ktravula – a travelogue!

East St. Louis (Illinois) Sesquicentennial: Ten Talking Points

by Eugene B. Redmond, February 23, 2011 . . . Re: 150^th Birthday Celebration, April 1.

1. we arrive, we arrive

we cross-fertilize

we derive, we survive

2. For a thousand years, Native Peoples (“mounds” builders) inhabit both sides of the Mississippi River. In “Illinois,” these “Mississippians” build the largest city in “America” (circa 1250 AD)—with a population exceeding that of London at the time. (Fast Forward: “Native” culture survives/pervades Metro East today via mounds, namesakes (sports teams, rivers, streets) museums (lectures/tours), conferences and annual pow wows.)

3. 1600-1800: After French Jesuits settle in “Cahokia” (late 1600’s), other Europeans follow, including Captain James Piggott, who operates the first Mississippi River ferry business (1790’s). A few hundred Africans are among settlers. (Fast Forward: During the 20^th Century, ESL’s “Piggott” Avenue nurtures Scotia Calhoun Thomas (entrepreneur), James Rosser (college president) and Jackie Joyner-Kersee, among others.)

4. 1800-1860: Flood of Immigrants. Belleville incorporates as a city (1850). ESL, evolving through name changes, social and economic processes, is overwhelmed by flooding and a tornado at mid- and late-century. City becomes industrial/commercial center. Fledgling “Negro” self-help groups, one-room schools, churches and settlements (like Brooklyn and Quinn AME Church ) are created. (Fast Forward: Brooklyn is renown for its Harlem Club where Duke Ellington, Shirley Brown and Albert “Blues Boy” King perform.)

5. 1861: From “Illinois City” to “Illinois Town” to “East St. Louis” . . . the “Village” is born on April 1.

(Fast Forward: ESL, criss-crossed by railroads, is second after Chicago in RR and meat packing industries.)

6. 1861-1900: Civil War begins. U.S. transitions from agriculture to industry, driving a commercial-industrial revolution in ESL. 1871: Creation of National Stock Yards. Eads Bridge opens (1874). First mayor, John Bowman (1865), is assassinated in 1885. Centennial of St. Clair County is celebrated (1890). Captain John Robinson leads battle for schools (for “coloreds” plus Lincoln and Garfield); “Negro” lodges, churches (Macedonia, Mt. Olive, St. John A.M.E.) and professionals increase. ESL’s population rises to nearly 30, 000 (with several hundred African Americans). (Fast Forward: During 19^thand 20^th Centuries, ESL is “transfer” point for goods and soldiers. John Robinson Elementary School and Homes open on Bond Avenue. As a “ premiere avenue for Blacks during the 1920’s,” according to Jeanne Allen Faulkner, Bond is also home to mid-20^th Century Lincoln High School and the Cosmo Club where Chuck Berry’s career is launched.)

7. 1900-1925: More flooding. Meat packing industry moves to town of National City on ESL’s northwest end and, like Monsanto (Sauget) on the southwest flank, incorporates as a separate entity, depriving ESL of a rich tax base. In 1917, a gumbo of social, political, economic and racial factors causes the Race Riot. (St. Louis [MO] Chapter of Urban League is formed the year after the Riot.) Of U.S. cities with populations of 50,000-plus, ESL is the second poorest. Even so, it is among fastest growing cities in the country: Its population doubles every 10 years (reaching 75, 000 in 1930). 1924: ESL NAACP chapter is organized.

8. 1926: Miles Dewey Davis III is born in Alton (IL). The Davises move to East St. Louis in 1927.

9. 1926: In sympathy/empathy re: victims of the Riot of 1917, Duke Ellington co-writes/records “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo.” … The song later appears on a Steely Dan album, Pretzel Logic. [Throughout 20^th and 21^st Centuries, movies, TV shows, books, ballets/stage plays (like Katherine Dunham’s Ode to Taylor Jones III and Frank Nave’s East Boogie Rap) and publications, such as Drumvoices Revue, focus on ESL.]

