Our Time PressThe Local Paper with the Global View

Relationship Plight
In almost 20 years of seeing all types of theater, I must say that “Waitin’ 2 End Hell” is one of the best plays I’ve seen depicting the hardship that the Black man goes through when in relationships with the Black woman. As a Black woman I left the play very enlightened about the way that Black men feel about their role in the family and the emotional and physical anguish they go through when they are in a bad relationship. William A Parker, the playwright, is a Black man and he is up front about his and the feelings of other Black men in relationships with Black women, from the opening scene of the play. Parker is well-versed in the telling of the Black experience. Waitin’ 2 End Hell is one of four full-length and nine short plays he has written during his almost 20 years in Black theatre.
Waitin 2 End Hell is having its New York debut at the 47th Street Playhouse at 47th Street and 8th Avenue and has been extended four times. It is not surprising that this production has been extended. It is filled with truths about the relationships that Black men and women share and it is not bashing men. It is explaining their side of many issues that are often looked at mainly from the woman’s point of view.
The Black male characters in the play, Dante, Alvin, Larry and Mark represent the varying ways that a Black man can be. Dante is the loving, generous, faithful husband. Alvin is the Black  man who has tried to be married to a Black woman. He has worked, assisted around the house, but got the cold shoulder in the bedroom. He got so desperate he had to seek  another companion.  Now he is sworn off of Black women and has married an Asian woman. He says Asian women know that their man is the head of the house and he is never told no when he asks for sex. In fact, his wife is constantly kissing and touching him.
Larry is very funny, he has just started seeing a Black woman named Shay. They are both not looking for a commitment. He feels he can’t trust  women because his  high school sweetheart trapped him by getting pregnant in their senior year. Mark represents the type of Black man Black women need to avoid. He is strictly about sex and nothing else. When faced with commitment, his commitment is to his single status.
 Waitin’ 2 End Hell is a play for couples to see, but especially Black couples. During the performance many men and women in the audience were calling out their reactions to some of the “testifying” about the problems with Black relationships. Once the Black man’s case was made, women in the audience were siding with the Black man against their sisters.
This play is superbly entertaining, amazingly hilarious and very insightful. The characters created by Parker are very clear-cut. Besides the four male characters, the audience sees three female characters-Diane, Dante’s unfaithful wife Shay; a woman who is an old friend of Dante, Diane and Alvin and is dating Larry while she yearns for Dante. Angela, the Asian wife of Alvin appreciates her Black man and will please him anyway he wants.
    Parker has a mesmerizing way of putting a story together. This  production also flows due to the brilliant direction by Woodie   King, Jr., who is also presenting the play through the New  Federal Theatre.
The cast gives noteworthy performances. Marcus Naylor is versatile and vulnerable as Dante. He goes through so many emotions as he tries to save his marriage. Ron Scott is on the mark as Alvin. He is both a supportive friend to Dante and a man that states straight out  what he  needs from a marital relationship. O.L. Duke is fantastic as Larry. He is a man who has been wounded  in the battlefield of love by a Black woman and has survived to share the lessons he has learned with others. Eric McLendon plays his superficial character of Mark very well. On the woman’s side Thyais Walsh is funny, sexy and a woman on a mission in the role of Shay. Trish McCall is perfect as the unappreciative Diane. Elica Funatsu is moving as Angela, a character who seems to be controlled by her husband, but one finds that there is much more there.
Go and experience Waitin’ 2 End Hell for yourself!
By Linda Armstrong

