Letter from Troy Davis (who was executed tonight. RIP)

I want to thank all of you for your efforts and dedication to Human Rights and Human Kindness, in the past year I have experienced such emotion, joy, sadness and never ending faith. It is because of all of you that I am alive today, as I look at my sister Martina I am marveled by the love she has for me and of course I worry about her and her health, but as she tells me she is the eldest and she will not back down from this fight to save my life and prove to the world that I am innocent of this terrible crime.

As I look at my mail from across the globe, from places I have never ever dreamed I would know about and people speaking languages and expressing cultures and religions I could only hope to one day see first hand. I am humbled by the emotion that fills my heart with overwhelming, overflowing Joy. I can’t even explain the insurgence of emotion I feel when I try to express the strength I draw from you all, it compounds my faith and it shows me yet again that this is not a case about the death penalty, this is not a case about Troy Davis, this is a case about Justice and the Human Spirit to see Justice prevail.

I cannot answer all of your letters but I do read them all, I cannot see you all but I can imagine your faces, I cannot hear you speak but your letters take me to the far reaches of the world, I cannot touch you physically but I feel your warmth everyday I exist.

So Thank you and remember I am in a place where execution can only destroy your physical form but because of my faith in God, my family and all of you I have been spiritually free for some time and no matter what happens in the days, weeks to come, this Movement to end the death penalty, to seek true justice, to expose a system that fails to protect the innocent must be accelerated. There are so many more Troy Davis’. This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country.

I can’t wait to Stand with you, no matter if that is in physical or spiritual form, I will one day be announcing,

“I AM TROY DAVIS, and I AM FREE!”

Never Stop Fighting for Justice and We will Win!

Toni Morrison's "Beloved"

First of all I have to say to myself: WELCOME BACK! Sorry for this looooooooooong absence.

Well, I finally finished reading Toni Morrison's "Beloved" and, as it is my custom, here I'm gonna leave some of the best quotations of the book (believe me, there were many many more). I promise not to spoil anything as I expect you to read it someday. It's a fantastic book and a must if you like black arts (as I guess you do cause you're following this blog). Feel free to tell me which quote you liked the most:

For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing […] was to love just a little bit; everything, just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you’d have a little love left over for the next one. (Such a sad thought)

Then, with the sun straight up over their heads, they trotted off, leaving the sheriff behind among the damnedest bunch of coons they’d ever seen. All testimony to the results of a little so-called freedom imposed on people who needed every care and guidance in the world to keep them from the cannibal life they preferred. (Hi, sarcasm, nice to meet you)

Some new whitefolks with the Look just rode in. The righteous Look every Negro learned to recognize along with his ma’am’s tit. Like a flag hoisted, this righteousness telegraphed and announced the faggot, the whip, the fist, the lie, long before it went public. (Scary)

Eighteen seventy-four and whitefolks were still on the loose. Whole towns wiped clean of Negroes; eighty-seven lynchings in one year alone in Kentucky; four colored schools burned to the ground; grown men whipped like children; children whipped like adults; black women raped by the crew; property taken, necks broken. He smelled skin, skin and hot blood. The skin was one thing, but human blood cooked in a lynch fire was a whole other thing. (Summary of Negro history in a few lines. Perfectly expressed)

Whatever is going on outside my door ain’t for me. The world is in this room. This here’s all there is and all there needs to be. (Something I also feel from time to time)

Work well; work poorly. Work a little; work not at all. Make sense; make none. Sleep, wake up; like somebody, dislike others. It didn’t seem much of a way to live and it brought him no satisfaction.

If I hadn’t killed her she would have died and that is something I could not bear to happen to her. (This feeling is more developed in the book, but I found this sentence so fascinating and frightening at the same time)

When she wasn’t smiling she smiled, and I never saw her own smile. (Just love this use of words)

Ghosts without skin stuck their fingers in her and said beloved in the dark and bitch in the light. (One of the best quotes in the book)

He can’t put his finger on it, but it seems, for a moment, that just beyond his knowing is the glare of an outside thing that embraces while it accuses.

“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all in the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.” (What love is)

“Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.” (Best final sentence ever)

Lena Horne

 Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.

Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. Due to the Red Scare and her left-leaning political views, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood.

Returning to her roots as a nightclub performer, Horne took part in the March on Washington in August 1963, and continued to work as a performer, both in nightclubs and on television, while releasing well-received record albums. She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than three hundred performances on Broadway and earned her numerous awards and accolades. She continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000. (From wikipedia)

She died in New York aged 92.

If you click on the video you will find the Oscar's video in memoriam of those who died this last year. At the very end you can see a moving speech by Halle Berry praising the figure of Horne, the first African-American actress in the industry.

Watch the video