the pioneers because they're often not mentioned and some of the people who are not included in Black Arts are sort of like included thanks to scholars who weren't there and who just sort of like go by the mistakes of other scholars if you if you uh if you've been on the periphery of academia as I have you see there's a lot of duplication you know so that's why mistakes occur I was on a panel with a guy who was annoyed all about Lorenzo Thomas and he's a pretended to be a scholar on Lorenzo Thomas I knew Lorenzo Thomas from the beginning in the 1960s until his brother called me when he was on his deathbed and I published Lorenzo Thomas a book called The Vaders but this guy pretended he knew more than I knew one of these know-it-all nicks I called him know-it-all nicks so anyway Black Arts came out of Umbra and you can trace it to Umbra magazine and Amiri Baraka who came later came later to Black nationalism acknowledges that this was a source of the Black Arts movement in New York so in Umbra you had N.H. Pritchard who's now made a huge comeback N.H. Pritchard died young he was doing a rap and sound poetry in the 60s and now he's being praised by people like Charles Bernstein who's the head of the language school movement N.H. Pritchard was a concrete poet and a sound poet and was a member of Umbra magazine Lorenzo Thomas is a member Tom Dent and Calvin Herndon founded Umbra magazine and if you want to read about Tom Dent there's a Kalamu song edited an anthology called The Tom Dent Reader so Tom Dent was on the ground floor and Calvin Herndon they began began Umbra Tom Dent was from New Orleans and and Calvin Herndon was from Chattanooga my hometown so these are the people who started this workshop down in Lower East Side so Tom Dent was connected to the NACP in the Black aristocracy uh his father was the president of Dillard University and uh so we had meetings where Charlene Hunter would Charlene Hunter Meredith James Meredith and all these people would attend her workshops I looked over there and Martin Luther King's brother came to our workshops in Lower East Side so he was able to raise a lot of attention to uh to Umbra and he eventually we all dispersed he left uh and went back to New Orleans and he was one of those who were instrumental in the development of the Southern Pre-Theater you know it was David Henderson that came from Uptown and he was one of those who followed the new Langston Hughes he introduced me to Langston Hughes Langston Hughes is responsible for my first novel being published so he followed the footsteps of Langston Hughes where he got his inspiration from popular culture so he's his classic poem is Keep On Pushing which is was I think was the Motown hit and then there was Calvin Herndon who uh who was a major poet somebody I published a couple of his books Medicine Man and the Red Crab the Red Crab Gang before he died and he went to Oberlin where he became he was a professor there but he was also a poet so uh the two uh people who are rarely mentioned in Umbra are Charles Patterson and William Patterson you want to read about those two read Amiri's autobiography will tell you a lot about Black Arts that's one of the major texts for Black Arts is his Leroy Jones, Amiri Brocker and uh we're we're actually roommates at one time uh Charles William Oskiatore we're all roommates I I uh sort of like uh left the apartment got my own apartment and uh next thing I know they were uptown with Amiri during the Black Arts Repertory Theater so they're the they're the pioneers but they're rarely mentioned I think I'm one of the few people who published Charles Patterson in an anthology called 19 Necromancers From Now which I published in 19 double day published in 1969 and uh so they uh if you want to read about that Black Arts history from then on it's all in Amiri's book I mean he was an eyewitness and so was the FBI if you go to uh William Maxwell's FBI's EYES they have the FBI surveillance of the Black Arts movement from the from the fundraising time I participate in two fundraising events for Black Arts until they they were out of business so you if you go there to William Maxwell if you do him and you they also have John O'Killers and some other people that the FBI followed but they paid a lot of attention to Black Arts they infiltrated Black Arts and so they talked about the fundraising all the way down to its demise where FBI agent says nobody's here they're all gone okay so so that shows you that matter of fact uh William Maxwell says that at one time the FBI were the only ones reading Black Literature and uh they even wrote Black Poetry I'm I got my submissions about one of these journals Black Poetry one of these Black Poetry publications I think it's probably FBI but anyway they published Black Poetry and they published Black so I like to find out what what those were but I I think I pretty pretty much know so anyway um okay Black Arts did two things it ended imitation and I know everybody likes James Baldwin because he's a big-time celebrity and had a lot of connections and great on TV and I said in a recent essay that there are or interview that there are more James Baldwin imitators on TV than Elvis Presley imitators in Las Vegas but he was an actor his last novel one of the great novel tell me how long the train's been going it's like about a theater an actor but he's very much indebted to William James uh so much uh that uh uh William James uh not no Henry James excuse me I'll get them all mixed up Henry James that Henry James's son sent me a photo and Nelson of course talks about uh being indebted to uh Ernest Hemingway who has a poem called Nigger Rich and in his short stories that in words he's very often so I'm gonna tell you that tells you about the kind of people they lionized in American literature but anyway uh so Larry Neal in his great manifesto in Black Fire says that they're going to go to the streets and going back to the toasts and the the poetry of populism like Shine Swam on and that kind of stuff which is the ancestors of the hip hop people say hip hop began 30 years ago in the Bronx or somewhere no it comes out of 19th 20th century early 20th century the gangster underground rhymed couplets kind of wraps Shine Swam on uh so uh uh that that's a very important manifesto now the problem would I think in I'll end you know shortly the problem with uh Black Fliers that excluded women because uh the idea of writing at that time was that it was something that men did and then the feminist movement comes along and women started buying books by people who looked like themselves and I put people like Norman Miller out of business now in fact he ended up being they did him and so he ended up being a research assistant in his old age but they put him out of business and so people started reading so there then there was a 1970s in Tozaki Shange I put we put Al Young and I published her first uh the first excerpt of Color Girls back in 1974 and to my everlasting shame I made her puncture uh use conventional punctuation but anyway oh and we're friends until her death as a matter of fact you I mean we're on the phone every week until she died but anyway um in Tozaki Shange and uh Tony Cape Bombaro whom I knew in New York and a lot of other writers came on the scene and then you know after that each uh group had their you know their moment in the spotlight so then you had the lbgtq plus and I think the importance of uh this anthology is that it brings it all together the summation so there are no you know uh what do you call it uh gender splits anything you know gender splits come from the outside I'm doing I'm doing a a play about that includes Indian culture and it was the English men who defined Indian genders defined the role of Indian women and they do the same thing here these people we talked about the model in order that was invented by white man to cause problems William Schneider and others are out of code newsweek about the Chinese Americans outwhiting the whites I mean they didn't that came from the outside Tony Morrison said a lot of the friction that gender splits in our community come from the house Tony Morris said that so this brings it all together and I think that's the important achievement and it also has brought up you know they has also brought up a re-evaluation of the black arts movement which has been shun because I'm like the Harlem Renaissance and I like the Harlem Renaissance you know Cloud McKay and all of them all they're pretty formal I mean their diction is really you know very pro you know like British English uh you know Black Friday they broke all that but I think that Black arts is more subversive and independent independent and not dependent upon you know the western canon I mean people started writing in African languages they started writing in Arabic you know they change their names and so the establishment sort of ignores black arts and so I'm glad that this anthology brings it up again that's all I got to say thank you Ishmael I wanted to say I really appreciate you because one of the things you did in your forward and you're doing now is you bring you you're able to contextualize you're able to show us where things fit and I think that's important because when we study what I consider our history through the black arts movement we really have to look at our history we have to go back further and put it all together to really find that history out and so thank you thank you Ishmael our next poet is is just wonderful she is I believe she's a third poet of poet laureate of San Francisco and just a wonderful wonderful poet and not many people know this but her godfather was actually James Baldwin and one of the major figures in her life and including a lot of our lives she's also has an incredible poetry collection called Caliphius Daughter that's just amazing and please pick it up I'd like you all to give a warm welcome to Davor Major thank you thank you Kim and let me say before I start my little thing that my first major publication of a poem was in Ishmael's Why Bird that when I go you know when you were saying that introducing them I was like oh that's right my first poem that wasn't in a little newspaper you know was from Ishmael too so I'm going to read my poems from the anthology as well as one by a poet from somewhere else because the anthology is so rich down pressures woe to the downpressers they eat the bread of sorrow that's a well-known Bob Marley song you walked on our bones for centuries turned them to sand poured into sand boxes for your children to build sand castles and when the sand became translucent filled with the sunlight burning your eyes you found more to sacrifice sent vultures to strip away our skins and built ladders formed from our ribs limbs and skulls on which you climbed to get a better view of the land you plan to conquer and now we rise joined by some of your children and grandchildren who have eaten of shame and refused to travel on the road rails you laid with our bones and each of you who blocks our path or