I felt disgusted with myself. It was the easiest thing to do—just pass my embarrassment on to Michael, and they would leave me alone. But I felt worse than ever. I was never going to be his friend now. He would never like me after something so horrible as that. Never. I was sure that Michael hated me. But it didn’t matter. At that point, I hated myself.
The next day at school, I was pulling my logic homework out of my bag at my locker. Both Michael and I had last names beginning with the letter M, so naturally, our lockers were close. He came up next to me and put his bag beside my feet. I watched him silently as he pulled his logic homework from his bag. It was incomplete.
“Did you know how to do your homework?” I inquired softly. I woulda spoke up a bit but, you know, I didn’t want him to yell at me or nuthin’.
He shook his head apprehensively, “Uh . . . no . . . not really.”
“Well . . . um . . . maybe I could . . . um . . . help you . . . if Mrs. McMorley’ll let me,” I stuttered. “She shouldna given you homework on your first day no way,” I added. I hoped that he knew this was my way of apologizing.
“It’s okay. She said she just wanted me to try. I’m not gonna get in trouble,” he explained.
“Oh,” I said disappointedly. I was really hoping to help.
“But, uh . . . thanks,” he finished, and smiled.
I blushed and smiled, too. He blushed back, and I swear I saw the most profound shade of red I had ever seen through his glowing skin.
It didn’t take long after that before we were friends. And soon Michael became the most popular boy in the fourth grade. The other boys looked up to him because of his height and strength. Most of us little goofy giggling girls that were madly in love with him never quite learned how to express that, so instead we continued with bouts of “Choco Bliss” and “Charcoal” throughout our fourth-grade year. Michael would fight back, throwing out a “Mellow Yellow” or a “Banana Boat” in his defense. We would argue. We would laugh. We would continue to be insecure in the skin we were in.
Some fifteen years later, I fell in love and found my own “Choco Bliss.” Dark skin glistening like the heavens, a familiar rouge glow in his skin when he blushes with passion, he is all I could ask for. When I look at him, I see a beauty I’ve always seen when I look at dark complexioned blackness. I tell him about Michael. He tells me about little girls just like me from his childhood that made loving his complexion a challenge. We laugh. We argue. We find comfort in the skin we’re in.
Dominique Morisseau
Lord, When Will This Journey End?
Steep yourself in black history, but don’t stop there. I love Duke Ellington and Count Basie, but I also listen to Bach and Beethoven. Do not allow yourself to be trapped and snared in limits set for you by someone else.
Gordon Parks
Who am I? I was born in 1929, the year of the Great Depression. My birth certificate defined me as colored and colored people were considered second-class citizens. To be more specific, we were considered nonentities.
I was born at a time in America when colored people entered through the back door, drank from separate water fountains, rode on the back of the bus or stood up if a white person needed the seat. In some Southern cities we couldn’t walk on the same sidewalk when a white person approached. We attended schools for colored only, with worn-out, hand-me-down books.
I was born “colored.” I reached my teens and was labeled “Negro.” I looked the same, felt the same, so I didn’t give it another thought. Some even labeled me “Nigrah.” I reached adulthood and a twentieth-century prophet, Martin Luther King Jr., and his “I’ve Got a Dream” came along and labeled me “black”—black and proud. He said I was somebody. My mama had imprinted this on my brain since I was born; so I embraced this man and my blackness.
After Martin’s assassination, Jesse Jackson, an idealist emerged. Just as I had become comfortable with my blackness, he labeled me “African-American.” As soon as you could snap a finger the whole world took on this definition of me. It is true I have African ancestry. My great-great-grandmother, an African, was sold into slavery by her own people. A rape by her slave owner when she was only fifteen resulted in the birth of a baby girl. The baby grew into a woman, escaped slavery with her mother, was rescued by Native Americans, lived on the reservation, married and had six Native American children. One was my maternal grandmother, making me a mixture of African, Caucasian and Native American. I am not an immigrant in this country. I was born in America of American-born parents and grandparents, all of mixed heritage. Are we now expected to relinquish part of our heritage?
Who am I really? I have now reached the winter of my years. My feet are tired, and my body is worn. I have traveled a thousand miles, a dreamer. I have been called colored, nigrah, nigger, Negro, black, and now African American. I have been told to be peaceful, be a separatist, be militaristic, bear arms, be part of a rainbow, and all I want is to be recognized as a person, a person who has made significant accomplishments in a world that continues to try to define me. My life has been an instrument for good in a world filled with hate and divisiveness.
My time is running out, and all I want is to be me, a woman who has made her mark in this world. I want to leave a legacy, to those who come behind me, the new seedling that will emerge come spring. I just want my gravestone to read, “Here lies a woman, a person, who walked a thousand miles in pursuit of her dream and made it.”
Little seedling, keep on trucking, and never give up on your dream to be somebody in America, the land that all of your forebears had a hand in carving, and don’t let nobody define who you are and what you should be, no matter what your race, religion or creed.
