Poetagraphy

As a young woman not in the military but fighting in the troops of the Civil Rights Movement, I lived in a war zone for nine years in the southern part of the American homeland. My existence and struggle was an unreal but very real experience in many ways. Growing up in the north I had heard about racism, and the socio-economic trials and tribulations my family faced, but I hadn't witnessed and experienced it up close and dangerously personal until I worked and fought in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. Work in the first two areas was relatively short, but work and life in Mississippi, 1963-1972, seemed like more than a decade. It was a serious, arduous, meaningful, intense existence, focused on educational, cultural, socio-economic and political change projects.Experiences in my first year in Mississippi, working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), the Delta Folk Festivals and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), in Jackson, and at Tougaloo College resulted in the forthcoming poems. They were written while I was living in the little white house across from the college, which is still there, working as a teacher in the Adult Literacy Project initiated by SNCC. Roommates Sandra "Casey" Hayden and Helen O'Neal, were also my co-workers. John O'Neal, another Literacy Project worker and I, along with Gilbert Moses, a journalist for the Jackson Free Press, co-founded the Free Southern Theater (FST) in 1963 at Tougaloo College. As participants in these groups we faced many trials and tribulations, some of which are reflected in this book. In the process, our activities and discussions were thought provoking, creative, argumentative, often dangerous, sometimes quite humorous as we continued to work productively together. Although we had disappointments, often scars and setbacks, we accomplished many goals we hoped for, with unexpected and far reaching results. In the years to follow, my time was spent working with the Poor Peoples Corporation, the Liberty House Handcraft Cooperatives, Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM) Head Start, Southern Media, Inc., Jackson State College's Art Department and the Margaret Walker Center based in Jackson. Fieldwork was in the Mississippi Delta, in Tchula, Durant, Milestone, Cleveland, Mound Bayou, Greenville, and in other places like Holly Springs, Newell Chapel and West Point in North Mississippi. It resulted in my documenting and saving a very large accumulation of historic photographs that I took which reflect African American life during the Civil Rights era.The people I met, learned from, loved, admired and socialized with, provide spiritual memories of those I relied on and who relied on me. They protected, befriended, laughed with and created with me. They were a crucial part of my struggle to keep faith, carry out our God-inspired mission for equality, to persevere and overcome adversity. They are vital pieces in my life's patchwork quilt, a puzzle which encompasses the combination of memories, upbringing, personal experiences, reflections and drive behind what I have created with this collection of my thirty-seven photographic images and thirty-four poetic works.