tries to press us back will be blinded by our brilliance blinded blinded blinded by our brilliance this next poem city values is uh out of san francisco but true things like this have happened in so many of america cities city values for kenneth harding two dollars in the city of san francisco is not quite enough for a sunday newspaper but you could get a leader of generic soda pop and have a bit of change and maybe two large organic apples or a medium order of fast food fries one tin of quality black shoe polish or one condom from a club vending machine or one thigh with a side at church's chicken or the life of one coco skinned 19 year old roughly trying to become a man who for want of a two dollar bus transfer was shot in the back of the head and this because so much time is because it needs to be a spent writing about the difficulties that of of survival and surmounting in these times this is called writing love all i want to write a love poems in this season of rotting flesh and hollow bellies in this year of hidden corpses and trapanel graveyards all i want to write a love poems to the one whose breath will mix with mine for the lips i taste for the hips i encircle for the sap i share all i want to write a love poems about shining eyes and sweats perfumes about promises made and kept about secrets and fears shared and revealed in this year of the buried city this decade of the hunger crop this century newly begun yet already with thousands upon thousands of limbs torn off eyes burnt out hearts eviscerated all i want to write a love poems i don't want this job of recording the children's despair the mother's grieving the father's misery the sun's brutalization the planet storms and fires it's all too much for me my eyes fill with salt and become blurred and only love poems will make it better will clear the way but all around me these others who i love in knowing and as strangers are being murdered or enslaved starved or tortured imprisoned or forsaken and the poems i want to write evade me until i am left with nothing but this howled wedged between my teeth all i want to write or love poems about blue kissing my morning lemons tart and fresh flavoring my afternoons crescent moons arching away from venus' sparkle in a star hungry sky all i want to write a love poems all i want to write is love and i'm going to do these haiku by lenard d more lenard is just an incredible master of haiku and has in fact been honored by the japanese haiku society for his work and so these are eight haiku for emiri baraka first month of the year you transform into trans bluancy winter recliner you bend language across borders snow glazed night your words flare off the page all the voices rising from yuan the heater hums close reading i recall your voice amid the chill falling temperature a student's research paper on your riffs frigid shadows black pupil stare from home the cold deepens the conjuring of blues people and i'm going to end with uh lenard d more's haiku sequence for sonia sanchez uh because those are two of baraka and sanchez of course are two of the original from the black arts movement and black fire your whole notes wake the dormant trees the winds breath drums thump pulsing of the heart song the opening sky jazz and haiku shake loose my skin a dusting of pollen insistent running of the long river your acapella my black hands cupping the sunlight jacuzzi bubbles orange lilies bow your noontime strut up the sidewalk rain long gone i recite syllables of your language evening walk i catch your riff in my voice thank you utterly beautiful just utterly beautiful thank you you know i i want to give a little gems that are in this anthology and there's just one line i ishmael wrote it i thought it was very important black fire was a book in which black men were gods and the supreme deities were malcolm x and marcus garvey and i'm saying that because we wouldn't be here if black fire hadn't been written and so i want to make sure that we give to the ancestors people like larry neal and a mary barack and so many others that ishmael mention and others will mention that made a difference for us and a devour just keep on writing just keep on writing it's so beautiful so beautiful our next poet is just a wonderful man i've known him about 35 years at least his name is raymond nap turner and raymond is considered the town crier in the and is the artistic director of the jazz poetry ensemble upsurge in new york city and he's a potent resident at black agenda report raymond what i love about raymond is i i i almost can guarantee you that every day he writes a poem and those poems are about the things he learned about standing up for the rights of people to the oppressed and it's in very bones this need to do that i'd love you all to give a warm welcome to raymond nap turner thank you thank you so much uh thank you dr kim mcmillan i'm so proud of you i've known you as you said i've known carla brandage and i heather is a new acquaintance i want to thank her for the work she's done and of course the san francisco public library ishmer read and d major and it goes on and on but i'm gonna try and jump in i have two pieces i'm gonna try and see if i can move through them the first is they're both in the anthology the first is called essential work you know during the pandemic there was a lot of talk about essential workers who was an essential worker who was an essential worker and honoring essential workers and so let's see if we can handle that essential work we'll always need race car drivers roaring down streets where children chase balls like we'll always need peaceful protesters pepper sprayed like cockroaches and we'll always need sleeping seven-year-olds shot while dreaming of dolls sleepovers tooth fairies we'll always need children playing with toy guns in parks executed before becoming hulk hogan's we'll always need doors kicked in and our daughters and sons slaughtered in wee hours even if it is the wrong address we'll always need elderly parents whacked for accidentally pressing emergency alerts like we'll always need mentally ill loved ones massacred in our homes we'll always need men rushing pregnant wives to hospitals shot for speeding and fathers of six hustling too hard chokehold lynched we'll always need young women who drive and smoke stopped and suicided and mothers wearing mask wrong wrestled down in subway stations as their four-year-olds watch we'll always need wallets mistaken for guns clocks for tasers fleeing black men shot in their backs and bridegrooms butchered before their weddings we'll always need taser heart skanking and reggae rhythms and broken broomsticks rammed up men's rectums for fun we'll always need bruised bloodied disfigured faces eyeballs dangling from sockets we'll always need drugs and guns planted growing into cases concertina wire covet 19 we'll always need right hooves raised test the line to judges and juries of our peers on the need for knees on necks 56 licks of 41 shots serve to protect property this next piece is called its capitalism baby grave diggers feed hungry heart island trenches plain pine boxes stacked three high they rest side by side and solidarity for now they share island real estate with aids and 1918 flu fallen new york is not new to this asked african burial ground ancestors it's capitalism baby 799 died today tasered with temperatures of 103.5 and shortness of breath a bus driver track worker and a couple of conductors i know on site and speak to came down with chills they've breathed welding manganese steel dust and diesel fumes decades for new yorkers yet they couldn't be tested it's capitalism baby what if they'd whispered three little words pleaded 12 times instead of 11 like irrick garner as the long white tatted arm of the law crushed his windpipe what if they pleaded i can't breathe 12 or even 13 times would they have been tested treated and alive today that's not mta's concern bottom line liability lawsuits are he's capitalism baby nurses slash garbage bags open using them as PPE personal protection equipment docks rest reuse gloves and masks multiple patients in the world's richest country it's capitalism baby hand sanitizer was $15 a bottle yesterday 50 today if you can find it ventilators were $25 000 yesterday 45 000 today and climbing it's capitalism baby if water is life hand sanitizer hand watching as a lifesaver unelected emergency management cut detroit water often poisoned penny wise flints oh please it's capitalism baby san francisco hotel room set empty the unhoused shelter in place below freeways and overcrowded shelters and on cold convention center floors oh well it's capitalism baby parasite self-isolate on swanky yachts toasting tax breaks looting labor's fruits sucking up shares senators congress members and blood leeches storm the hamptons hoarding greedily buying neat frozen foods filling extra mac mansion freezers while working class shoppers tussle over toilet tissue or stand their ground in long lines buying guns it's capitalism baby car sob and food bank lines stamped insufficient funds a mile long while farmers plow perfect cabbage heads and green beans back into black soil and ivory rivers swell from dairy farmers dumping millions of gallons of milk in manure pits and chicken processors smash 750 000 eggs a week for profit omelet obscene food fights capitalism baby return to normal that titanic sailed months ago it does seem however that it left the shore capitalism's grave digger wonderful i just want to let you know raymond that my students love that poem and one of them actually did it in class and i was i wanted to say to her you have to hear how raven raven says it's capitalism baby because you you do it so well it's a beautiful poem thank you raven thank you very much our next poll well i'm not going to say pope but what i consider dr margo and natalie crawford is to me i would a viewer and a documenter of the black arts movement and a way to decipher deciphering it so that the average person can understand its importance when i first read um dr crawford's work probably about 10 years ago and i was looking for females who were writing about the black arts movement when i heard or saw what she wrote i was in heaven i thought here is a voice that's saying what needs to be heard and what needs to be spoken about with regard to african-american literature dr crawford is a professor of english and a director of the center for african studies at the university of pennsylvania she penned the introduction to black fire this time and to me has shown the way for so many people asking for more wanting to hear different voices with regard to the black arts movement please give a warm welcome to dr crawford thank you ken mcmillan and thank you heather Buchanan we simply need this book and i'm so honored to be a part of the jam session today honoring this book and i want to share just a few parts of the introduction that i wrote in 1968 america and larry nill edited black fire this groundbreaking anthology of poetry essays drama and short