99 Problems but a Beach Ain’t One
99 Problems but a Beach Ain’t One
It is almost unimaginable that a strong ray of hope can shine through in such dark times. After over 100 years and counting, reparations were made to the Bruce family by returning the prime Southern California beachfront to its rightful owners.
In the 1900s, blacks were excluded from most local beaches; thus, Charles & Willa Bruce decided to create a 3-acre beach resort for black residents in what is now known as Manhattan Beach. It became highly successful, thus rearing the ugly head of envy and jealousy from the white residents. Then according to that hateful playbook of racism, there were threats, the KKK, burning of property, and intimidation of beachgoers. It didn’t work. So, what could not be accomplished illegally was accomplished legally by executing eminent domain, which allows the seizure of property without the owners’ permission if the government states it is needed for public use.
Paying an obligatory pittance, the property was confiscated, in 1924, under the guise of building a park for public use; the land, however, remained vacant for several decades. Thirty-six years later, fearing that sleeping dogs might awaken, the city decided to build a park named Bayview Terrace Park. However, it was the first and only black elected official (Manhattan Beach Mayor Mitch Ward 2007) that insisted on the park being renamed Bruce Beach
Born out of a 2020 Juneteenth commemoration picnic held in the park, the advocacy coalition Justice for Bruce’s Beach was founded and spearheaded by Kavon War, an African American resident of Manhattan Beach. This grassroots movement pressured the city council into creating Bruce’s Beach Task Force.
Los Angeles County Supervisors Janice Hahn and Holly Mitchell took up the reigns with the new law being authored by Senator Steve Bradford, who sits on the state’s newly formed reparations task force.
“This is what reparations look like,” said Bradford, insisting that the county is not giving anything to the Bruce family yet simply returning their stolen property.
There are still 99 problems, but the beach “ain’t one for the Bruce family.”
- by Malaika Kusumi
August, 2022
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If You Are Seeing Red Poem
If You Are Seeing Red
You should be seeing red
Not voting it
Your children are dying too
Guns don’t kill people
People do
Potatoe potahtoe
You should be seeing red
Not voting it
Color, creed and race divide
Yet death unites all mothers
Grieving the loss of children
Shot down before learning their ABCs
You should be seeing red
Not voting it
Abolishing abortion does not save a life
It may kill two
Ignoring gun control
Kills hundreds
If you are seeing red
Vote blue
by Malaika Kusumi
May 26, 2022
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Back on the Black Block
On the streets where i grew up
There were no high buildings
Lots of store front churches and liquor stores
Little brown girls in catholic school uniforms
Climbing in overfilled dusty loud buses
Boys playing basketball behind barbwire courts
Babies crying in the scorching summer sun
Oh yeah, we had a bunch of barbecues
Soul music in all variations blasting from open windows
Baseball games, basketball, jump rope, card games
street dancing, singing, cussin’ and praisin’ the lord
The smell of roast and frying chicken on Sundays
Guys hanging out in front of sagging dilapidated doors
You might find an old used needle or two or three
Stuck sadly under a pair of worn rusty swings
And the playgrounds usually had more than just kids
On certain street blocks in my community
You weren’t allowed to walk through
Not if you didn’t belong there
Unless you had family living on it
Violence, oh we had that on many corners
Sometimes the dim lamplights shone the blood
Of the last misunderstanding between two men
Or men and cops or even between men and women
Almost everybody I knew had a gun or a rifle
Some had baseball bats at every door entrance
We had sanctified preachers in almost every family
Cops, doctors, teachers, junkies, army folk, drunks
Girls dressed like women and boys posing as men
Some houses had well-kept lawns watched by german shephards
While others had basically nothing but a sagging roof and the smell of piss
Lots of nosy police cars prolling the streets looking for eyesores
Some didn’t even need an excuse to pull out a club, handcuffs, or a gun
The parks were often full of the sound of percussion beats
Revolutionists arguing about how to overthrow the missing system
Or the strong smell of ganja enveloping a group of teenagers
Shell shocked ex. soldiers sleeping on empty benches
Evicted homeless looking for warm dry shelter
Families living in cars unable to pay the exorbitant rent
Ghurch ladies spent a lot of time getting home most evenings
And the noise from the clubs never seemed to stop
Life wasn’t easy on the block, but it wasn’t boring either
Camille Elaine Thomas
March 02, 2022
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Mind Made Up?
Mind Made Up?
