We, or rather speaking for myself, I get so caught up in the business of living everyday, trying to keep head above water, that I forget to stop and count my blessings. This Thanksgiving week is as good as time as ever to say how thankful I am.
I am thankful for waking up everyday
I am thankful for my health and know I should do better
I am thankful for my 83 year-old mother
I am thankful for my beautiful daughter
I am thankful for my siblings and extended family
I am thankful to have a job
I am thankful to be in my right mind.
I am blessed in so many ways, I am thankful for so many things
I happened to be reading a novel called Breathing Room and coincidentally I had cleaned out my closet and came upon some pink ballet slippers. In an attempt to get exercise and perhaps recapture my childhood, I had taken some ballet lessons at Grand Dance, a local ballet studio a few years prior. It brought back memories of my taking ballet lessons at a black-owned ballet studio in the ‘60s.The book is told from three points of views and one of characters is Zadi, a fifteen-year old middle-class black girl living in Washington D.C.Her story is told in writings in her journal given as a Kwanzaa gift by one of the other characters.In this journal, Zadi is writing to “Sisterfriend” and she talks about many things, boys, clothes, her father’s new wife and a major part of her life, ballet.She is an advanced ballet student who stresses over her fouette¢s, pirouettes and the wrath of Ms. Snow, the dance teacher.She is also anticipating a role as Odille-Odette in Giselle and dancing for Alvin Ailey or Dance Theatre of Harlem.Zadi takes lessons from a black-owned studio where the students are also black.
This so reminded me so of my experience over thirty years ago when I took ballet and tap dance lessons at Barbara Braxton’s dance studio in West Oakland at 24th and Market.In a ramshackle building on the corner, I trudged up the gray stairs and past graffiti-strewn walls for my ballet and tap lessons either Saturday morning or Wednesday afternoons.I took lessons off and on from about 1959 when I was about eight years old until about my sophomore year in high school about 1966, as I recall.
There in Barbara’s studio, I learned to loved dance, especially the ballet.Barbara said I had the perfect feet for ballet; I had a natural pointed toe and beautifully shaped calves.Over the years I still hear remarks about my nicely formed calves from my years of dancing.Though I didn’t pursue dance as a career (I had a dance major in my first year of college) the truth was I held back.I was shy, somewhat withdrawn, not wanting to shine and be in the limelight.Barbara would get exasperated with me because when we had individual projects, I would make something up short and sweet.She would always say I had the potential but my dance projects were too short.
The students at Barbara’s studio were the popular girls, the daughters of the black bourgeois.Children of doctors, dentists, lawyers and successful businessmen. Some belonged to Jack and Jill and their mothers were member of the Links.I knew many of them through my father’s club, East Oakland Business and Professional Men’s Group.There was Janet and her older sister, Cynthia (who later married Gene Washington, 49ers football player), daughters of Dr. Watson who had a large medical practice and cute brothers.Mickey’s (the only boy I can remember that took ballet) parents was the first black family to buy a home in Orinda in the ‘50s. His father was a physician also His father was also a medical physician.Judge Broussard’s daughters also took lessons there.Cheryl Taylor was older, but she was the daughter of a renowned officer in the military.She also ended up marrying my high school crush, John Ivey( which is a whole other story).I also remember Joslin, who lived not that far from me who was a very good dancer.I don’t remember what her parents did.Barbara’s studio is where the middle-class and upper class black girls went for their dance lessons.It was like a special club.When I would see these girls at different events or outings it was like a special fraternity.
Some of these girls could really dance, some of them were very awkward and I could dance circles around them but still I didn’t showcase my talent or skills like I could have and as a result I never advanced to toe shoes.Anyway, I remember those days of putting on my ballet slippers, I had a pair or black ones and pink ones and when I put them on, I let my young cares drift away.Barbara was a woman in her 30s and she had two children during my tenure with her.She was a formidable, attractive brown-skinned woman with her hair either hanging to her shoulders or pulled back in that ballet style bun.She also taught tap dance.I remember once my sister having on her tap shoes and my brother picking at her and she kicked him with her tap shoes.Barbara ended up moving to San Jose and closing her studio here in Oakland.That left a gap in ballet for black girls, although there was Ruth Beckford Smith who taught modern dance in the ‘60s with the Oakland Park and Recreation but there was none of African descent who taught ballet for many years probably not until the late ‘70s.
Reading Zadi’s letters to Sisterfriend in her journal, I am also reminded of a book by Rita Williams Garcia called Blue Tights.In that book an inner-city girl is rejected at a white ballet studio and told her body is not made for the ballet and finally finds acceptance at a black studio learning African dance.Zadi talks about the joy she feels at Ms. Snow’s studio and I am reminded of her same security and protection dancing with someone who will nurture and encourage her.
