Frederick

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.
--Frederick Douglass.

"My name is Frederick. My daddy was Fred Brown, that's his whole name, Fred Brown. People thought I was named for him, and he was a good man. I would have been proud to be named for him, but my mama named me for Frederick Douglass. My full name is Frederick Douglass Brown. I was fifteen years old before I knew who Frederick Douglass was. My mama wouldn't tell me. She said I had to go to school to find out. It was one of the ways she kept me in school. Frederick Douglass was an educated man, a fine man, and he fought slavery and wrote poetry. Me? No, I don't write. I could. I write things in my head. But I don't see the point of it now.

"Sitting here under the cherry blossoms, watching people pass by on a sunny day, you wouldn't know I was homeless, would you? No, I didn't think you would. But there's two reasons why I'm on the streets right now. After a certain point the body starts to break down. I can't keep working like I always worked. Knees give out. I laid concrete, I did construction, I could do electricals too. I could wire up your whole house if you wanted me to. I learned it on the job from another black man. I was never afraid of work. But I'm sixty-nine years old, and my legs have started to give out, and I can't do like I used to. Can't work and can't chase women. I give it all up now. I used to love me some women, yes indeed. Love me some women, fine women. I never forgot a one of them. But I quit now.  

"The other thing is betrayal. I've been betrayed more times than I can count. Tell me one thing. What is wrong with white people? They're your people. Tell me. You put ten men on a work force, who's the first one to be fired? The black man. You fill up a building with people, who's the first people thrown out? The black ones. You got kids in line for scholarships to stay in school, who's the last ones to get money? The black ones. It was a black man invented the computer, it was black men that discovered medicine, it was black men and black women that built cities in Africa while white men were still running around in animal skins. We built everything this country is, but you look now, who got the credit for it? Who got the money for it? I don't have to tell you.

"My daddy told me I was going to have to be strong, and he made me strong. We had a pig farm in southern Illinois, and I worked that farm. My daddy was a man of faith, a preacher man, and he had a whip, I mean a real whip, not some toy. He had a whip, and he kept me in line. He didn't want me falling in with bad company. I didn't drink, I didn't use marijuana. I use it now, if I can get it, and I'm not ashamed to say so. But back then, I didn't do anything but work that farm, and I'm telling you, you don't know work till you shovel a mountain of pig shit, hauling it one wheelbarrow at a time out to the garden, and digging it into the earth. That's what work is. I think that was the happiest time of my life, making my daddy proud of me. My daddy was a hard man, but he taught me work, and I was happy working."

Color version and other cherry blossom pictures here.

P.S. If you'd like to hear a half-hour radio conversation about Blip, featuring the voices of Katherine Ellis, Just Be and her nephew, and me too coming in about halfway through, it's here.