My grandmama taught me that prayin’ is good for the soul
Prayin’ ain’t nothin’ but sayin’ what’s in your heart
Some folks say faith can move mountains
I guess so if they know so
Other folks say that you can heal bones
But not a truly broken heart
What I believe is people need hope
They need to believe that love conquers all
And that if rain don’t wash away the dirt
A good glass of whiskey and Keb Mo might
People been chattin’ about meditation
Substitute for keeping your mouth closed
Paying attention to where you’re standin’
‘Cause If you ridin’ a wild buckin’ horse
You can’t be thinkin’ about Christmas
Sweet potato pie- and black-eyed peas
You gotta hold on to the reigns
You gotta focus on where you’re headed
My granddaddy could fix almost anything
Except the broken wings of his children
When his wife passed from having too many
Leavin’ their farmyard full of dandelion weeds
You know pruning is easy once you pick up a rake
I can’t put too much credit in people’s talk
Sometimes it sounds like coyotes howlin’
Hungry bellies can’t think too straight
While some animals will eat almost anything
If it’s lookin’ pretty and smellin’ sweet
My sister used to beg me to love her
Like she needed my feelings to have a name
She got fat with self-pity and faded dusty
My brother wanted to be a local marvel hero
Got himself a badge and a legal 45
Got his butt horse whipped with it by a junkie
But he survived chasin’ loose bad gals
My aunt who grew up in that barren yard
Got a bad case of religion in her mature years
Now she’s fanning her lonesome self away
With other sanctified found themselves again
On a hard wooden baptist church bench
A lot of people claim to know who God is
Seen him sitting at them famous crossroads
Picking her teeth with a tree branch
Others say they felt them on the last full moon
Some claim to know him her it personally
Because they read a good book
Lot of folks think they know it all
All I know is that if faith is our number one game
Then hope is our main pawn in it
If we lose that
Then we lose everything
Camille Elaine Thomas
January 02, 2022
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The Trust Mantra
The Trust Mantra
I believe that rainbows appear after the storm
That in times of test loved ones are still the best
That being natural is staying close to nature
That standing up is not a solution for the cowardly
That trust is better than distrust
That love can conquer all
That living with joy is more appealing than the blues
That willpower checkmates all hindrances
That faith can move mountains
That compassion performs miracles
That justice will dismantle inequalities
That patience during trials is recommendable
That believing in yourself is paramount to survival
That black people will one day be truly free
That children should be lovingly cherished
That women should be held up not held back
That men should be honored as admirable equals
That knowledge is better than ignorance
That dancing is good for the spirit
That you are what you constantly think
That kindred souls are preferable to adversaries
That the company you keep defines you
That laws should be constructed to protect citizens
That being kind is kind of great
That loving yourself first is paramount
That giving to the needy protects from selfishness
That being resilient keeps you going strong
That staying grounded helps sustain humility
That laughter is good for the soul
That destiny is what you make it
And you?
Camille Elaine Thomas
October 21, 2021
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A Half a Tale
A Half a Tale
She knew she had a story to tell
The words seemed to evade her
Like a song about a harvest for the world
Lyrics and melody in commotion
The pandemic had left her tapped out
All she had was in her large pocketbook
Last week she had sold her old Ford
The living quarters for the three of them
Mary jane is not my name
Double dutch a childhood game
For a quarter and a nickel
You can get a sour pickle
There had been a time long past
When laughter was a daily remedy
Chasing away the daily grievances
Rent money, school fees, insurance
She felt the defenseless pressure
Leaving her senses desolate
Home is where the heart is
But the roof has to be kept
Step on the line
Your mama gets a fine
Take your money back
Fry the spinach black
She waited nervously in line
With her information filled-in form
All she wanted was another chance
A narration to nourish her yearning
There was a highly inebriated man
Yelling in the adjacent line
About what he would do
If he could do what he wanted
Jump up and down
Then do the turn-around
If you ain’t got it
Then it’s time to quit
A baby in a carriage bawling
Children jostling each other
Vying for attention
Which is all anyone wants
Sit in grandma’s rocking chair
Step on a crack if you dare
If you don’t like my baby
Then don’t you say maybe
It was finally her turn
She raised her wrinkled application
Which was greeted by a sullen frown
The testy refusal just a second away
But this time it was different
She was told to go and stand
In an even longer line
She took her request form
Pulled on her heavy handbag strap
And walked quickly to the adjoining line
Her doleful story just had to wait
For another day.
Two for the money
Three for the show
If your mama don’t like it
Then it’s time for your butt to go!
Camille Elaine Thomas
October 20, 2021
[email protected] All rights reserved
Ain’t it a Crime Story?
Ain’t it a Crime Story?
No, i will not stop telling my story until i’m done.