I’ve come to the end of my journey, folks, and I am going inside now to escape the cold of winter. And I want to leave you with this message: “Don’t let nobody turn you ’round, turn you ’round, turn you ’round. No, don’t let nobody turn you ’round. Glory hallelujah.”
Myrtle Peterson
Lord, Why Did You Make Me Black?
Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow—red, yellow, brown, black and white—and we’re all precious in God’s sight.
Jesse Jackson
Why did You make me black?
Why did You make me someone the world wants to hold back?
Black is the color of dirty clothes; the color of grimy hands and feet.
Black is the color of darkness; the color of tire-beaten streets.
Why did You give me thick lips, a broad nose and kinky hair?
Why did You make me someone who receives the hatred stare?
Black is the color of a bruised eye when somebody gets hurt.
Black is the color of darkness. Black is the color of dirt.
How come my bone structure’s so thick; my hips and cheeks so high?
How come my eyes are brown and not the color of the daylight sky?
Why do people think I’m useless? How come I feel so used?
Why do some people see my skin and think I should be abused?
Lord, I just don’t understand; What is it about my skin?
Why do some people want to hate me and not know the person within?
Black is what people are “listed,” when others want to keep them away.
Black is the color of shadows cast. Black is the end of the day.
Lord, You know, my own people mistreat me; and I know this just isn’t right. They don’t like my hair or the way I look.
They say I’m too dark or too light.
Lord, don’t You think it’s time for You to make a change?
Why don’t You re-do creation and make everyone the same?
God answered:
Why did I make you black? Why did I make you black?
Get off your knees and look around. Tell Me, what do you see?
I didn’t make you in the image of darkness. I made you in the likeness of ME!
I made you the color of coal from which beautiful
diamonds are formed.
I made you the color of oil, the black-gold that keeps people warm.
I made you from the rich, dark earth that can grow the food you need.
Your color’s the same as the panther’s, known for beauty and speed.
Your color’s the same as the black stallion, a majestic animal is he.
I didn’t make you in the image of darkness, I made you in the likeness of ME!
All the colors of a heavenly rainbow can be found throughout every nation;
And when all those colors were blended well, you became my greatest creation.
Your hair is the texture of lamb’s wool, such a humble, little creature is he.
I am the Shepherd who watches them. I am the One who will watch over thee.
You are the color of midnight-sky, I put the stars’ glitter in your eyes.
There’s a smile hidden behind your pain, that’s the reason your cheeks are high.
You are the color of dark clouds formed when I send My strongest weather.
I made your lips full so when you kiss the one you love they will remember.
Your stature is strong; your bone structure thick to withstand the burdens of time.
The reflection you see in the mirror . . . The image that looks back at you is MINE!
RuNett Nia Ebo
Majority of One
My blackness has never been in my hair. Blackness is not a hairstyle.
Bertha Gilkey
I wanted to do it for so long—throw out my chemically relaxed hair for a natural. I had long admired sisters who sported braids, afros or locks and tossed their heads in defiance of mainstream-endorsed hair beauty regimens.
I want to be one of them, I often thought, but continually struggled with the idea of shedding the thick, dark brown, longer-than-shoulder-length hair I had been told I was blessed with.
It was so tied to my identity I could not bear to part with it. From my wide-eyed childhood to long-legged adolescence, each trip to the beauty parlor was marked by a beautician’s friendly question.
“Chile, where in the world did you get all that hair?”
Not knowing exactly how to reply to the question, I would always look at the floor, and whisper “Thank you,” while secretly harnessing the attention my hair brought.
Those precious times were a marked contrast to how I often felt about myself as a darker-skinned black adolescent, when it seemed that lighter-skinned people were all the rage in our largely black middle-class suburb.
I once asked my mother, who like the rest of family has a caramel-brown tone, if I was adopted. She pulled out ultrasound images from a scrapbook to assure me I was not. And later, she created a poster of chocolate-toned African Americans, like Iman and others, to show me I was beautiful.
As thankful as I was for her reassurance, I thought she was doing her motherly duty and still struggled to find something about me that was beautiful. I thought about those trips to the hairdresser, how special they made me feel, and so I turned to my hair for acceptance. People had always made a big deal about my longer-than-average black-girl hair. It was special when my mother allowed me to wear my hair “out,” because on those days I could truly swish and sway my hair with the best of my lighter-skinned peers.
At Duke University, I was glad I didn’t have to wear extensions or a weave. I grew it longer than ever, thinking it would allow me a better chance of getting into a sorority I was interested in. But by my junior year, I realized how long I’d been buying into the mainstream-enforced, black women-accepted notions of beauty. The ruse was exposed, and I was not, after all, like Samson; my hair didn’t hold that much power anymore.
Again I questioned, What about me was beautiful?
