When St. Louis American publisher Donald M. Suggs invited me to attend Maryville University’s St. Louis Speakers panel entitled “Racism in America” I was honored, to say the least.
Tickets for this speakers series are expensive and often hard to come by. So I jumped at the opportunity to attend, especially given the subject matter and considering the fact that The St. Louis American was the featured sponsor.
Little did I know that a last-minute substitution would make the event even more pertinent and relevant for me.
The advertised panelists were Michelle Norris of NPR, Jason Riley of the Wall Street Journal and Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center – a very good and balanced group.
However, at the last minute (and to my delight), Goldie Taylor was announced as a substitute for Norris. I had always wanted to meet Goldie and had previously communicated with her through Facebook, Twitter, etc. and have always been impressed with the brilliance of her commentary in print and on CNN, MSNBC, etc.
I was particularly pleased (and most in the audience were oblivious to the fact, until she revealed it) because she also happens to be an East St. Louis success story.
In between intellectually “chin-checking” the black conservative WSJ columnist Jason Riley for his propensity to curry favor with the white conservatives seated in the Powell Symphony Hall audience, she managed to make reference to her East Boogie roots, schooling and coming of age in an ESL reality where jobs were in abundance, a good education was achievable and solid role models were plentiful.
Taylor also kept it real and in context, pointing out that, despite her upbringing and positive influences, both her father and brother were murdered at the hands of other black men, and further, that no male relatives born prior to 1986 are alive today.
You could have heard a mouse pee on cotton at that utterance, which is an unfortunate yet familiar reality to many in East Boogie (and any other black ghetto in America).
Yet Goldie’s positive reflections on the ESL of our youth often mirrored mine. When we met, following the panel, we were both pleased to have finally connected and shared memories of her favorite English teacher Ms. Peggy LeCompte, whom we both know and whom she credits with “teaching her to write.”
That’s powerful stuff, considering the astronomical trajectory of Goldie’s career from TV commentary to print media to politics to the world of documentaries and as a public intellectual.
It only goes to underscore an often-ignored fact (given the poli-tricks, scandals and corruption of the few) that East St. Louis is an incubator for many of America’s sophisticated intellectuals, shapers of thought, change agents and those who never forget their East Boogie roots, irrespective of their status or success in life.
Email jtingram_1960@yahoo.com; Twitter@JamesTIngram.
