THE BLACKNESS

THE BLACKNESS The "spirit was moving" when Nina Simone turned out the lights in Cramton Auditorium, Howard University, in the early 1970s on our afroed assemblage and proceeded to initiate us, enfold us, invigorate us in black love. She was puissant, positive, passionate, insouciant . A few years earlier, as a sophomore in high school in St. Louis County, Missouri, I was carried down to a house near Washington University, where two afroed black graduate students resided. They were from Chicago, married, and were also conducting a tutorial program for area students, while studying for their own courses. After speaking to me very briefly, the wife took we upstairs to a room with black walls. She had me to lie down on a cot. She put on "Malcolm X: Ballots or Bullets" record. She turned out the lights and left the room. Nobody in there but me and Malcolm X in total darkness. I was immersed in black. Black on black in black: blackness! Something about natal blackness that leads to the spirit, the true entrepôt!