Blogs

A Blow to African American Cultural Preservation

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I write to you to inform you of a great loss.  Avery Clayton, curator of the Mamie Clayton Library and Museum in Culver City, CA died on Thanksgiving Day ( after November 26, 2009. Many of you may not know Avery, nor may you have heard of the Clayton Library and Museum. For the last four years, Avery devoted his life and his art to carrying out the legacy his mother left to African American children and people.

Mamie Clayton began collecting books, manuscripts and other examples of African Americans' contribution to American culture and the preservation of African and African American culture. She believed emphatically that *"To know where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve been.”

*According to Avery, she wanted black children to know that they had come from a people rich in culture and history. With her own resources, she amassed the only collection of archival materials, films, books, slave records, etc on African Americans on the West Coast, and the largest private collection owned by African Americans in the country--and possibly the world.

An artist in his own right, he sold his own paintings to fund the initial start up of the MCLM. He was not deterred by funders and others who questioned why he "didn't just give the collection to somebody," a coded way of suggesting he turn over the collection to white institutions such as the Library of Congress. Avery stood firm. He believed that having a private collection, owned by and managed by African Americans was a way to help heal the racial rift in this culture, and a way to affirm the valuable contributions of a people much maligned.

I was privileged to have known Avery when I was a program officer at the Ford Foundation. He received a small grant from Ford, and continued to seek funding. I write you to encourage you to follow the future development of MCLM. It will need all of our support. I last saw him at the beginning of October, and had the privilege of witnessing the transformation he already had made happen with the Museum. Whenever Avery spoke, his gentleness and passion for making his mother's vision, and his own, a reality, inspired all who heard him.

Be inspired yourself. As the year closes out and you think about a gift you can make that will go on giving, I urge you to consider the Mamie Clayton Library and Museum. If you have ideas about potential funders that will make this library and museum continue to live as a testament to Mamie and Avery Clayton's vision, please pass the information on to them.

I write this because I believe every culture has a right to know its own value and worth, and to be the keepers of its own history. I write this to you because I believe in legacy-making.

You can find information about the holdings of the museum on two segments of the history detectives
(http://www.iptv.org/video/detail.cfm/3430/hide_20090304_slave_songbook).

Contact Information for the Mamie Clayton Library and Museum
Contact us at: info@claytonmuseum.org
Website: http://www.claytonmuseum.org

(310)202-1647 Phone (310)202-5464 Fax

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2009/11/avery_clayton_curator_of.php

http://www.claytonmuseum.org/documents/MCLMNewsletter05-06.2008.pdf

Pass the word to preserve this African American treasure.

Peace, Irma

Original date: November 28,2009

~Photo Opt Courtesy of: Latimesblog.com

Funny bone??—Well Webster’s dictionary

says its  that weird place

towards the back of the elbow

where the ulnar nerve rests.

If you’ve bumped it,

you know it’s there.

But feminists’ funnybone

is in a different location than most. 

It’s not that bony elbow

 that most people know.

Somewhere between the brains that houses our ideology,

and the heart where our passion lives,

rests the feminist funnybone.

And do we need it ever.

 After a hard day’s work of campaigning for equality

 and sending out chain emails

 to get signatures for the next round of legislation

that threatens to return women to the Middle Ages,

we need something.

Laughter is healing,

and quite frankly, from where I stand,

feminists don’t laugh enough. 

We don’t laugh at the outrageous world

in which we live,

we don’t laugh

at the insaneness

of watching legislation

that gave us full rights

begin to shrink

(call it an Alice moment)

right before our eyes,

we don’t laugh

at our own contradictions

and tensions within the women’s movement,

and we certainly don’t laugh for fun.

Watch for more and share your feminist funnybone moment :

 feministfunnybone@gmail.com

[1] Free Merriam-Webster. Accessed May 23, 2010

I ran my first (and only) marathon when I was 49.  It was October 2001 in Baltimore. I had signed up for the Marine Corp Marathon in Washington, D.C. , and then 9/11 occurred; so Baltimore was the back-up plan for those of us who could not complete a 15 ½ minute mile. I think I was averaging a 15 ¾ minute mile.

For a variety of personal reasons, including my stepfather’s illness,  I trained alone.  We were guided by an Olympic marathon runner who encouraged us to focus on finishing rather than speed. My completion time  was 6 hours and 59 minutes to conquer the 26.2 miles. And with the numerous hills on the Baltimore’s course (which they changed in subsequent years),  I am amazed that I finished at all.  

My number was 3913, and while I wasn’t fast, I did raise $2500 to support the Walker-Whitman Clinic for HIV-AIDS prevention.   So the discipline and hard work were worth it for a good cause.

Throughout our lives, as Black women, we receive so many negative messages about our bodies. We are rarely celebrated unless we fit a more Euro-centric stereotype.  I decided late in life to take up modeling.  It was something I had wanted to do since I was sixteen years old.   It was my way of having fun, and challenging the standard myth that Black women are not beautiful.

We are beautiful, and we must take the time to prolong that beauty by being healthy.   It is my hope that other Black women will be inspired by my late-life modeling adventure, and will take the time to honor themselves by focusing on being healthy and fit. 

Download Head to Toe Toning

The year was 1968 and the King was dead—assassinated.  The streets were red and black—thick with blood and smoke.  It was during this summer that what was once ivy towers opened their doors.  And so, I departed the projects of Chicago, boarded a plane or train (I can’t remember now) for my first trip outside of the West side to New Haven, Connecticut.

There I became part of an experiment.  Give inner city children the opportunity to read “great books” like Hegel’s Phenomenology, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (which we wanted to burn after reading), Jean Genet’s play, The Blacks, and you can transform their lives. 

The director, Larry Paros, has spent his retirement time and money, making a documentary about the summer of 1968 at the Yale Divinity School that changed many lives. In the summer of 2009, we met again at Yale to see where those “great books” and summer of 1968 had led us.  We mourned those who had died, and talked about the different paths our lives had taken. We came from across the country, and one person flew in from Brazil.

I learned that as one of the 30 women students, out of 120 people, I was among the first to make Yale co-ed before it officially changed. To read more, visit:http://www.yshs.org/index.htm

Photo Opt: Jean Genet's Play, "The Blacks," Courtesy of YSH.org