My Gullah Is

Buildin’ [US] a Home.

A quick escape out of New Orleans, LA to Mobile, AL and, as soon as my office closed for the July 4th weekend, I was OFF (logging out with the quickness) and ON the heritage trail.

By God’s grace, I returned to Africa Town to visit the recent addition of the . A lot of it hit differently for me now, as I’m smack in middle of balancing grief, connection, truth, opportunities, and memory. Kossola’s undying yearning for home is what tugged at me then in 2018 when I first visited Africa Town and still does now, as I recall using “all within me” to facilitate the return of Stephen home last year. “I gotta get him home” was the vow and to see full circle the blessing of having our teenage son back in Ghana for an entire summer to enjoy the home of his father is something we don’t take for granted as it was a dream of many…the dream of home.

But for Kossola, his dream took shape not in his beloved ‘Affika’… despite it all, he and others from the Clotida built a home right where they were — on the Alabama ground their feet were touching.

My next pre-planned stop was the Historical Avenue Cultural Center where I was gifted (really no way to describe it) a thorough, one-on-one tour by Ms. Sheila, who shared with me the rich legacy and meaningful contributions of blacks in Mobile to the civil rights movement, which I was not previously aware of. She also sent me across the street to the Isom Clemson Civil Rights Memorial Park, a ground zero location for movement, and to see the ‘Angel of the Avenue.’ Many thanks Ms. Sheila!!!

All of what I saw today reminded me that it takes a constant rotation of builders. I’m talking generational dedication, the acceptance that the completion of the build may not be realized in our lifetime (yet you continue), and the understanding that even after completion, you still need to build to preserve it.

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📜 in first 2: Roche, Emma Langdon. Historic sketches of the South. New York, The Knickerbocker Press, 1914. Pdf. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, .

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42!!!

Today on my birthday, as I sat in the car re-reading some of my research items on my way to Beaufort, SC, I saw that this same day nearly 120 years ago, my 3rd great-grandmother, Katie Brown (Fields) began her deposition for the widow benefits’ pension application saying “I can’t tell how old I am.”

Well, I’m 42 because of you so that makes us:

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🥳

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#42