stories propelled the black arts movement forward now in 2022 we have black fire this time and ken mcmillan is the wanderer's carrier black fire this time shows that the black arts movement never ended the mix of 1960s and 70s black arts movement art and more contemporary art honors the flow of the art of the black power movement into through and around the art of the black lives matter movement for example haki matabuti's 21st century poem we are a hated people moves into through and around his 1960s and 70s black arts movement poetry the end of this 21st century black fire this time poem most clearly echoes black arts movement poetics when matabuti evokes an inwardness tied to a black mirror he writes quote look in the mirror say your last name in matabuti's classic black arts poem entitled windland brooks first published in 1969 the black mirror stage produces a collage like layering of the infinite possibilities and limitations moving within the name black that gained the force of electricity during the black arts movement we feel this electricity when matabuti in this poem entitled windland brooks writes into the 60s a word was born and then creates the following collage of blackness black double black purple black blue black been black was black day before yesterday blacker than ultra black super black black black yellow black nigger black black whitey man blacker than you ever be one fourth black unblack cold black clear black my mom is blacker than your mom a pimple black fall black so black we can't even see you on black on black in black by black technically black man tan black winter black cool black 360 degrees black cold black midnight black black when it's convenient rusty black moon black black star black summer black electron black spaceman black black is beautiful black i just discovered black negro black unsubstant black it is hard to read these words without any pause the tribute to gondolin brooks one of the guiding this tribute to gondolin brooks one of the guiding voices of the black arts movement demands that the reader experienced this part of the poem as a state of trance an ecstatic process of purging that ends with the liquid blackness signaled by unsubstant black this anthology black fire this time reignites the fire of the black arts movement when the original black fire was published in 1968 brokka and larry neale framed more than an anthology they paused as the art of the black power movement was unfolding and curated a non exhibit of the range of voices that were shaping this mid 60s and early 70s movement they wanted black fire to be what james steward in the black fire's opening essay the development of the black revolutionary artists describes as quote the non matrixed form a non enclosed form black fire this time continues this practice of anthologizing the type of art that is too open to be to be contained too explosive to be the type of book that can be held and read if you are not ready to feel what gondolin brooks describes as quote the dissonant and dangerous crescendo the dissonant and dangerous crescendo in this anthology is the sound of the black arts movement that never ended as this anthology combines band poetics and the art created after this movement we hear the sound of a movement that never ended black fire this time teaches us how to hear the echoes that never stopped black fire this time is a remix that continues the groove of the original 1960s and 70s black arts jam session brokka and neale began black fire with the following opening note it is obvious that work by don lee ron millner alisha johnson carolyn rogers jane cortez jewel latimore there were other names listed as well should be in this collection the frustration of working through these bullshit white people should be obvious the symbology continues this unfinished work this awareness that there is no way to include all of the voices that are a part of black fire this time windowland brooks's poem to the diaspora is one of the many poems in this anthology that teach us how to grasp the power of the unfinished windowland brook writes your work that was done to be done to be done to be done black fire this time embodies the spirit of the revolutionary black art that was done was redone and what still needs to be done thank you i love that i it almost makes me cry because we are continually as people as a people redoing we're rehealing we remembering and reimagining what blackness is to us you know and there's no point like say we're going to get it right you know we've been on this planet a long time no we are just going to get it we're just going to heal we're just going to be and what you wrote really spoke to that thank you thank you our next poet is carla brundridge she's a bay area poet she's an activist educator and the founder of the west of west oakland to west africa poetry exchange i i've known carla we worked together late at night when we were really quite young putting together and carla did most of the work with wanda severe just a wonderful wonderful anthology with all the funding going to help the people that were be homeless because of katrina and that is how carla is she gives to the community and she's well aware of the wonderful gift she has to bring i'd like you all to give a warm welcome to carla brundridge thank you thank you thanks kim dr mcmillan it's so i'm so honored to be here i guess i want to share i'm sitting here with catherine to carla my mom and i'm feeling very much like i'm a daughter of the i'm gonna move over her now um i feel more like i'm a daughter of the black arts movement and um i don't know when ishmael was introducing the book um or was giving his talk i was listening to all the names and um the poem i'm going to read is called black arts movement and what particularly struck me was my insecurity around this poem because i know there are mistakes in it so as a daughter i've heard mythology my whole life um and the black arts movement wasn't taught in school and in fact i went back to mills to get a mfa just recently and in one of my classes someone was like black arts is that a thing and so this poem was written in response to that and it's mostly true i did as much research as i could but a lot of it is my mythology of of the blessings i've had being surrounded by so many amazing poets so um if you thought if you hear a mistake feel free to email me i'm gonna put my email in the chat black arts movement to be young gifted and black in 1957 marks the first point of the black arts movements that's already wrong on the american timeline meant using the back door brown versus board of education no voting rights black panthers huji chagalia self-determination umoja unity ujama cooperative economics the 10-point plan free school lunches taking back our streets from the police arming ourselves black arts is self-love and self-liberation creation of our own literature calls to actions founding of umbra poet's workshop which becomes a magazine by ishmael reade david henderson calvin and norah hicks and other true new yorkers who move west black arts is barbara christian chairing african-american studies at uc berkeley lee roi jones graduating from a beat poet to the school of pan africism and black nationalism emerging is amiri baraka poet instigator novelist playwright cultural critic trickster the country is in turmoil do you integrate do we self-separate some black art movements repatriate to gana who knew why the caged bird sang maya angelo founder of the association for women of african heritage member of harlem writers guild there were other actors john o'neill tom dent founders and co-collaborators of umbra of the free southern theater members of snick who would influence the san francisco mime troop and would be featured in new black voices black arts movement is mary love lace o'neill abstract artist and professor at uc berkeley but also in new orleans with john o'neill and tom dent working writing witnessing with snick core and free southern theater adrian kennedy explored the psyche of the black woman in funny house of a negro black arts is poet intellectual eugene redmond claiming the most influential schools in the black arts movement were not new york school but oh sorry were eugene redmond claiming that the most influential schools in the black arts movement were not the new york school but merit college san francisco state university san francisco uc berkeley uc la and the hbc us avacha bay area dj musician poet producer and celebrities starred in entozaki shangays for color girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enough qr poem in one hand pen and another bops his jazz rhythms at the elbow room um pitches words uh from right to left james baldwin said societies never know it but the war of an artist with society is a lovers war the artist does at best what lovers do which is to reveal the beloved to themselves and with that revelation make freedom real black is afros like golden halos uplifted fists black is power is beautiful is black arts is a way to reclaim power celebrate beauty discover voice i loved it um and i have one more i'm going to read the revolution will be televised with apologies to gil scott heron um the revolution will be televised can't you see it's happening right now last night was phase six shock and awe phase one destroy the warriors define warriors however you want every society always has warriors our warriors are being taken down one by one phase two cut out our tongues change the language redefine words to have new meanings liberal entitlement news guilty impeach president real fake footprint cloud phase three take our religion give us icons and devices to worship bow your head and text bow your head and text replace prayer with phase four take our land displace the people phase five destroy the family unit undo the matriarchy let the women come together for no against no for no against no for the safety of our children born and unborn our bodies scarred and trampled deharmonized love phase six shock and awe replay violent deaths over and over for analysis was he really choking could he really breathe was she really carrying a phone was their skirt too short did they ask for it was his back really turned tell kids it's okay to dance on the heads of their debt of their dead opponents introduce the extreme right i'm right i'm right i'm right ask the extreme left who's left the revolution will be televised turn off all the lights keep them on turn them off keep them on are we running out of water are we running out of time are we running make sure you have a gun make sure you have a gun lock your doors lock them tight the revolution will be televised tonight wonderful carla i i just want to give you uh something that i i was on a radio show with ethyl burg Miller who's also in the anthology he mentioned your poem he mentioned the umbra and and what you've done with this so you know kudos to you we all have our own realities you know very good very good thank you yeah um our next poet is elijah pringle he's a