By Bernice Elizabeth Green

Keith Eversley owns Premier Restoration on Van Dam Street, a brisk walk from the African Burial Ground site.  The firm produces high-end furniture and specializes in milling and wood restoration for corporations.    His company created — what he calls — the  burial chambers  which hold the coffins containing the remains of enslaved 17th- and 18th- century Africans who labored and eked out a living in Colonial New York.
The walnut-colored coffins – the most enduring image of last fall’s Rites of Ancestral Return — were produced by Dallytex, a manufacturer on Odoikwkaoi Road in the Ghana city of Accra, who employed artisans from the village of Aburi, famed for its great carving traditions.  Those coffins and Eversley’s 1/4 -ton structures are the most requested  image of last fall’s six-city, five-day  Rites of Ancestral Return  observances,  notes Janine Fondon of the UnityFirst.com news wire and distribution service. 
 “I started in the restoration business in 1979 not knowing where it would lead me”,  said the Guyana native,  a former world-class soccer star who journeyed to the U.S. to find the opportunity that would help him send his children to college.  “But I was focused on doing something with my hands, something that I could pass down to my children and other children. I wanted to learn a skill. I never chose this for myself, it just happened.”
He found an entry-level opening with a piano restoration firm on East 19th St. and became an expert at the arts of sanding, wood stripping, touching up furniture and prepping  for the artisans who stained and sprayed. 
He later joined Premier Technologies, a company specializing in historic restorations (St. Regis Hotel and The Jewish Museum), and was quickly promoted to manager of operations. Soon after, he started his own “premier” enterprise.
  Before settling on Long Island, he lived with his wife of more than 30 years and their three children in the Prospect Heights area of  Brooklyn.

History, Heritage: Always in View
Eversley’s Premier Restoration operates from the mist-green walls of a pristine, organzed office without a view.  Overlooking his desk are distinctive clues to what matters.  
On one wall is a framed poster of photographer Art Kane’s awesome “Great Day in Harlem” portrait of famous jazz musicians taken in 1958, around the year when tender-aged Keith began to take to going down to the Guyana piers to watch the ships come in.  An enlarged detailed map of Lower Manhattan dominates the wall opposite the Kane masterpiece.  Watching Eversley’s back from the credenza are framed pictures of his family.  Nearby is a sheath of African Burial Ground files, stamped Burial Chambers. (The term “crypt” is shrouded in mystery and darkness, he explains.  “It is disrespectful to the ancestors who have helped us see the light.”)
“The first time I stopped at the African Burial Ground on my way to my restoration job at HSBC bank,   I was just a stranger passing by. I never knew I would be involved.”  Ten years later, Judy Kunoff, a building project manager,  informed him about GSA’s search for a person of African descent to build the reinterment burial chambers. “I was immediately drawn to the  project and I was motivated to produce something respectful.”
At times, he traded his corporate suit for work clothes to assist his craftsmen with the planing, shaping, grooving,  hand sanding and finishing.  
  There was no contact between Eversley and Ghana-based Dallytex, the firm that supervised the making  of the coffins.   “I knew the specifications and that they were being made in Africa.”
The chambers were completed in late August 2001.  From January 2002 until a few days prior to the “Rites of Ancestral Return” observances beginning in September 30, they were stored at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Connections: In Nature and In Spirit
 The 7 mahogany chambers eventually will fragment and disintegrate.  Eversley  embraces the rationale for this planned degeneration of his work.  “There are no nails in any part of the chambers; glue and wooden plugs were used for joinery.  That was the whole idea – for everything to go back to a natural state.”  Saturday, October 4, 2003, Eversley  was a face in the crowd, as he stood peering through the  high metal gates on Elk Street for a final glimpse of the 7 burial chambers — and the 419 coffins — as they were lowered into the earth.  “I wanted to be with the people,” he said.  “I never knew I could feel so spiritually connected.  I could feel the connection deep in my bones.”

Rudolph ”Rudy” Bogue, age 70.  A Union Man
What would you say is your greatest accomplishment?