10. 1926-present: After struggles for jobs and freedom, equal housing and education (Black-based and citywide schools); after “Miles/tones” and “Negro firsts” like the Paramount Democratic Organization and Dr. Aubrey Smith’s election to the Illinois House of Representatives (1930’s); after creation of “Negro” newspapers, being named an All American City (1940’s-1960’s) and more floods, the rest is history . . .

_________

Eugene B. Redmond is the poet laureate of East St. Louis founder of the EBR Writer’s Club and a retired professor of English from SIUE.

Re: “Drumvoices Revue” #17

TO: All Media, Poets & Writers, Readers/Students/Lovers of Poetry, Aspiring Poets, Literati
FROM: “Drumvoices Revue”/SIUE English Dept./EBR Writers Club: 618 650-3991; Email: eredmon@siue.edu; Fax: 618 650-3509

Call: “Kwansabas” for Special 20th Anniversary Issue of Journal

Kwansaba example #1: To Godson Sekou: a Kwansabas for Your 18th Birthday

I entrust to you our past, never
fully passed, dressed in royalty & poverty,
a symfony of koras & Zoras, war-
prepped prayers & def jams of bondage,
Nia-driven duties, a pyramid named Asa,
a motif known as Malcolm &, finally,
Sekou, a land of juju called Medu.
—
EBR/2010, from MS

“Drumvoices Revue: A Confluence of Literary, Cultural & Vision Arts” is issuing a “call” for the “kwansaba,” a 49-word poetic form created in East St. Louis, Illinois during the Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club’s 1995 season. The kwansaba
is a layer of sevens: seven lines, seven words per line, and seven letters (or fewer) per word. (Exceptions to the seven-letter rule are proper nouns and foreign terms.) If used as stanzas in a poem, each kwansaba should also have a
stand-alone life. Accepted kwansabas will appear in Drumvices Revue’s 20th Anniversary issue #17 (Fall 2011). Hundreds of examples/discussions of the form can be accessed via online search engines and previous issues of DR which have featured kwansabas devoted to Katherine Dunham, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Maya Angelou, Miles Davis, Jayne Cortez, Quincy Troupe and others.

Kwansaba example #2: Song of Sister Maya

From God’s amazing peace rises a choir
of caged birds, the leader’s private song
flung up to heaven like a paean
on the pulse of morning. Hallelujah, the
heart of this woman, taking nothing for
her journey, says if you’re singin’, wingin’
and swingin’, sit at the welcome table.

–Marie A. Celestin (Young), from “Drumvoices” #15, 2007

Themes/focuses: 1. “2011” as it arches East St. Louis’ Sesquicentennial (150th year) re: the city’s historical impact on the bi-state area (Illinois/Missouri), Midwest, nation and globe (e.g., the 1917 race riots). 2. The 25th birthday of the EBR Writers Club, which has co-published “Drumvoices” with Southern Illinois University Edwardsville since 1991 (Club namesake has been poet laureate of ESL for 35 years). 3. “1926,” year of ESL Native Son Miles Davis’ birth (he’s 85!) and the co-writing/recording of “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” by Duke Ellington, one of MD’s idols. 4. Other East St. Louisans who created their way out of “no way,” including Harry Edwards, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, LaFonso Ellis, Dawn Harper, William Holden, Leon Thomas, Darryl Phinnessee, Donald McHenry, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Katherine Dunham, Sherman Fowler, Barbara Ann Teer, James Rosser, the Hudlin Brothers, Ike & Tina Turner. (See attached “TALKIING POINTS” re: East St. Louis Sesquicentennial.) 5. The Sesquicentennial of the beginning of the Civil War. 6. The Centennial of Romare Bearden. 7. The 80th birth year of Toni Morrison. 8. The 45th birthday of Kwanzaa. 9. Writers Club patron saint Henry Lee Dumas (1934-1968) whose fiction and poetry Morrison helped champion into posthumous print—and whom she and critic Clyde Taylor referred to a “genius.” 10. Any of the Club Trustees
(listed below) or combination of themes/focuses noted above.