philadelphia poet musician composer actor and activist and he's just i'm so it's always wonderful to meet new poets because you just get excited about their work and when i heard him read and the poem i'm very excited what he has to offer i'd like you all to give a warm welcome to elijah pringle um i just want to say i'm humbled um nervous and just thrilled to be here because um i've been a poet in the closet for a number of years and i want to thank uh this anthology for helping me to burst through so i'd like to share a poem um actually there's three i'd like to share the first one is in the anthology it was written by friend aileen casanetto and it's entitled how to launch an ad campaign using black bodies it starts with an epigraph from nat king coal madison avenue is afraid of the dark part one cigarettes as i look at the beginning of the america negro i know we can brand them with yeah and make new money we can reclaim them to tobacco with cigarettes we've had a planet we did prune it until it now a manufacturer and forced them to consume it see psychologically smoking allows them to escape from their mundane being will retell it uh sexy cool can't get black lungs working cotton pills so this will do the lungs of blacks to become cancerous part two malt liquor next we'll need the plaster malt liquor signs everywhere in the bathrooms and especially your schools if they are abstinious they'll resist our efforts to placate and pacify them about 45 bottles 32 ounces of liquid denial will keep them unbalanced get through the hangover the next day don't worry about the taste it is the buzz the hot and as a delightful byproduct we can have the indigenous birth children of alcohol syndrome part three so we can use them to sell so have their black bodies scrub nearly white to show how great it is our soul elliott's white veneer see how it covers over black see bleach and cream to light so bleach and cream does lighten their burden oh not really but they'll buy the hoax give them the lie of straightening hair or maybe have them glue their mind shut with number 33 synthetic walks i see my head back and forth my head back and forth oh i wish we could get willing to do the commercial part four sweaters it all boils down to nitty your cost how much will you pay to make something go away like this little black i mean block of a sweater like the green hoody with the coolest monkey like an ad gonna ride but you need to add quickly first own your bad press secondly hashtag mean amplify our oh i return on investment lastly and most importantly open the red silvi how much will you pay in solidarity part five postcards what's better than double page spreads collectible postcard saturate the market with your brand come up with a sexy ad can copy such as pregnant black child and watermelon patch oh it must be something or something more domestic like white women sewing with six cord cotton thread black woman labor in can go saying wish you were here part six sir we all know that a ready mixed spice up wouldn't sell any foodie can add hard winter meat corn flour phosphate compounds and some salt to antiminer pancakes hmm give the target markets something antebellum hmm let all antiques sing in your kitchen as in town funny it's all syrup and gravy thank you um and uh that was written with a link caston neto and i like to share uh two problems that i think visually uh will be easier to understand the first one is an image um and i saw this photo and this poem came to me uh give me a thumbs up you can see the um image okay and i'll just read the phone now an old photograph her hair is a nest upon her head it has been the home for many who have abandoned their eggs her photo shares her spirit but not her smile her name who is she to me as her eyes penetrates this now an old brownie camera long born these are print of her blouse but not her smile the image folded has removed her mouth like her error may have removed her voice yet she survives authority over me over time over all she is the monolith and we query is there a smile and decreases of her safety approach is there a grin maybe there's a smirk that tells us she knows that we will wonder as her concealed full lips still pours thoughts into our mind while she magically instills into we gazers a sense of pride of astonishment that this generation is guarded by this muse this angel this ancestry the last poem i like to share is actually a form that i've been experimenting with and it's sort of like a found poem and i just will and basically what it is um i know you probably can't see the words but i just want you to kind of see the visual of it so it's one poem in the words of black out to reveal the truth and this poem is entitled bishopville soft riliner late summer of 68 part one my little brother my sister my cousins at twilight would look out a grandma's painted a grandma's painted sharp 12 pane front window gazes glazed by sunscorched black and lace curtains that dangle limp and lifeless where they once adorned handsomely we were stared beyond the half props fields to spy pine magnolia birch sourd and up by the pond weeping willows auntie said trees once held our grandfather and it holds the ever-present sky in place trees anchor marching is to stay still and put treason out the swamp sneaking to the front yard anymore to steal from grandma's garden colored okra and blood prized or seed okras tamed while roses and estranged grotesque misshapen gnarly fruits her chicken finch clutching tomatoes birch bursting if alums restates our heirlooms like minas drapes or tarnished silver forks or unmatched spoons not beautiful useful grandma would watch as we eagerly eyed to stretch through the glass at the trees that finger and tickle the heavens my mother her sister their cousins not uncles would all sit on the dust-darkened porch with a bushel of greens and with arms akimbo with big bone bodies and chorus with belt out go to bed now met with an arching contralter at pateesmo be them kids be i can hear grandma's soul is soaring above all i hear grandma cry now part two brother and twilight look out front gaze at life some pine by the pond leaping auntie said hold still do not let grandma see the strange fruit mina would watch heaven would sit with arms akimbo aching part three my my my grandma's pain he limp and lifeless once handsome the tree held our grandfather it holds grandma prize a strange fruit tarnished grandma would search the heavens all dark and big i can hear grandma cry still thank you and i will stop sharing i love those thank you so much shawna did you say that the woman was was a relative of yours in the picture it is and i am very very ashamed that i can't tell you her name because i just received that picture maybe a year ago from my mom who my dad had it all this time and um she's my actually my great great grandmother from society hill south carolina um and i'm just now researching more about her so thank you i mean i'm like i'm like thank you i i'm blown away and you know wow thank you shawna thank you because i saw that image and i've been reaching out to everyone saying where did this image come from so i've never published that phone because i just felt that i could not until i could find out who this picture belongs to so thank you um and it's strange you should say that it's um she's from south carolina because that's where my family is from so maybe we're relatives but we definitely are kindred's heart so thank you you never know what's going to happen at a poetry reading particularly when there are black people involved but we couldn't hear you but thank you shawna thank you so much i i really want to say that this is this day and this event is to me it just has these little miracles in it to hear this beautiful poetry and to hear these beautiful voices speaking out and thank you thank you all very much including the people that take their time to come and listen to us thank you our next poet is laquiba pitman she's a creative artist a certified compassion ambassador throughout the day area she is also professor at menlo college and the author of bread crumbs for the soul finding your way back home i'd like you all to give a warm welcome to laquiba pitman hi laquiba thank you so much cam i'm just honored to be with you all today you know since people were bringing in a little context i just want to thank um al young was actually uh discovered me i was working in a local bookstore in palo Alto and he continued to encourage me uh in my poetry and my creativity and so i just want to honor him and thank him today so i'm going to share a couple of poems that were included and then just one additional this one is entitled we come to heal the world i call myself queen of the universe of the sky as i fly into new realities once living many years as a caterpillar stuck and then i found a safe spot to transform and within this chrysalis i began to know my true self this metamorphosis of me becoming queen re birthing out of a cocoon of light and love i awoke as a butterfly high in the sky above all seeming troubles of the day i am alive in this new place due to miraculous callings now crowning others to walk in ancestries footsteps where we survive we thrive as we visioned and manifest new ways to be soft yet powerful with eyes lifted to imaginations i hastened to my throne to deliver truths and wisdoms and fabrics of many colors to new soon to be queens in this now this future day i am because she was because you are the one to continue this majesty lift up your chin in true reality knowing the power you sense within is real and the time you sense is now as you are the one to come to heal you are the one we prayed for oh queen of queens take your rightful place on the throne that we might be healed by your heart by your tone by your art by your music by your rhythm your rhyme your poetry by your touch by your soul i speak to the queens and the queen's answer we come to heal the world incredible thank you and this one also included in the anthology which is kind of similar in underlying feeling i would say i am the instrument i play within the rhythms of my own life seeking a pathway of light and wonder and tiny pathways and cavernous entry points i have no limits no boundaries except to love fully so i improvise each new day and i whisper i sing i drum i dance i am the instrument through which i play the melody of my life i call upon the ancestors who whisper new songs within my spirit and i don't hold back i give it all i've got i step in unencumbered unabashedly because the world is on fire and i am the water the land is dry and i am the tears the fear is growing and i've got the love i am the instrument used by the holy presence inspired to tune you in to resonate within your heart to vibrate within your soul to reverberate within your mind so you can remember your purpose i am the rock the truth the light i am called and i answer that call i play in beliefs in prophecies in stories so that even when your ears don't hear me your heart does your soul knows your spirit