Abstract
The work that POA has done in the communities which surround the University of Michigan has been extensive—covering a large swath of diverse communities. Not only was a great deal of effort spent in working in Black communities but equal efforts were made to include the large Muslim population in the Dearborn area outside of Ann Arbor. DeMario tells the story of a queer young Black man and the white students they led into Black spaces to teach the module. The complex story of privilege and whiteness is an essential part of the POA project. But this is very much Mari’s own story about how, as a queer person, they managed the strands of race, assimilation, whiteness, and the church, which is revealed in this paper which Mari calls, “In the beginning there was the word and the word was Black.”
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Notes
- 1.
HARC Center: HIV Accessory & Regulatory Complex Center https://harc.ucsf.edu/; UNIFIED HIV and Beyond https://miunified.org/About/Our-Mission; HELP: Help Emergency Lifeline Programs http://helpoffice.org/; and Horizons https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pdf/research/interventionresearch/compendium/rr/cdc-hiv-horizons-best-rr.pdf.
- 2.
This quote has been attributed most widely to James Baldwin, but James Baldwin tells us he is quoting Malcolm X “at the point where Malcolm came back from Mecca,” in Conversations with James Baldwin, (1989) p. 218. The Rev. Albert Richard Sampson also uses the phrase in an interview in April of 1968, “White is a state of mind, black is a condition.”
- 3.
Photo by Brenda Hodges, circa 2000.
- 4.
The original quote reads, “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” CrossCurrents, Summer 1961. The meaning is the same.
- 5.
I am thankful to the mothers, sisters, and brothers of the New Hope Baptist Church, who by name are Alvin Stroud, Charles Stroud, Betty J. Thomas, Patricia Anderson, Anthony Larkin, Bennie Larkin, made possible by the leadership and coordination of Bernette Garner and Pecola A. Lewis. I am thankful to the elders, members, and youth of the St. John Missionary Baptist Church, who by name are Charellle E. Lawrence, Barbara Gray, Inez Weathers, Elder Spencer Junious, Lucille Hopkins, made possible by the leadership and coordination of Pearl Wilkins, Vivian Langford, and Pecola A. Lewis. Your joy, humor, calling, and commitment to understanding and teaching HIV were salve to my soul. I am thankful for the participation of the Detroit residents involved with UNIFIED’s peer-led support group for folks living with HIV—your resilience, honesty, and reflections brought life to this work. I am always thinking of you and wishing you all the best.
Works Cited
Baldwin, James, Emile Capouya, Lorraine Hansberry, Nat Hentoff, Langston Hughes, Alfred Kazin, “The Negro in American Culture,” CrossCurrents, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Summer 1961), p. 205-224.
Baldwin, James. Conversations with James Baldwin. United Kingdom, University Press of Mississippi, 1989.
Levenson, Jacob. The Secret Epidemic: The Story of AIDS and Black America. United Kingdom, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2004.
Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. United States, Random House Publishing Group, 2015.
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(Mari) Longmire, D., Haniff, N.Z. (2022). In the Beginning, Was the Word and the Word Was Black. In: Haniff, N.Z. (eds) The Pedagogy of Action. Neighborhoods, Communities, and Urban Marginality. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0801-9_8
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