Kwansaba example #3: Kwansaba for Quincy

Come from a place of truth widdit
Smoke it lika fast ball neath dachin
Bringit bringit high & hard, wit command,
Cause it all depends u being on
Yr game, strut yo stuff, but be
Down widdit, baby, bringit high, low, calm
Come from a place of truth widdit
–Michael Castro, “Drumvoices” #15, 2007

Send kwansabas via Email—MS Word (.doc file type)–to eredmon@siue.edu–by JULY 1. Hard copies may also be sent to Editor: “Drumvoices Revue,” English Dept./Box 1431, SIUE, Edwardsville, Illinois 62026; or to EBR Writers Club, P.O. Box 6165, East St. Louis, Illinois 62202. Telephone: (618) 650-3991. (Include a two-sentence bio and a physical mailing address.) Trustees of the Club, which meets September-May, include Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Avery Brooks, Haki R. Madhubuti, Walter Mosley, Quincy Troupe, Jerry Ward Jr., and Lena J. Weathers. The late Margaret Walker Alexander (1915-1998), Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), Raymond Patterson (1929-2001) and Barbara Ann Teer (1937- 2008) were also trustees. Founded in 1986, the group was chartered by Fowler,Roy and EBR.

Kwansaba example #4: Calling your name

for richard wright

rich in the sadness of our times
harsh again the dark storms we weather
our boys, our men hemmed by hate—
your black rites call across these years.
your hand sure in calling forth truth
writes black boys into men of honor
makes us richer, guides us toward light
–devorah major, “Drumvoices” #16, 2008

Kwansaba example #5: For Katherine Dunham

(Inspired by “A Touch of Innocence” and “Island Possessed”)

Come here lost child of Nan Guinee
Come away, spin free of the dust
Away from Bluff Street, and the wheel
Move arms, move legs, coax bad knees
Dance in wedded union with the earth
Carry Thunder, carry Shango, carry me—Home
To Haiti on breath freer than air.
–Mali Newman, “Drumvoices” #12, 2004

Caught: Osama: Dead!

The first thoughts in my mind is that the family of victims of 9/11 may finally get some deserved closure. And then the thought of what may have happened if evil didn’t exist, if there was no need to blow up the US embassies in Nairobi, or the WTC in 1993, or the twin towers in 2001. I still remember where I was then – in the dormitories of the University campus in Ibadan – as friends scurried to bring me to the television. It was evening in Ibadan and CNN was breaking the news, along with footage, of planes hitting the world trade centre.

What would have happened if a rich Saudi son had used his strength, industry, leadership and organizational style to a more productive use, say, trade. Or entertainment. Or even just a normal spiritual or educational leadership. How different would the world have been? There is nothing extraordinary about living in caves. Men have done it for centuries. The idea intrigues, even. A set of men with deeply held beliefs living out of the box of their privileged upbringing in search of spiritual, or mainly normadic, experience. I know I would have loved to go on one of such expedition.

How did violence against innocent people on a large scale even become such a worthwhile venture? And how did the man supposedly smart enough to have evaded capture all this while not have been smart enough to see the big picture: that the world is bigger than the little thoughts in the mind of a handful of hateful nomads riding in the desert. As slowly as the wheel of justice grinds, it always catches up in the end, somehow. His death is not a victory for America as it is a victory for humanity, and justice for all. It is perhaps also a call to introspection, although the cynic in me still nags on the futility of such news as this – as significant as it is – to eradicate evil on the surface of the earth. I’m glad he got what he had coming to him, Osama. Can’t we all now just get along?

Time after Time

The motions are the same: a year rolls by with such thrills and frills that when one looks back at it, it looks so short, and one is left wondering just where all the days went. A school year begins in August and ends in May, or July depending on what one has to do.

For the two visiting scholars to this institution, their program is now over and they will return to their country in less than a week. I know this process. A roller-coaster year of both honeymoon and depressing loneliness comes to a certain end and the travellers are filled with the mixed feeling of longing for a long-left home, and missing a bond of affection with the present location. They will be gone and new people would come, and the process will continue, new bonds, and new departures a year from now.