Staying alive.  Is that good enough? (laughing but serious) Because, my mother told me “you ain’t going to live long, you ain’t gonna live past 30.” I said, what do you mean? “Police gonna kill you.” They gonna kill me for what? “The way you walk, the way you talk, they gonna kill you!”  Well, I’m still here.
So how did you walk and how did you talk?
The same way I do now, but without the cane. (deadpan) I took after my father. They called him “The Mayor.” He took no stuff from nobody. He always had two guns on him.
Tell me about your father.
Every summer my sister and I would spend the summer with our grandparents in Emporia, VA. He’d come down and get us at the end of the summer. This particular time he came down to bring us back up on the train. In those days, all the Black people had to fit in one car. They had to stand all scrunched up into a single car until you reached Washington, D.C. where the segregation law stopped. In the car immediately next to us there were just three white people. My father said “Come children, were going to sit up in this car where the white people are.” When the conductor came over he said “My children are not going to be standing in that crowded car all the way to Washington.” The conductor went to speak to the three white people who went to the next car, and all the Black people all scrunched together started to come in where we were sitting. My father could have been lynched.
How did you become involved in the union?
I couldn’t find a job. So, I went down to the New York State Employment Office and was sent to a chandelier manufacturer on Greene Avenue as a helper. I was making $1.11 an hour. It was 1952. After I was there 30 days here comes a guy talking “you gotta pay some dues.” What?? He said “you gotta join the union.”  I said “what’s a union?” I make $1.11 an hour and you want some of my money? I gotta pay YOU — to work? I went along with the program and was mad as hell for 3 years. But it was the best thing I ever did.
What was the turning point for you?
I was a committee man for the union, the one who backs up the shop steward. But one day they fired a Black man on the job unfairly and the shop steward went along with the program. I said, “No, you can’t do that. I was there. I saw what happened. He was set up.”  The issue went up to a business rep named Lou Stein who listened and got into it. The Black guy in the end got his job back and lost no pay. But by now, the whole shop is in an uproar against the shop steward. They had a big meeting and he was replaced. Then the replacement died. The shop said “we want Rudy.” That’s how I became a shop steward. Lou Stein taught me as I watched him. He introduced me to Harry Van Arsdale, who helped to open doors for Blacks at a time when the union was just father and son. We went to many places together I would not have gone to had I not entered the union.

Give me a ‘for instance.’
In 1955, at a convention in Atlantic City, NJ, Van Arsdale came over to me and said “Rudy, A. Philip Randolph is down there at the hotel on the boardwalk. Did you go over and see him?” I said, who?? “You mean, you don’t know?” he said.  I got everybody together and went over. A. Philip Randolph and I talked for over an hour and I still had no idea who he really was. But the man was sharp! Years later, I wrote a college research paper about him. And man, when I saw what that guy did!  And at that time!

Who else did you have a chance to meet?
Lots of people. All these experiences, all the people I’ve met and I started out as a kid that didn’t know what a union was. In 1963, we organized buses for the March on Washington.

What was the March On Washington like?
Being from Brooklyn, I had no idea of all that was going on at that time in the south. There were limited reports in the newspapers up here. But I did know it involved – us.
When the buses rolled in I saw lots of people and the Secret Service carrying sub-machine guns. I saw them cart off American Nazi Party Leader, George Rockwell, and his six thugs in storm trooper uniforms before they incited a riot. And I met Dr. King and Corretta, Abernathy, Hosea Williams and Jackson up on the steps, by Lincoln’s statue. Van Arsdale took me up there. I met King several times after that. Whenever he came to New York to meet with the unions I met with him. He knew the unions played a key role in the Civil Rights Movement.

Are unions still needed today as they were years ago?

A union is needed for the working people. We are the buffer between the haves and the have-nots. We (unions) are in the middle, we’re a stopper. You’ve got good unions and you’ve got bad unions. But a bad union is better than no union. You have no union you ain’t got no protection at all. Now, they (the bosses) have figured out a way to get around it. . .  It’s called outsourcing. It’s a way to rob us.

Why don’t we know about people like Harry Van Arsdale or A. Phillip Randolph?
Because Van Arsdale never liked publicity, he just didn’t like publicity. He was just going to do his thing – quietly. And a. Phillip Randolph was fighting everybody to organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters: George Pullman, the Black preachers, the white press – everybody. But as the saying goes, “eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.”

How would you describe yourself politically?
“Actively involved” And I vote in everything. A couple of elections ago when I was in the wheelchair I had them push me around. So I could vote. Politically active, that is the only way you can be. About voting, there’s gotta be something to it. Otherwise they wouldn’t be trying so hard to keep us from it. If only we would understand that.

What leaders out there on the horizon do you like?
I subscribe to the theory that we have always been put in that position, that we must choose whoever’s going to hurt you the least. One guy’s going to put his foot up your behind up to his knee, and the other guy’s going to put his foot up your behind up to his ankle. The second guy is the guy you vote for!

