Driving to “The Corner” I pass the high Georgia pines that encase well-to-do homes, of famous political figures from the sixties, countless entrepreneurs, and college graduates who are motivated by powerful careers. Gas guzzling SUV’s, Bentleys, and Mercedes Benz’s, are standard day-to-day modes of travel, transporting African Americans who discreetly listen to Biggy and JayZ. No loud rapping or singing in sync just slight head bopping coupled with thumb and finger cadences tapped out on the steering wheels, expressing their Blackness in a tame manner.
Who are these strange people to achieve the American dream and what price have they paid to do so? Did they blindly or knowingly assimilate, imitate and integrate into such a peculiar system? MLK said, “I think we are running into a burning building.” And God, why do 95% of the Black American athletes marry women who don’t look like their mothers? What kind of mental disorder is that God?
The breeding, because not all occurrences were rape, of enslaved African women the most inhumane act practiced against these people. Even more so than reducing them to property, stealing their children and having their men in a constant state of freeze, flight or fight. Oh, I know they have many mind sicknesses because they will cringe and judge their own brethren for speaking in a vernacular that was the natural evolution of language. God, do they not have awareness of the origin of these things? These people mock their own survivor language, no other race, no other culture does that to my knowledge. They are haughty if their skin or hair is of one vs another type and this keeps most of them stuck and distracted working for superficial things. Lord, could the aforementioned be the root problem of all their misery?
Two miles in route, the bustling crowds rush out of check cashing establishments, fast food chains, liquor stores, Asian and Middle Eastern owned and operated grocery and nail shops. Some wait for buses, arms full of groceries, with children whose lips are stained with blue, green, and red freeze-pops. This is hollywoods and local news’s sought out and one-sided version of African American daily life. Three more blocks and what remains of the grim reapers booty after the integration of schools and his release of a blizzard of cocaine that blew relentlessly through the neighborhood, destroying everything in its path in the eighties and nineties. The reaper was not blind like the lady holding the scales of justice pretends to be nor were the politicians or inhabitants of the neighborhood. Everyones eyes were wide open while we watched the creation of this masterpiece of unrepairable businesses, distraught community, and dismayed human souls.
Two blocks more dope fiends nod out as the fast walking, fast talking skeletal remains of someones little girl turns tricks to pack her one hitter glass pipe. The laughter of children playing and dancing in grassless yards as adults gather on front porches blasting the likes of TuPac, Public Enemy, Biggy, and JayZ is common. Unlike the Black people ‘down the street’, this crowd doesn’t tap fingers on the steering wheels of fancy cars, nope, they bop their heads hard and move their bodies like some higher being has them under a rhythmic trance. They laugh at hostility, as if it is the norm, as if it is expected, medicated on something in the midst of economic decline and never even pray about their psychological warfare because they are unaware the mind wars that impact them and the ones they love on a daily basis. Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural, rightly argued that what the Confederates lost on the battlefield was “all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil.” They weren’t here to play music on porches until someone was kind enough to show them “how to pick cotton.”
But not on The Corner! The answers are in the identification of the problem, so I chose to seek the thinkers, the street scholars, energy experts and the poor righteous teachers. Do they ever look at themselves and ask for forgiveness? (Father, forgive them, for they no NOT what they do. They are as little children, lost in a land that is not their own. Give them light, lead them out of the darkness, yeah, just like Moses, Jesus, Harriett and all them other bad motherfukas taking a knee and raising their voices and God force and source, especially, those mother who have stayed on their knees wailing for the past 400 years. Yeah, God, give them a Glock please and show them how to use it)
Another mile and I’m closer to “The Corner.” Visual and olfactory stimulation is induced by signs advertising vegan and vegetarian establishments, the smell of familiar soul food with a twist of health, Southern style. Burning incense sticks swirl hypnotic smoke from store front plants, kundalini yoga classes, free African and Black History lectures, and local famers market their fruits in an abandon parking lot. They appear to be picking up the pieces for those that have given up on the struggle or who are unaware that there still is a struggle. They seem to be picking up where Dr. Ben, John Clark, Marcus Garvey, Bunchy Carter, H.Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, Malcom X, Bobby Seal, Huey Newton, Martin Luther King, John Lewis, Assasata, Muhammad Ali, and Bob Marley left off. Picking up were present day politicians and academic intellectual have fallen off. Even picking up new levels of energy from the universal consciousness. They are picking up many things but they surely ain’t “picking cotton” no more Mr. Lincoln.