set free the griot i am word i am instrument thank you thank you so much and this final one i became water not rock if i had died before i woke i wouldn't have known this river flowing and what this wondrous spirit can evoke rising and falling through mountains of time and valleys of this life divine i became water not rock within this mid-summer night's dream i decided to live before i slept so my doppelganger intertwined with me and as we became one i jumped over morning glories rebounding in time like counting sheep relaxes the body mind i awakened rested rested from a long journey aligned i became water not rock when i got in my lane i flourished i grew wings on my journey i became water not rock and connected my being to being me myself and i'm laughing today and smiling this way as i reflect on where i've been and where i'm going i'm not defined by works yet i rise each day on purpose for life comes and runs and creates and desires to be free within me and i answer this call today is a new day and i sit in now and i think of then that exact moment of wondrous reflections and projections bursting forth like sparklers lighting my sight knowing this truth that has set me free i chose life and became water not rock beautiful thank you so much thank you so much i i just it's a healing hearing those poems our next poet is elaine brown elaine she's also known as a poet e she does poet e spoken she's a freestyle poet she's a history teacher and a co-host event an online literary empathy circle and my word open mic please give a warm welcome to elaine brown thank you thank you oh my gosh oh wow i am just sitting here and i'm blown away and i i just want to say thank you this is dr kim McMillan because of how i came to be in this book it's true story so i'm humbled either way so so i get this email from dr mcmillan says yeah yeah you know i want you to um would you be willing to submit a poem into black fire rain the anthology that i'm doing i was just like blown away i'm like me wow yeah sure then i i said to my bite him and she said um could you talk a little bit more about the prison the pipeline and it was this then that i understood she thought that i was elaine brown the panther and i said wow that is such an honor you know so i was like i must be on the right path right but uh anyway i am going to read two poems one that's in the book joshua's tree and the other um from my book cried out laughing which will be out later august um but uh to give a little background about joshua's tree my second great grandfather was uh joshua halsey i don't know if you all heard of him he was a victim of the 1898 womleton massacre whose remains were found um in november of uh 21 and so we in november of last year we just had his funeral and everything like that um so that prompted me to finally complete my book and um talk about the stories of the descendants as a result of the womleton massacre of 1898 so here we go this is joshua's tree every since the day that she claimed that our knuckles straight ground and we walked on all fours we were still upright you see amendments did not change nor legitimize legacy so we broke bread like chains to tell our stories therefore silence is foreign tongue so all the trials triumphs and tribulations written in the blood of our ancestors were meant to be told it is healing for lost souls you see i myself had strayed far from this path but voices from the past whispered wisdom they said in lane even systems deep rooted in oppression have vision they'll spread the gospel allies and history books like religion and although unwritten our voice has the power to transform and transcend generations when we lift them up so teach them that 56 percent of the black race represented womleton under the era of reconstruction did away with this two-party system and created fusion words like diversity and inclusion suddenly had a meaning in a port town that brought us over in slave ships but we fought like hell to control our own interests open our own businesses while white supremacists saw this as an act of violence stormed the local government killed unarmed black men women and children and those who couldn't leave hidden the pine cemetery where our ancestors dwell and it was there that i heard them call like the calling from the conch shell see i heard grandpa joshua i heard grandma sally i heard grandma betsey i heard grandma wanita annie i heard my daddy i heard my brother bird and i heard my uncle lane uncle sonny uncle url and i heard my mother joan still blessed to be alive yell tell our stories tell our stories so this uh next piece right here um it's the last uh piece that i do in my book is called how flowers get their names um self-explanatory welcome to community gardens complete with chain link fences and surveillance a place where mothers still smell the blood of wither babies were slain where murals have been defaced and replaced with signs of keep out no one beyond this point punishable by fines and or imprisonment a place where movements have been reduced to signs on t-shirts that i can't afford to capitalize on because you see me too and black lives and look taken and me has become too damn expensive a place where indigenous and first nation peoples have been murdered and uncovered well this is not a shocking secret this is a pandemic that she can't cover over so you see we're not talking roses because they're seasonal we're not talking daisies because they're easy to uproot and while apocryphal opposites have been associated with the deaths of the josh halsey's the amethyls the makia bryants the george floyd's the sondra blans the riana taylor's the mike browns the willy mccoy's the indigenous and first nation peoples and the countless of victims whose names we will never know but they also send a message of forget me not thank you all thank you so much uh for this honor i am so humbled and blessed and i'm just so excited for this thank you so much for allowing me to be apart you were meant to be in this anthology you were you are the right person for this anthology thank you for being a part of it thank you uh our next poet is thurman watts he's a founding member of the nirobi poets and his work has appeared in the san francisco examiner please give a warm welcome to thurman watts thank you you need to unmute yourself thurman thank you thank you kim and i love you canon as well uh this is indeed a great honor and pleasure i'd like to dedicate this to all the ancestors who came before us in our gloried progeny who deserve the promise of a future this is a story i wrote entitled excuse me in bombay's glass the time of extreme seasons i priestess of soul nina samon was my rib of existence even then until now her fervent anthems of counterslave elevation accompanied me through my post psychedelic cointel pro coincidences however real or imagined i was in salem oregon again after flunking out a couple of years earlier at the university i'd originally arrived on campus back in 68 at the apex of the democratic national convention there were 12 of us at the time nine guys and three women out of a total student body of 1500 lessening the sting of being dark sojourners in a land of snowy winters we called ourselves the dirty dozen like the jim brown film of that era and imbued our presence with bay brazen bay area and south central cool we wore black leather and free hui posters adorned our dorm room walls my cool however left me bereft of survival's like the history of western syd the discourses of modifiers like Descartes and Voltaire all but bum rushed me back to the comforting solace of my dorm room where i wrote poetry consumed baraka and hungered for the funk that was sure to come i also smoked a lot of portland pot which wasn't very good the one time i raised my hand in class to answer a question occurred in freshman english class my peers were allegedly the scholarly cream of the pacific northwest they seemed to exist in an academic realm wholly foreign to my mode of understanding but on this day the professor asked a question that perplexed the whole class except me whose philosophy of non-violence did marchin luther king study and apply as a leader of the civil rights movement her question was met with blank stares by everyone except me i raised my gravity defying hand with all the strength like a muster she called on me gondy i sang and proclaimed rising above the cream it was the loftiest perch of my university experience after flunking out i returned to the bay and joined a group we patented ourselves after the last poets and called ourselves the village griots we were gigging on the west coast and now two years later had a date at the school where i'd been deemed academically unworthy this is how we met dr and bombay life is a hell of a drug we stayed at lamumba house while there was a rented house that offered solace to the black population in and around campus it was named after a fallen freedom fighter patrice lamumba the first legally elected prime minister of the democratic republic republic of congo another hero that was killed or betrayed like gill sang in winter in america there students could decompress from the rigors of minority academic life and the young african american locals could also comfortably socially mingle the young locals were the offspring of black migratory farm workers and followed the crops from arizona to oregon there was a wine note by the name of lee roy who hung around lamumba house enjoying the energy of the young folks there one day out of the out of earshot of lee roy a brother whispered to me that cat can eat glass at the next opportunity i asked lee roy about it he shined me on focusing instead on the feminine apparition in front of him on our last night there's a small a small crowd assembled at the village griots having earlier slain the university community at large with our performance now gave a private intimate reprieve reprieve reprieves for in fact that lee roy the elder commandeer of the scene as we say in booming elocution he said to one of the sisters baby would you bring me some salt from the kitchen seasonings procured lee suddenly he smashed the bulb on the cleason shaman he sprinkled the shards of glass with salt and pepper to our astonishment lee ingested the sharp pieces in between swills of his favorite beverage tingle paint he continued then he looked at me and spoke young blood run your finger around my mouth and see if there's any glass left i respectfully declined already thoroughly convinced how do you do that i asked he then told me the story when i was a young man as a merchant marine i became stranded in north africa i studied with a tribe of people who awakened the power of my mind i was shown how to walk on hot coals and eat glass all you have to do is believe when i had a full set of teeth i could eat soda pop bottles when i came back to america i worked in the circus as dr umbonbe which dr from africa the village griots flew back to sfo the next morning we stayed together as a group for about another year we individually