That summer, I wrote a poem celebrating African Americans who had the courage to make strides that included wearing their hair natural in the sixties and seventies. One line read, “I wasn’t there but I heard about those who dared to put down the hot-comb for a minute, don a dashiki and look themselves in the mirror exclaiming ‘Beautiful.’”
I longed to be like the people I felt so strongly about, people who found their beauty and acceptance in themselves.
The excuse I made to myself was that natural hair was a statement of beauty for another time and place. But deep inside, I was really unsure whether I could ever be beautiful if I discontinued my fourteen-year relationship with no-lye chemical relaxers. I knew I had long been afraid of finding out. So, after a false start my senior year, I thought I would give it another try.
I am going to go natural, I told myself.
The first three months after my last relaxer in November were easy. I had gone longer without a perm before. The real test began in March, when my “waves” grew into full-fledged naps. April came, and my mother and friends at church who, like me, knew no lives without perms or presses, asked, “Lisa, what are you planning to do with your hair again?”
I was confident in my decision to go natural but at times felt like Thoreau’s “majority of one.” Weeks went by. I pressed on but not without doubt: Was I crazy? Was this reasonable? Would this allow me to continue to live and work in mainstream America?
I felt like the world wanted me to just pick up a relaxer and be done with it. But I had to fight; I had to do it. I had to try. By May, I decided to grow my hair gradually and get braided extensions, so no one except me could witness the war being waged between my fragile, permed hair and the stronger natural roots that rose like defiant Zulu warriors month by month.
The situation was metaphoric. As the mercury rose, my roots encroached upon the territory the relaxed hair had held unchallenged for years—my heart. July came, and it was time to take out the micro braids. Once they were completely out, I vacillated between going back to a perm and continuing my quest.
I started to shield my roots from the public view with a scarf. Then on a Friday in August I looked in the mirror, grabbed scissors from a drawer and snipped a little from the back. Just enough so I can change my mind and get away with it, I told myself.
I snipped some more. I can hide this section with a scarf if I change my mind.
When I was done, I knew it would be an adjustment. I could no longer toss my head to and fro and have my hair swish and sway.
But I could finally really look myself in the mirror, and smile, exclaiming “Beautiful.” And that was all right with me.
Lisa R. Helem
Boondocks. ©1999 Aaron McGruder. Dist. by UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Disappearing Strands
Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.
Maya Angelou
Hair to black people is personal and always something to contend with. My hair was a symbol of my black pride. I forged a bond with myself years ago. I committed to wearing my hair only in its natural state, and gained new appreciation for its uniqueness. Black hair has styling capabilities that few other hair types can accomplish— from cornrows to flat twists, Bantu knots to goddess braids.
We wear these natural styles as a symbol of pride and dignity. More importantly, black hair is a shield of protection, originally given to us by our maker to shade our heads from the searing sun and protect us from the cold of night. Although difficult to deal with most times, black hair is a blessing that was bestowed upon my people, a blessing that is painfully absent to me now.
Nineteen days after my first chemotherapy treatment, my hair began to disappear. The nurse explained that because of the type of chemo medicine I would receive over the next twelve weeks, I would definitely lose my hair. I became consumed with thoughts of the road ahead of me in my battle with breast cancer.
There I was, wearing an African-style head wrap pretending I didn’t feel bald spots forming underneath. I never saw the strands fall; my hair just seemed to dissolve. I could no longer ignore what I felt or the reflection in the bathroom mirror.
My hair was fashioned into two-strand twists. Each
twisted section had begun to rise as if my hair was swelling from the roots. Portions of the side and back of my hair had developed baby-smooth bald areas. As my fingers groped through the peaks and valleys, they rested on a twist separating from my scalp.
My husband, Charles, inspected my hair. There was no denying it. I was going bald!
Charles looked at me sympathetically and asked, “Do you want me to cut it?”
“Yes,” I replied with a heavy sigh as I sank onto the commode lid.
Charles began cutting my neck-length twists and carefully placing them in a plastic zipper bag. He said I would want to keep them for sentimental value. At that moment, I did not give a damn about those twists of hair. My husband kept softly conveying words of support and encouragement. He assured me that I would be even more beautiful to him without the hair.
He stopped cutting long enough to ask if I was okay. Tears the size of nickels swelled up in my eyes and spilled out over my cheeks. I collapsed against Charles’s legs, grabbing him around the waist. He held me close, lifting me up with comforting words that salved my panic and grief inside. We moved to the kitchen where I could sit in a chair, and Charles could finish the haircut using clippers. I sat there in silent shock, paralyzed by the trauma.
After cleaning up, I was emotionally exhausted. I crawled into bed next to Charles, enjoying the warmth of his body next to mine. He kissed the top of my head and forehead several times before falling off to sleep. I lay there waiting for sleep to come. But an uncomfortable coldness invaded my body. The frigid sensation started in my feet and slowly crept up my shins. It felt like death had started its ascent. Anxiety and panic raged in my chest.