I’m told it was standing- room- only at the House of the Lord Church on Monday, August 23rd, 2004.  An all-star linedup of activists joined Pastor Herbert Daughtry to show their support to the Barron Campaign for Mayor.  Among those present were Percy Sutton, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Minister Kevin Muhammad, Amiri Baraka, Elombe Brath and Viola Plummer.  Upset for missing what sounded like a historic Black Activist gathering and the highlight of the political season, I rushed to the newsstand to read about it in our daily black newspaper.  I was quite disappointed to see that it received absolutely no mention. While everyone is entitled to their opinion regarding who they support, our community must be astute in analyzing the response of Black media and Black political leadership to the Barron Campaign for Mayor.
Charles Barron’s theme of “White Men Have Too Much Power” has resonated throughout the town.  He is the only Black elected official bold enough to make that statement to expose the racist makeup of New York City and state government.  White men currently serve as governor, mayor, chancellor, speaker of city council, speaker of state senate, speaker of state assembly, police commissioner and fire commissioner.  The Charles Barron  Campaign for Mayor is also a campaign against “white male supremacy” and the conspiracy to destroy Black males.  We must be clear that it is no accident that 50% of Black males in NYC are unemployed and that 70% of our youth drop out of H.S.  The relationship between education and employment are apparent.  What is not so apparent are the racist policies that have suppressed Black male leadership in the  D.O.E. 
The over-100-year history of the  D.O.E. has been dominated by white men.  The only Black men serving as Chancellor were brought in from outside of N.Y.C. They obviously did not know the political landscape of N.Y.C. It is believed by many that the system killed Dr. Richard Greene and Rudy Giuliani.  No NYC Black educator was ever chancellor of the  D. O. E..  I do not consider this an accident.  Neither is it accidental that not one Black male was selected to serve as superintendent of any of the 10 school regions. The system is making a statement that Black males will not be allowed to serve in top-level education positions in this administration.  Again, ” white men have too much power”. This is wrong and unacceptable given the plight of Black males and the history of white male supremacy.  A study should be done on the current state of Black male leadership. This should include the impact of the mass exodus of some of our most prominent educators and their frustration with the D.O. E.
Dr. Lester Young recently announced his retirement from the D.O.E. after 35 years of dedicated service.  He was the top Black in the Klein administration; however, he has far more educational credentials than Joel Klein.  Dr. Young has served as the associate commissioner of the New York State Department of Education, superintendent of School District 13, principal and teacher. Dr. Young was interviewed for the position of chancellor by Mike Bloomberg and with all the qualifications was passed over for Joel Klein, who did not have the required qualifications.  Mr. Klein received a special waiver of the requirements by the state commissioner of education so that he could become chancellor. 
Mr. Frank Mickens, the nationally acclaimed Principal of Boys and Girls High School is rumored to be retiring any day now.  Mr. Mickens has served with distinction over 36 years.  He turned Boys and Girls H.S. around and has written two books on urban education.  Due to his independent leadership, Boys and Girls H.S. will become a part of an autonomous zone this school year.  This is a major accomplishment and victory for our community.  For over 18 years, Mr. Mickens has run the safest zoned H.S. in the system yet he has had to struggle each day against persons who have never spent 10 minutes on Fulton Street.  He has never been granted the respect that he deserves. 
Mr. Ray Haskins was forced to retire from the system after serving for over 3 decades.  Ray, too, had served our community with distinction.  A Black woman superintendent is responsible for Mr. Haskins being removed from M.S. 390 even after he received 3 bonuses for raising both reading and math scores at his school.  Ray received massive support from community leaders including Councilman Al Vann.  This support fell on the deaf ear of the chancellor and his subordinates who feel they know more about the culture of Albany Avenue than Ray and Al Vann. 
Mr. Michael Johnson, former principal and founder of Science Skills H.S. and superintendent of District 29 has also left the  D.O.E.   Johnson and George Leonard of Bedford Academy are the best in the system at preparing Black youth to take standardized tests.  He would have made a great Deputy of Instruction.
Mr. Basir Mchawi was founder and former principal of Freedom Prep.  He also served as special assistant to Chancellor Richard Greene.  Mr Mchawi introduced the concept of starting an all Black male H.S. over a decade ago.  He was told it was illegal and discriminatory.  Shortly thereafter, an all- girls H.S was started by white women in Harlem.  This year an all- male charter school started by a white man will open in Bedford- Stuyvesant.  It is being enthusiastically supported.  Imagine how many Black males Basir’s school may have saved if his ideas were embraced over a decade ago.
All of the above-mentioned Black male educators if given the opportunity and proper resources could greatly impact the education of Black males.  They have all struggled to maintain their dignity as Black men in a system that has suppressed their brilliance.  A new Million Man March might have to be called in NYC to outline a plan to stop the destruction of Black males.