The streets are alive in the West End of Atlanta. It remains a mystical community blazing with colorful kente cloth, dashikis, locked, braided, twisted, corn rolled, afro hair dos. Authentic oil grace the skin of patrons and warm greetings make it a safe haven for spiritual and socially conscience black folks. This black hole is now the center for an emerging force of higher thinkers and healthy lifestyles. The famous writer Pearl Cleage lives in the neighborhood and sets her stories in this glorious place. A tsunami of knowledge is free standing and salutations like hello or goodbye don’t sound appropriate but “peace my Sista, blessings Goddess, hello Queen” always make me feel out of sorts with my traditional responses of “hello and goodbye.” Melinated ears hear and balance to the voices from the Nation of Islam, Black Hebrew Israelites, Shrine of the Black Madonna, Five Percenters, Nuwabians, Brothers of Metaphysical Underground, Kematic Scientists, experts in numerology, meditation, astrology, Spelman and Morehouse students and professors, stone healers, natural food experts, writers, poets and artists. Just to name a few of the many dominant subcultures in this delicious pot of stew called SWATS, South Wests Atlanta Streets.
It is dusk and I park in a back poorly lit lot, unafraid. I walk with a unnoticed excitement as I see the small group surrounding Kiti. They stand amongst the old buildings that have become an artistic backdrop for peaceful people, poor righteous teachers, and black vernacular intellectuals. I quietly take a place in the midst of seven men conversing about the present state of Africana, George Floyd, Covid and Gangsta Rap. I figure that colonized minds, with whom I ENTER-ACT with daily, world be confused when and if in the presence of these folks who look like them, but whose blood runs hot with uncomfortable rebellion, not cold with fear, fake ass religion or so-called power positions where they lick boots and shred the hearts of their brethren.
I look to see Kiti’s reaction to the conversation hoping he will offer his knowledge but as usual he rarely does. He stands about six feet and two inches with Cherokee slanted eyes that carry no threat and he listens intently as if he is hearing this information for the first time. His pleasant face is serious and he will occasionally give an uncomfortable quick half smile. Kiti is controlled in every sense of the meaning. Whether he is walking, speaking or thinking, he appears extremely calculated. No metaphors or similes spill from his lips but brief synopsis of truth. After his twelve year old sister’s death, his mother described Kiti, then thirteen, as “The quiet one that seemed to get lost in his silence.” His life is a sermon and with his books stacked neatly to the ceiling of his trucks open trunk, in an alley, on The Corner, Kiti’s library teaches everyday people like me how to adjust my surroundings with natural vibes, my birth numbers, 9/30/63 (9-3-63). Although he never mentioned any interest in Nikola Tesla, I found this, “If you want to find the secrets of the Universe you need to think in terms of 3-Energy, 6-Frequency, Vibration-9.” He knew I was a fit from the start. Perhaps that is why I was so easily allowed in this circle of street scholars, not because I dropped knowledge with the best of them but because of my power numbers.
My and Kiti’s corner in Atlanta has vanished and is now converting, with our eyes and mouths wide open. Our safe space and home away from home has been displaced, replaced and erased. Kiti returned to his home town of Baltimore Maryland, to raise his family with his beautiful wife Sun. Daily he passes the corner where he stood as a young hustler after the tragic rape and murder of his baby sister. The corner that houses more heroin addicts per capita than any other city in America. The corner that led to his incarceration and ironically becoming the corner that set him free. Thank you Kiti for being available, for a time in space, for us Atlanta transients who felt isolated until we found ourselves earning another degree with self-tuition, on The Corner. by Vonnia Harris Davis, “The Corner Project”