morphed into other pursuits and his relationships sometimes famously do broke up we have remained in contact and sometimes reminisce about the black arts movement or the art of being black for us the beginning and the end remain one we have also stayed in contact with the thread of african-american students that we came to know through our salem experience no one seems to know though what happened to leero recently i took my 34 year old son on a road trip up through salem he had asked me how i ended up going to school there for a season and i thought the trip might provide the answers i didn't readily have salem though a tad more diverse still only has about a 1.5 black population as my son marley and i drove through the streets near the university i was reminded how starved for soul music we were as students all those years ago even in the frosty frosty snow winter we would go out to the student parking lot late at night when the radio signal from xzrb near teowana was the strongest it would reach even salem with the legendary wolfman jack pumping the latest dike in the blazers the flamingos sam mr soul cook or mr jackie wilson yeah we love the old wolfman baby when we pulled up to the old lamumba house i was only half surprised to note that though the structure was still there it was no longer designated in remembrance of patrice it was still student housing but most traces of africa had been removed there was one left someone not so very long ago had scrawled in a square of replaced cement bombe lives thank you thank you thurmond that's absolutely fascinating the fascinating piece just beautiful um our next poets our mother and daughter team uh sajaba so excuse me sajabu and her daughter dr vs chochasi sajabu is a writer producer prison rights activist artist air force veteran and a uc davis retiree and she is just a wonderful mother and daughter team that are called straight straight out scribes dr vs chochasi chochasi is a writer poet photojournalist and college professor vs earned a doctorate in education from dextral university and together they make up a wonderful team i'd like you all to give a warm welcome to sajabu and her daughter dr vs chochasi i'm gonna start a revolution i'm gonna start a revolution i'm gonna start a revolution i'm gonna start a revolution in my soul gonna seize control of all i have in me anything to make me whole or high or both i'm gonna start a revolution i'm gonna start a revolution i'm gonna start a revolution in my soul. Greetings, my name is Tujabu. I'm Dr. V. S. Chochezi. We're a Sacramento mother-daughter poetry team with eight books of poetry and two CDs. People know us far and wide because we like to share a positive vibe. And we're now celebrating our 32nd year as straight out. Scratch. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. I'd like to give thanks and praise to the most high creative energy in the universe for bringing us together today. Thank you, Kim, Dr. Kim McMillan. Thank you to the San Francisco Library. And thanks to all the contributors that are here and who wanted to be here and could not. We open with what we call a weave, and we're going to do each a poem and another weave and each a poem and then a close out. I just want people to know that my daughter, I'm so proud of her. She's a writer, poet, photojournalist, college professor. She earned her doctorate in education at Drexel University. And she is the amazing daughter of straight out scratch. So my first poem is the message. And this is in the book on page 248. When our enslaved ancestors were granted freedom with no money and no place to go, what message could be clearer? When black people were refused education, jobs, housing, medication, or a seat on public transportation, what message could be clearer? With the shameful treatment of the black and poor after Hurricane Katrina, what message could be clearer? With high unemployment and infant mortality rates, plus innocent people killed by police, what message could be clearer? When they cut back public assistance, dismantle affirmative action, reduce food stamps, and deny us reparations, what message could be clearer? When they bombed the Moog family in Philly, killing six adults, five children, and burned down 61 homes on Osage Avenue, what message could be clearer? When black communities are flooded with drugs and guns causing all kinds of chaos, mayhem, self-annihilation, incarceration, or profitable increase in prison populations, followed by amazing upscale gentrification, what message could be clearer? Rosewood, Florida, Birmingham, Alabama, Greenwood, Oklahoma, Soweto, South Africa, did they get the message? I'm going to do Strange Fruit Emmett Till, Bobby Hutton, Fred Hampton. I'm going to do the allotrape on Martin Malcolm X, Dr. King George Floyd. Get the message. The death penalty is legal lynching. Racism is still prevalent and unflinching. We must be diligent. We must be brave for our children and grandchildren. We got a planet to save. What message could be clearer? Yes. Thank you, Mr. Jabu, my mama. Black girls bop. This is also from the anthology, a black fire this time. Black girls bop for Shannon and her girls. Black girls hope. Black girls dream. Black girls cry. Black girls scream. Black girls laugh. Black girls play. Black girls dance. Black girls pray. Black girls think. Black girls do. Black girls matter just like you. Black girls jump. Black girls run. Black girls achieve. Black girls have fun. Black girls read. Black girls write. Black girls work. Black girls fight. Black girls live. Black girls love. Black girls do. Just like you. Mind check one, two. Mind check one, two. Mind check one, two. Mind check one, two. Mind check. This is a mind check. This is a mind check. Check out your mind. Mind check. This is a mind check. This is a mind check. Check out your mind. Mind check. This is a mind check. This is a mind check. Check out your mind. Check it out now. Wow, have you seen your mind lately? And my next poem is The Tooth. And for those of you who don't know the vernacular, when you have a tooth, it means you got an attitude about something. I don't know about you, but I got a big attitude about my people being enslaved. I got an attitude about the lies that were told, the bill of goods we were sold, about us being inferior and them being superior. And I'm madder than a big dog about the rapes and lynchings they did, especially to a kid named Emmett Till. Yeah, I'm still mad about that. And Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Megan Evans, George and Jonathan Jackson, Bobby Hutton, the Moove family. And nothing makes my jaws tight like when I remember the night they beat Rodney King. And another thing, they never apologized to us publicly, never made good for all the years. We cried bitter tears for our lost children, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers they sold or the gold they stole. My blood starts to rise when I realized we have yet to have our day in court. For the wrongs that were done to us, we ought to be able to make a good case about the injustices done to our black race. We need to negotiate a settlement like in any other disagreement. I can represent myself. And when the jury is chosen on it would be a dozen former slaves, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren. I know we went without a doubt because even before the jury went out, once they checked out the evidence, they were surely sentenced to defendants of 500 years of hard labor and restitution of $400 trillion in back pay, okay? Yeah, I'm running hot and I'm plenty fetched and I want some satisfaction. Now you can act like everything's cool and lobby die and all that action, but from what I can see and I ain't blind, their payments are running way behind and I'll chill out with a smile on my face when those overdue payments pick up the pace. Until then, y'all need to give me plenty of space because I got a big adder too. Thank you. Black is beautiful and y'all look so beautiful. Black is beautiful is not a battle cry. It is not an attempt to diminish or overshadow other types of beauty. It is not a boast or used to set up for a abundance of pride to be interpreted as black is the only beauty in the world or even the source of all beauty though, that can't really be ruled out. Black is beautiful is not spoken in hate, a waste of breath, like stating the obvious, though perhaps it should be since in fact, black is beautiful and of course, black is complex. So beautiful is not the only thing that black is. Black is more than beautiful. Black is beautiful is a slogan to help those who have been taught openly or indirectly that black is anything but beautiful. And if you are not black, saying black is beautiful does not negate your own beauty to be perfectly and politically clear. But when you hear black is beautiful, you don't need to fear, but black is beautiful is not a battle cry. It is a slogan to be chanted and used to greet each other. Open your hearts to it, feel and believe it, reinforce it and let it sink in lazy to counteract the negative stereotype subjugation, microaggressions, drama and pain that can too often accompany this skin we're in because in the end, the simple truth is black is beautiful. Black is beautiful. Uh-huh, sa-sa-sa-sa-sa-sa. Uh-huh, sa-sa-sa-sa-sa-sa. Uh-huh, sa-sa-sa-sa-sa-sa. Uh-huh, sa-sa-sa-sa-sa-sa. Promote you to the gender. Together we will win. Because the sight of you feeds my spirit. Can't put some mojo in my mouth. Oh, let me inhale your power. Be brave in your warm migration. Uh-huh, be our rap. Liberation is our song. Free up the land is what we demand. Stay strong people, stay strong. Uh-huh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh. Africa uh-huh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh, sa-sa uh-huh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh. Africa uh-huh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh. Uh-huhuhuhuhuh means freedom. Sa-sa means now. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. What a great team you to make. Thank you very, very much. Our next poet is Avacha. Avacha is a playwright, multi-percussionist, photographer, teacher. She's published in English and Spanish. You can hear on K-Pool on Fridays and also you can hear on K-PFA. Please give a warm welcome to Avacha. Hey, hey folks. Oh wow. And put me after two of my best friends, Satchabu and my stolen daughter. Satchabu got the stretch marks and I get the baby. So anyway, got a baby anymore, but she's still beautiful. You know, I want to thank each and every one of you. I want to thank Dr. Kim McMillan and Heather for putting this thing together. It's really imperative. As someone said, I think it was Elaine told me we have to keep these ancestors alive. We have to tell the stories. And so that I want to dedicate this to all those ancestors who line the oceans floor, who are sitting up underneath cotton fields and cane fields. You know, I want to thank Pity Tomas and Al Young and Margaret Walker and Jane Coates for helping me keep it going. And I want to thank each and every one of you. So I want to do two poems and thanks again for inviting me to be part of this miraculous book. Because I do believe that the Black Arts Movement started long before we got here. It came with us on slave ships and it still remains with us and and those ancestors gave us the fire to remember that we ain't always tired. This is called still paying the price. It's come to my attention more times in the few that there's folks out there still out there embarrassed by me. Waiting for me to act my age to wise up and grow up forget about feeding my soul on a diet of music and poetry instead of stuffing my psyche with envy and gold. Said they're waiting for me praying for me to wake up and drop all that artsy faulty stuff. Stuff they have the audacity to crawl immature nonsense one half drunk intellectual phony even told me my lifestyle could dishonor our mission of uplifting tradition demanding I surrender to the blandness of their reality. Get up off my big artistic behind and find a little good old fashioned upwardly mobile pride pull my head in out of fantasy land and get myself a real job. Join the morning oops morning army of the nondescript this out in some nameless cubicle and lose myself among the lost hordes of the respectively board and the boring but the gods chose to smile on me. Drop the gift of soul on me and when the spirit speak to me it always comes out poetry and every wind that blows my way talks to me begs me to keep one asking the same old question how many ancestors had to lose their hands for me to be able to write this poem has the ambition to rise blinded some of our eyes and the quest for acceptability lodge like stones in our ears leaving us deaf making us forget it was the uncounted power of our music and song that kept us keeping on kept us strong through the lynchings and the burnings and the sonings it was all creative fire a creative torch and lit our desire to inspire it was the blue rhythm in our gift the gruesome dues behind the spiritual power in our songs all along the road to an always elusive goal called freedom this is the gift that some would like to sit on the back burner blessing that some others would just love to know forgetting those times when we were there all and there was nowhere else to go they don't even know that they are what they're running from how many hands were lost for us to earn the unasked for right to become the backdrop for the unending pompous torques drums nothing more than court justice relegated to ambiance new age clowns on some modern-day technologically hip plantation mindless that entertainment for the little rotty who've obviously forgotten that the gift of intellect in the hands of an insecure fool can become a curse that clogs the mind and self-destructs and gets swallowed up lost in the shallow hell of an inevitable but cruel retribution a hell-born of self-hater build bitter unhealthy dose of disrespect turned on in on itself and even though we're still ignored by some of our own and I I know we're never ever ever going to get anywhere near 40 acres in a mule we've always got this gift it's written all over every single one of the beings of cells in our bodies this gift a stubborn old hard-headed ancestors with wish this this this gift of an undefeated dream this gift paid for by hundreds of amputated hands and broken necks bizarre decorations left hanging from too many trees this gift and unnipotent patient wish that refuses to die in his poet's eyes and because some of us so-called artist types continuing to refuse to stick our heads in the convenient sands of selective amnesia somewhere I say somewhere this evening the ancestors are dancing laughing and dancing and stirring it up even in the stoic too cool the groove hallways of academia laughing cause not even fear could stop us from writing dancing because I'm still asking what what was the cause I said can anybody out there tell me what was the cost how many hands were lost in order for me to write this poem this last one I want to do it's called soundly metaphysical some people still believe the stereotype in order to become a good artist you must become a doping or a drunk I was dumb enough to believe that and so for the younger days way back when I believed it and became both the doping and the drunk but I've been sober and clean now 51 years so I some fool came up to me and said that the music that we were playing I had to know what some good dope was so this is my response to him because I don't believe in violence so I wrote this poem it's called soundly metaphysical hopefully he got the message my music my music is an orgasmic sending them for all that is real an organic vibrational healing a sanctified tone for my deal is sound sound sound sound sound sound call me a metaphysician a doctor of sound another addition on the ladder of tradition another one of those trying to be spiritual music nuts pushing a hundred percent natural medicine melodic medicine non-toxic here's one B flat the high C I said I got a music Jones that won't let go it's a heavy gift of Zora Neil Hurston Jose Montoya words on a gift to lift us a healthy intoxication is stronger than drugs and ever an expanded ritual fix that's everywhere all the time music is the song that sings me that flows through me the song that is me music is the funk in a joe cuba tune Duke Ellington's mistress the beat that bites and Betty Carter's bop the blood in my veins part of music is the air I breathe the heart of every dream I dream sound so strong I can see it can you hear it feel it I say I gotta know if you ever even noticed it music's calling and calling and calling and call is always talking calling you calmly inviting you essentially as a caress holding you warmly haunting me desperately like a scream music is a unifier the one sure thing that brings this world together the only universal language music is a brazenly unrepentant flirt comes speaking sweetly teasing swinging and talking jiving every idiom that's ever been a language so strong even the death can taste it are you listening are you listening it's begging you to heal music and the music of the world is medicine of a poetic musician is a traditional human I'm a dealer I say I'm a dealer a metaphysician who deals in sound sound sound sound but there's no sound it's the only how I'm pushing right now I said right now I feel a healing coming on anybody out there wants some thanks for listening to my words and thanks to all the ancestors who made it possible thanks for Dr. Kim McMillan and Helen uh uh excuse me not Helen heaven Heather Heather Heather forgive me for mispronouncing your name and each and every one of you and I'm so honored to be part of this amazing amazing thing thank you thank you and thank you all we have one last poet and you brought a bit of that old-time religion into that so thank you for that Avacha our last poet is Dr. Catherine Takara she's an Afrofuturist echo poet and the author of nine books and scholarly articles and she's also the owner and publisher of Pacific Raven Press since night excuse me since 2008 please give a warm welcome to Dr. Catherine Takara thank you Catherine do you have your sound um muted can you hear me now yes I can hear you now all right thank you okay I just want to thank everyone and say how inspired you have all made me feel I am joyful I just flew in from Hawaii so that's where I live now um we don't have much time so I'll jump right into um if we have time for two but I'll jump into one and it's called Tuskegee where I was born and raised Tuskegee divine mirror of two due attitudes black folk hard work rewards of success diamond of a small southern town mine from dark slavery sharecropping miscegenation and born in dreams students walked miles to arrive with one change of clothes and determination to labor to learn to prepare themselves and the race to seek an education help to build a school a campus students made bricks one by one cultivated the grounds and built the Tuskegee Institute Chapel in 1898 renowned towering stained glass windows precious colors royal gems a whole community witnessed the great midnight fire destruction of the bellissimo cathedral chapel in 1957 flames seen from my house two and a half miles away a whole community new fear understood endings listened to rumors of Ku Klux Klan violence remembered burning crosses vulnerable churches Tuskegee people watched the recurring tragedies of race so connected yet disconnected by color and class and unknown quilted histories whispered in closets behind doors in bedrooms trepidations of whites dominated the unspoken discourse fears of educated uppity articulate niggas who sang jubilee songs and spirituals traveled and got degrees lax thrive got jobs created jobs researched and learned black history understood the value of black pride and self health chief anderson light-skinned and confident taught the Tuskegee airman at molten field took up elena roosevelt in his plane she dared to fly with a black man my dad bill waddell walnut brown and handsome came to Tuskegee to work on peanut oil therapy with george washington carver to research a liniment for those paralyzed by polio like president roosevelt who reluctantly visited the campus with his wife my mom lati proud smart as a whip fab fabulously stylish from a well-to-do family who owned land and had servants descended from generations of teachers she taught languages french and german even after marriage when women were expected to stay home she kept her job i see so many mind pictures family resemblances processes evolving Tuskegee Tuskegee prototype of hard work and determination so much history open and hidden it's beautiful i'm afraid we were um the the crew says we can't we were not supposed to go on past three o'clock and so i apologize because i would love to hear more poetry by you and um an anis and ashana ashana and and john we want to really thank you and we usually like to open it up for for the audience is it okay if we open it up even if we do have time for another 15 minutes or so if you want to open things up oh i thought we had to quit okay well i would love to open up and i because i want i want the i love when we interact with our audiences and and um dr tukar you were absolutely beautiful if we have 15 minutes if you do have a short poem i would love to hear it then from the book anything you were anything you would like i i i adore your poetry as much as i adore you whatever you'd like to hear i'll read from the book the one poem stolen jewels because it seems to go with everything that everyone has been saying all right who stole the jewels from africa they missed the essence of what they took chasms of misunderstanding and misinterpretation for in africa sharing was like sunlight abundant as sky is blue gold was for beauty and celebration of the people adorning everyone's body rubies and pearl dust of brotherhood sisterhood sapphire skies amethyst halos of consciousness immoral clusters of community abundant in