This past month, Syl Williamson, owner of “Trophies by Syl,” joined the ancestors.  Syl was an institution and one of the strongest Black male role models in our community.  His firm handshake was legendary and would stop you cold and make you aware that you were in the presence of a powerful man.  Syl, while not in the school system, was a great educator.  As a young boy growing up I felt safe in his store and was inspired by his profound wisdom about life, politics, business, art and culture.  The afrocentric mural on the outside of his store was the first of its kind in our community.  The tile on his floor was red, black and green and his plaques were all masterpieces done with love.  The loss of Syl Williamson, Chief Bey and Sonny Carson are monumental.  It is unfortunate that the school system never embraced and promoted them as role models to Black males.  We must seize control of the system.

By Stanley Kinard

The House of the Lord Church, pastored by Reverend Herbert Daughtry in Brooklyn, was again filled to the rafters when the energy to elect Charles Barron Mayor of New York, paused for a moment to coalesce, raise some money, $8,000 that night to be matched 4-to-1 by Campaign Financing bringing it to $40,000, and  to speak on the rightness of their quest.
Among the many speakers on Councilman Barron’s behalf was Tiffany Schley, the high school valedictorian who was refused her diploma for speaking her mind, who said, “This experience has opened my eyes.  When Black people start up and do things, they want to knock us down.  We need someone from the street who knows our struggle.”  And then speaking of those who say that the councilman helping her was “All about politics,” Ms. Schley says, they’re right.  “They labeled it, ‘All about politics’ and it is…elect Charles Barron Mayor!” 
Poet Amiri Baraka, speaking of the Greek Myth of Sisyphus, he condemned to pushing a huge stone up a high hill, only to have it roll back down for him to start again, said that the struggle of African people here in the Americas has been a lot like that.  “All those things we had in the Sixties have been taken away… Down in Florida there was a right-wing coup.  When they worked outside the constitution of the United States. Abolishing the Voter Registration Act of 1965, taking us back and making it a confederate victory in 1863, rather than the Emancipation Proclamation.”   Baraka himself took us back to the first black political convention in Gary, Indiana, in 1971.  Where as co-convener, he sent out the cry of Black Power and organization that they thought would change the world.  Remembering those exciting days of Black politics, and after an extended poetic riff on Black “firsts”, he said,  “I’m just back on the scene to say Black Power.   Back on the scene to say it’s time to rise again.  Time to rise, time to get to that higher ground.”
Many of the speakers spoke of what separates Councilman Barron from others in office.  As one said, “Most politicians, you can smell the selling out pouring off of them, but there is none of that from Barron.” 
After going over his qualifications for the job, the budgets passed, the positions taken, Mr. Barron said that one of the tenets of his campaign is that white men have too much power.  
He said that candidates will come and talk about quality education, affordable housing, health care, waste management programs and all the rest of it and all the candidates will have programs to deal with those issues, as he, Barron, does.   “But unless they come to you and say white men have too much power and that they are going to address the structural racism in the system, then all of that will mean nothing.”
The councilman expects to have a lot of progressive white support, but, “Don’t tell me to tone it down, to get it.  And the same goes for middle-class Blacks who say, “He’s too Black.”   To those who feel that way he says, “I don’t know how to be a little bit Black.”
This is a movement that is going to take New York like a quiet storm, suddenly it will be all around you.  Mr. Barron said former Congresswoman McKinney counseled him to “keep your strategy to yourself,” and sometime next year the mass media is going to look up and say, “Charles Barron might win what?”  
And Ms. McKinney, in private conversation, told the councilman who the special interests are and what they come with when they come hard, as they did when they came after her and got her out of office.  Mr. Barron no doubt listened attentively to the strategies of the Right and the political twists, but as a former Black Panther, a student of history and someone who did thirty days for civil disobedience, he comes to this race knowing it’s a gauntlet, but the prize is for Black people to wield power, not just influence, in New York.   And for a man who cannot be vaguely Black, that’s worth the run.