Present day 2009:
A few weeks ago, I attended a choreographer performance for the Oakland Ballet. Several Bay Area ballet dances performed prominent choreographers’ ballet and while there was no black ballerina but a black male dancer, one of the choreographers honored was Alonzo King, whose body of work is without question, one of the finest. Even today there are stereotypes about black bodies and dance techniques.But I am so thankful that an avenue was provided for black girls like me in my early years that may have been discouraged from dance and judged by European standards.I am also thankful I have a mother who appreciated art and culture and exposed us, my sister and me to dance. It has been well over forty-five years since I took my first ballet lesson but my memories linger of the fondness I had for the art and the opportunity to be introduced to dance in a positive manner, an art form I still love.
Halloween back in the day in Oakland was sooo cool. Trick-or-treating in the 50s and 60s in the neighborhoods in which I grew up, 24th Avenue and later, Brookdale Avenue was safe, fun and a community event. I can remember going trick-or-treating with my mom when my sister and brother were younger but the real fun was when a group of us kids from age nine and up would go off all over the city (not really but it seemed like it) and getting loads of candy. We would be gone for hours and we did not worry about someone putting something in the candy or razor blades or any of that stuff. We just had fun.
The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock was regular fare so we were really geared up on the scary movies. The Adams Family and the Munsters television series got us ready for the haunted houses. I remember this old lady’s house over on East 26th Street that was spooky and we called it a haunted house and being scared to walk past but we marched bravely up to it on Halloween night, still scared, but not to miss out on any goodies. The lady just gave us regular candy.
I remember being a fairy, a ghost, Snow White (ha ha). We got huge amounts of candy. My mother would go through it and throw out loose unwrapped candy and then we would put our horde in big glass jars and we were supposed to be meted out a few pieces but my brother and I always ended up eating as much as we could. I remember getting a tummy ache one year. But that was then and this is now. Parents now have to worry about every little thing and have to think on every angle. Most people go to people’s houses they know, some do not trick-or-treat at all. I see lots of churches have parties; some call them Harvest day. They have games, costume contests and plenty of goodies. But I still remember Halloween back in the day when we were carefree and innocent.
Well, this is the second time I forgot Memory Monday blog. There has to be a way to remind myself, a tickler or something. I mean, I thought about it that morning but then poof, I completely forgot.
Memory, forgetting, it's all in rememberances.
Well, I'll be back later in the week with a new blog.
I was too young to remember the Little Rock Nine, the nine black students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. I was born there and at two years-old moved with my parents to Oakland, California. We were frequent visitors to Arkansas, but it was not until I was much older did I read about and realize the sacrifices those young people and their families made.
I read several of the Little Rock Nine memoirs, and I am currently reading Carlotta Walls Lanier’s account, A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School. The youngest of the nine at 14, Walls Lanier would not speak of the ordeal; so traumatized was she, for thirty years. She left Little Rock in 1960, as did her immediate family after the bombing of her home. Lanier Walls was a bright, ambitious, intelligent young lady, who just wanted to best education possible to secure the future she felt she deserved, yet there were thousands of people who tried to take that basic right away from her. And Why? Because they were threatened by the color of her skin and threatened that their way of life would be changed. Arkansas’ Governor Faubus was determined to keep the six girls and three boys from entering Central High by calling out the National Guard. Angry white parents taunted, threw things, berated these youngsters, their faces full of hate. But Daisy Bates, a journalist and activist who was born in my mother’s hometown of Huttig, was unafraid of standing up to the white establishment that dared violate these young people’s rights to an educated as mandated by the 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education ruling.
This past summer I visited Little Rock, along with my mother, sister and niece as part of our family reunion in the southern part of Arkansas. It is a much different city then it was in 1957.You would never have known this was formerly a Jim Crow city. We spent a lot of the time visiting and reliving the history of that city. We visited my parents’ alma mater, Philander Smith College, the Mosaic Templar Museum on 9th Street, other museums. We also visited Central High and the majestic school’s architecture is amazing. Lanier Walls gives the history of how this school came to be built and why she so wanted to attend. Earlier this year, monuments were erected to the Little Rock nine on the Capitol grounds and we of course, visited that. We took lots of pictures at both places.
Last year in 2008, Soledad O’Brien of CNN featured Central High in her Black inAmerica series. Little Rock schools are totally integrated, I dare say, more integrated than the schools in Oakland. So it pained me that now that black students can freely attend Central High--- which is still considered prestigious, that the students self-segregate themselves and that black students are routinely herded into low-achieving classes. I know this is not endemic to Little Rock particularly but a symptom of the inequality of the educational and economic structures of this country. However, I am proud of the great many prominent African Americans that graduated from Central High and those faces I saw in the glass cases honoring high-achieving students. All in all, I have to say I am pretty much proud of my birth home.
While my day job is in education working with students, faculty and administrators and help developing curriculum, I consider my real life as writer. In that capacity, I write fiction, nonfiction, memoir,and essays. I have been published in a number of anthologies and a journal. I have also published academically, writing profiles and history for encyclopedia journals. I am also a book reviewer, editor and involved in all things literary.