And i won’t quit searching into the fastened closets
Nor will i leave the old dusty dank library shelves
Until i learn all of my people’s heritage hidden within
i walked past a bus stop yesterday and heard a white man
Muttering racist profanity under his alcohol-ridden breath
His shoes were worn dirty cracked and falling to pieces
i guess what disturbed him the most was that mine weren’t
When slavery wasn’t a crime no one cared about spewing discord
It was certainly normal to burn crosses in front of people’s houses
Or spit on the black kids when they tried to go to school with white kids
And we all know that the lynching’s were sanctified by those in power
When white people get provoked, they say it’s justified indignity
When black people get riled, they call it deplorably primitive
There’s still a black man dying every 21 odd hours from police aggression
But if you mention the words defund the police, you’re a traitorous communist
And now that social media has become the new drug
We get to see all of the paranoid racist Karens in panic
Abusing black folks for walking, talking, eating,
running, golfing, swimming, breathing while black
The we heard of the term micro-aggressions and realized
That is our daily experience and our white friends who show it know it-now
White supremacy leers at us from almost every street corner poster
While white fragility leaves us depleted discouraged dissatisfied depressed
We are then accused by our well-meaning liberal European friends
Of playing the race card, crying wolf, bluffing victim, singing the blues
If the Jewish can forget the atrocious genocide done against them
Then surely, we can grow up and finally forget our decimations? Truly?
Post-traumatic slave disorder is dismissed as a nasty myth
And aren’t all the black men languishing in jail guilty?
Yes, there is black on black crime, but don’t white folk hurt each other?
While European missionaries still frequent Africa bringing bibles and not food
i remember once listening from my bedroom window
As a young white german kid told my black child that he should wash
So that he could be as clean and as white as he was
i have never been so proud of my son as i was on that day
Our stories need the telling and we need to be the ones telling them
Not glorifying, ignoring, denying, not leaving out the good or the bad parts
Rather accepting acknowledging and working through the pain
Perhaps then we would have no need for anger, as we do now.
Camille Elaine Thomas
September 15, 2021
[email protected] All rights reserved
Unrequited Love
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Unrequited Love
She figured she really should get over it
Let downs, disappointments, broken promises
This was worse than an unrewarding love affair
She had given all of her faith, her inmost dreams
For this one single obstinate purpose
She had cried copious tears of hope, tears of despair
Listened to reason, tried common sense
Endured a roller coaster of ups and simultaneous downs
But when all was honestly said and done
Her ethics ruled the roost and wouldn’t be placated
With soothing words and unproductive excuses
There was an aching pain of resignation lingering
Troubling her neck and her nightly slumbers
She had gone regularly to the local herbalist,
The psychologist, social worker, community advisor
But the results had left her feeling empty, unassuaged
Petitions hadn’t helped the situation much either
She had even written her congressman twenty times
Only to receive polite noncommittal platitudes
But the lives of over a thousand black men
Wasting their existence on death row
Just wouldn’t concede her genuine peace
Wearily, she wondered if she should just call it a day.
Camille Elaine Thomas
September 09,2021
[email protected] All rights reserved
Our Voices Count Too
Our Voices Count Too
(for Angela Fobbs)
There are many who discredit
Those who follow the call
The fist raised in protest
The lament in the darkness
But even in the light of day
There should be a semblance
Of compassion for the needy
A deterrent to the greedy
Our blackness has a voice
Which was silenced too long
Threatened by the spineless
Desecrated by the narcissists
Our voices intone melodies
That can uplift nations
Inspire to transpose
Leave defamers dumbstruck
Our voices have built bridges
While soothing the fatigued
Our prescience gives America a grace
A reason to need feel honored
Should we now sit mutely by
When we realize that our voices joined
Hold an unfeigned promise
Which underscores much more
Than the rantings of the tyrannical?
Camille Elaine Thomas
August 30, 2021
[email protected] All rights reserved
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Lost Talent
As he sat down, with a look of hunger in his
Eyes. As I searched, nothing not evens the lowest.
Sensing, a strange and different personality from
The others.
He glanced up with a gleam in his eyes. Within
Minutes, my face was on the dirty white paper.
Just as quickly as he came. He disappeared for
A long, long time.
Thinking, over the years. A talent, this homeless
And hungry person. Drifting, in a world too busy
To care. As my emotions rose to meet the thoughts.
As quickly as he disappeared, he returned. Looking
Deeply hurt in the eyes. My soul ripped with sorrow
And anger. For I, too was with little.
As I watch him sipping coffee. Knowing the
Thoughts of his mind as thought my own. The
World not known to his talents.
As I gave him my last. Thinking, his need more
Important than mine. As I walked away. Poured
Down the drain, into the sewer, into the sea.
Lost forever.
As the tears, began to seep into my eyes.
I must, I must.
Copyright © 1993 Paul S Hickman All Rights Reserved
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