Much gratitude to all who came out last evening for my book signing at Left Banks. It was definitely a reunion of old friends and the making of new ones.
One highlight was Daphne Jones coming out. She was fired from her job back in 2007 for wearing an “I Love Being Black” button on her job. The racist act turned up as one of my columns entitled “Fear of a Black City” because I needed to name names and call out this racist act.(Daphne brought her copy of the newspaper for me to autograph.) An excerpt from my St. Louis American column:
” In a believable-in-Dred-Scott-City incident, Jones was summarily fired for wearing her button in honor of the Dr. King holiday. The button was likened to the Nazi Swastika by the personnel director of Healthcare Strategic Initiatives, Bernard Kindell. Kindell, an African-American, was responding to another employee’s stated offense to the button. That employee’s identity and race are unknown to date.
What is known is that being black in this city is an every day challenge.”
I did some reading from the book but we also talked about about several issues, eg. mean-spirited black people (internationalized oppression), how white people can deal with the use of the N-word by another white person in their presence, etc.
As we were packing up to leave, a surprise visitor and his fiancee’ came by–Dr. Lee Blount. A patient made him late but I’m alway happy to see the doctor.
Autographed copies of my book are still available at Left Bank. They also have a few copies of my first book, The Best of the Way I See It.
Next book signing: Bluford Library, Kansas City MO.
