One Must Learn How To Be Black

My Earliest Childhood Memory Is Of My Father Going Crazy When The Giants Won The World Series In 1954. He Started Whoopin' And Hollerin' And Jumpin' Up And Down All Around The Living Room. I Started Crying Because He Scared Me To Death.

The First Slave Came To Florida In 1526. The First One We Know By Name, Esteban, Which Means Stephen, Came A Couple Of Years Later. So, We Start With The Stories Of Juan Garrido And Esteban To Show That African-american People Have Been Here A Century Longer Than Anyone Thought, And That The Diversity We See In The African-american Community Today Has Existed Since The Beginning.

Ever Since I Watched 'roots,' I've Dreamed Of Tracing My African Ancestry And Helping Other People Do The Same.

It's Important To Debunk The Myths Of Africa Being This Benighted Continent Civilized Only When White People Arrived. In Fact, Africans Had Been Creators Of Culture For Thousands Of Years Before. These Were Very Intelligent, Subtle And Sophisticated People, With Organized Societies And Great Art.

I Want To Be Black, To Know Black, To Luxuriate In Whatever I Might Be Calling Blackness At Any Particular Time, But To Do So In Order To Come Out On The Other Side, To Experience A Humanity That Is Neither Colorless Nor Reducible To Color.