ebony and copper drum rhythms presence in opal harmony like planets to sun who stole the jewels from africa they missed the essence of what they took there were no banks no uniformed law and order of separate we's and they's and those who introduced and perpetuated we they abounded like hailstones collected stolen jewels for elite and noble kings and queens popes and churches of civilized lands in a demaginated devotion to those who sat pretentiously puppets of pride on paper maché thrones who stole the jewels from africa they missed the essence of what they took who stole the jewels from the people and gave in mirages of generosity imitation jewels turned holy expectation of honesty and a denji imagination and gaudy hopes of betrayed receivers watched as drabness settled in like drearsome fog who did you say who it was that with graceless wishes from lecherous fantasy who it was that turned purity of being into ego safety deposit boxes of threatened stolen jewels who stole the jewels from africa whoever it was you missed the point thank you so much for having me letting me share a bit that was beautiful every single one of these poets saying to our audience and each of you are gifts gifts to the planet and gifts to us just honored that you all showed up before we start talking with the audience and just hearing what they have to say our publisher Heather Buchanan would like to say a couple of words thank you Heather is your is your mic on yes that's fine everyone I just want to say thank you for the bottom of my heart and thank you Kim of course and I know we don't have a lot of time but I want to mention that we have a newsletter going out and we'd love for you to sign up we put it in the chat and we'll ask the library to post it as well because we'll keep you notified of our future readings as well as some live shows so we just want to tell you that some live shows are coming in with some people this is going to be a 40 50 year reunion so stay tuned thank you all thank you and I wanted also mention that I I just really adore Shauna John and Anissa the whole crew is just spectacular and we do have a live show coming up with them on September 24th and I believe that Michael war will be the host and I think you're all going to really enjoy it so now if it's if you would like to if there's anything that you would like to share with us about coming to the reading or your own experiences with african-american literature please do we're open to hearing what our audience has to say as well as what the authors have to say too so let's open and see what you have to have to say anyone okay go ahead see you put his hand down but his hand was up there for a minute so okay um well how about if we there's a couple things if if um laquiba is still on the line she mentions that she's a compassion compassionate ambassador and so I wanted to find out from her what is that in intel you're doing because uh I think that's a beautiful title to have well I studied at stanford center for compassion um but beyond that it's really about not ignoring the suffering that is right before our eyes and having a desire a heart moistened that directs us to want to do something about the suffering so in truth indigenous people have always cared about other people in their communities so in I would say in the US we're not really socialized to so much uh care for other people so so it's the training that I do the workshops the sessions is really to reacquaint you with your heart and reacquaint you with the possibility of a moistened heart which would then enable you to care about what you see and what's right before you and a lot of the poetry that I heard today reflects uh some eyes and hearts that have been closed to the to the suffering and the need to uh reawaken those what I think are innate aspects of the heart and soul wow be beautiful thank you you know I saw Malcolm Margolin he was a he started heyday books and Mark Malcolm I'd love you to say hi because you are one of the beautiful giants I consider in our independent um publishing that really had made a difference particularly for California writers you want to say hi um Malcolm and let us know what you're doing if you want to you have to turn your um your sound on hi Malcolm how are you oh it's so nice seeing you how are you doing I'm trying to speak so so because it's just beautiful seeing you Malcolm I'm just glad that you exist and that you did so much for authors like myself and so many others who you made a difference with your press it really helped the community thank you so much you're marvelous you're absolutely marvelous thank you thank you very much you know um and it's I if there's any other people that we haven't seen or a part of the community here yeah yes hi hi Malcolm hi go ahead uh I'm Andrea Bagwell in Washington DC and it's such a great pleasure to hear all the poetry and storytelling from today and my daughter who's a college student here is working uh with her professor and they're doing a symposium and they're going to be ordering books for the participants I'm going to recommend to my daughter that this book is one that's purchased and given to the students so I'll follow up with you Dr McMillan about how to make that happen but they are they've been planning since the spring and this is just the the kind of thing that's just so good and heartwarming and like you said that our folk need to know about young and old and just everybody so I'm going to be recommending to my daughter that she put this book for so it's beautiful thank you the publishers on the line um just put your name out there or a contact and and I can say we can do it we can we can give you a deal yes thank you thank you very much thank you very much I we appreciate the community and we appreciate having support within that community thank you uh Raymond did you have something to say I heard I saw you kind of say something uh if you wanted to say something it's now or never I think we have about four or five minutes Raymond uh if Raymond I also saw a Vacha come on I just I just wrote uh what I had in the chat I thought Laquiba's um what do you call it moist in hearts is such a beautiful image and so you know I don't have anything other than that I I speak a lot so I don't I don't want to you know and also oftentimes males tend to end up getting a lot of airtime but what I will say in my conclusion is that I thought it was um just a very incredibly beautiful gathering of very diverse voices from various regions and areas and so forth and once again you know I I sound like a broken record but I can't give enough praise to Dr. Kim MacMillan because you know you've been doing this for a very very very very long time and so it's not new for you and um I just hope that you continue to do it and that you get the support and infrastructure and everything that you're that's needed to carry it on and and I want to extend my appreciation to Heather and uh the library team so y'all was fabulous little pissed at a Vacha she didn't do Poppy was a dancing man that she knows that's my piece but we'll we'll deal with that in another context it was great to see D major yeah it is it's possible to say something real quick sure go ahead a Vacha I think that one of the one of the greatest crimes that's happened in our journey has been that they convinced us to uplift ourselves out of ourselves so we threw away the baby with the bathwater I grew up in shoot and cut New York when I finally got to uh now you youngies tease me and say that I was the only black person you knew everybody the other black person was trying to get out of Mississippi I was trying to get there because I love the blues I love gut bucket blues I'm not talking about the city blues I like I like the Mississippi style gut bucket storytelling blues and what I saw there was the same kind of thing that thing that we thrown away when I grew up in shoot and cut New York everybody on that block was your mama and your daddy my I didn't have a spanking for my mother or my father I had spankers for everybody else on the block oh my god you could not breathe without somebody taking care of you and making I had to talk to everybody on that block because if I didn't poppy had periscopic vision and he would know by the time I got home I didn't speak to mr. Garcia or mrs. Jones and I would be punished for that we threw away the good stuff with the bad stuff instead of just throwing away the bad stuff who you told we're intelligent people intelligent people don't do those things intelligent people give up themselves that is excuse my language the biggest bunch of bullshit they handed us intelligent people take care of each other somebody mentioned the native Americans taking care of each other we did as well and we need back to that don't throw it away and I agree with you and I think programs of this nature and having a library like the San Francisco public library that truly does support the arts community it get you feel the support and it's very obvious and with with those statements if anyone wants to say something else please do otherwise I'm handing over the mic to the library but much gratitude for their kindness and their support of us I have to say that Kim we don't crazy enough I know that's not why you do this but I think we need to celebrate because without curators like you the art may not continue forward so I say thank you for your sacrifices thank you for your encouragement I am always humbled and motivated by any experience or time that I spend with you so I just want to say publicly thank you and I absolutely adore you oh my goodness see I promised myself I wouldn't cry I I cried too easily just the kindness that is shown to me I do this a friend told me she was frustrated that her art wasn't getting to that point of fame and I said to her we do art we do poetry with love if you get fame wonderful but if you can breathe at night because that creative force is in within you and it's just coming out to the world to yourself and it's a healing force that is even better than fame could ever be but but that is just my opinion yeah did you have something you wanted wanted to say margo I did I also wanted to say thank you thank you thank you thank you and I also know that I speak for so many of us when I say that it is going to be so wonderful to have black fire this time volume two so we thank you for this on point where because I hear I hear tell right that there is a volume two so thank you Kim so much and thank you Heather and thank Heather for her vision too so without further due we're turning over the mics to the san francisco public library and we thank you for your for your kindness and your support of what we do thank you thank you everyone for coming that was one of the highlights of the year just an astonishing program really an astonishing book we hope to see you again have a wonderful day and summer bye bye everyone take care of yourselves bye bye everybody be safe yes be safe bye everybody thank you bye everyone thank you thanks everyone bye