I don’t envy them because my own time here will soon wind down to an end, sometime, again. I think it will become inevitable after some time – if I ever return here – to get inured to the process of bonding, socialization and departures. It might be time to set my sights to another faraway place, maybe Europe, or South America, or Asia, for a different breath of fresh air, languages and surprises. Then with new eyes to look at the world and events, there might be a different kind of thrill and adjustment processes. Just a thought. In any case, this semester will be over in a few days, and I’ll be left with the new dilemma of filling my time with a less exacting routine. Or not. We’ll see how it goes.

(Picture taken at the foot of the Monk Mounds the tallest of the man-made mounds at the old Mississippian heritage site at Cahokia Mounds in Illinois, yesterday.)

Nativizing English

Kachru’s concentric circle includes my country Nigeria as part of the outer circle where English is spoken only because of historical contingency. This is true. Along with India, Philipines and a host of other nations of the world, English is spoken in Nigeria as a result of colonization. This took place in the 1800s and ended in the 1960s. The inner circle countries where English is spoken as a first and only language is the UK, the US, Austrailia, Ireland, New Zealand, etc. People who live in those countries are called native speakers of English perhaps because that is the only language they speak.

The idea of a “native” language however presents an interesting question to my curious mind. Is a language native to those who speak it only because it is the only language they speak or because they speak it with such total and infallible competence? Going by the name, a language is native to those who speak it as their own perhaps only language. I am a native speaker of Yoruba. It is not my only language, but I speak it since birth and have a native-like competence over it. I can teach it. I know the rules of speaking a behaving in the language without any more prompting. I have acquired the language without knowing it. Yes.

The same, however, applies to English for me. I have acquired it from birth, subconsciously and simultaneously with Yoruba so much so that I can’t tell apart which one of them I speak more frequently. I think/dream in either. I have Caucasian friends who have learnt the Yoruba language almost to the point of native-like proficiency. If they were born in Nigeria, they probably would speak it just like me. They would be native speakers – like thousands of people in the carribbeans whose only language is English (and a creole). So two weeks ago, I asked on Facebook if I would be considered a native speaker of English – for the purpose of applying for a job in the US, and the majority of the responses was “no”. The consideration was that since I speak another language from birth, I cannot be considered a native speaker. Besides, Kachru has put me in the outer rather than the inner circle.

I believe that native speaker language stipulation falls flat when defined only by place or circumstance of birth rather than levels of proficiency. As output in English literature from Africa and other post-colonial societies have shown, what makes a good speaker of a language is not really where s/he is born as how much s/he has applied himself/herself to mastering it. Wole Soyinka (Africa’s first Nobel Literature Prize Winner, and Nigerian) is as much a native speaker of English as Karin Barber (Yoruba scholar in Birmingham) is a native-speaker of Yoruba going by proficiency and the corpus of their literary output in the language. I doubt that anyone would doubt as well that Salman Rushdie or VS Naipaul are native speakers of English either because of their Indian ancestry.

I suspect however that this misunderstanding of what is a native speaker comes mostly from American purism – a kind of desire to protect one’s position by claiming total control of all its parts. By this policy, I suspect that citizens of Liberia or South Africa would be given a pass as a native speaker in a job requiring that, ahead of citizens of Nigeria or Ghana. The last time I checked the TOEFL exam requirements, students from Liberia and South Africa were exempt from taking it. Go figure. If an American couple living in Nigeria gives birth to a child and raises him there for ten years, s/he would become a proficient native speaker of at least one Nigerian language and could, if s/he pursues it, be able to teach it too. The same should apply to a Chinese couple living in the United States. Their child would become proficient enough in English to be able to do anything with it.

I hope that the definition of what makes a native speaker of a language is revised to exclude stipulations of ethnic belonging to the target language. I suspect however that it already has, just that some people haven’t caught up with the news yet. 🙂

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