Liberation After

Meeting Bobby Seale:

Howard University is the quintessential oxymoron in Black reality. You love it, then you hate it. Sometimes you love to hate it, and other times you hate to love it. My only recompense for my fellow Meccans is the “here after theory.” I’m here after what you’re here after, so we’re here after the same thing. But if you’re not here after what I’m here after, then you’ll be here after I leave.

So the question is; what exactly are we supposed to be here after?

LIBERATION!

Liberation of the Black minds, our African souls and our American bodies.

For those of us whom have had the pleasure of Dr. Harris’ class on Black ideology you know we are firmly in place in that river to freedom, though the ride gets bumpy, we must persevere because there are moments of pure nirvana.

Friday evening, found me and a few of our classmates on the second floor of the HUB (Howard University Bookstore for those of you who prefer to save money on Amazon), in the midst of another love it/hate it Howard moment. Unadvertised and unsuspecting to any who did not happen to stumbling through the foyer of the HUB or see Dr. Carr’s Tweet, the great Bobby Seale was signing his new book and speaking. For those of you who do not know who Bobby Seale is please report to Mrs. Drake’s office to turn in your “Black card” or go to www.bobbyseale.com.

He arrived fifteen minutes early and took exactly one question from the audience which took him approximately seventy-five minutes to answer. It was worth every minute. He even offered us a poem he once recited, for which he was physically attacked and arrested.

An evening up close with the essence of Blackness over, my beloved cage on the second floor stacks in Founders Library closed, I beat a retreat to my basement room in Parkview to meditate on what it is we are here after as we paddle our Black community down the river to liberation.

______

Uncle Sammy Call Me Fulla Lucifer by Ronald Stone.

Uncle Sammy don’t shuck and jive me,

I’m hip the popcorn jazz changes you blow,

You know damn well what I mean,

You school my naive heart to sing

red-white-and-blue-stars-and-stripes songs and to pledge eternal allegiance to all things blue, true, blue-eyed blond, blond-haired, white chalk white skin with U.S.A. tattooed all over,

When my soul trusted Uncle Sammy,

Loved Uncle Sammy,

I died in dreams for you Uncle Sammy,

Died in dreams playing war for you Uncle Sammy,

No, I don’t want to hear that crap,

You jam your emasculate manhood symbol, puff with Gonorrhea,

Gonorrhea of corrupt un-realty myths into my ungreased, nigger ghetto, black-ass, my Jewish-Cappy-Hindu-Islamic-Sioux-sure, free public health penicillin cured me,

But Uncle Sammy if you want to stay a freak-show strongman god,

Fuck your motherfucking self,

I will not serve.