Nikky Finney Convocation
Today was one of those days that I know shaped me as a person; inspiration is flowing out of me. Wofford had a convocation today in which they recognized and commemorated the slaves that built Old Main in 1856. I've been taking a class at Wofford -- called the Black Arts Movement -- about a historical movement during history in which African-Americans advocated, through music and literature, a move towards embracing their "blackness." Before I can even talk about today, I have to say that this class is the ideal class: we aren't just in a classroom, intaking information, but instead we're forming a family as we go through the emotions of the movement together, and trying to apply it to today's world.
The convocation featured poet Nikky Finney, a brilliant artist and remarkable woman who teaches at the University of Kentucky. As a South Carolina native and daughter of a Wofford graduate, she's had a taste of the Wofford world and if she didn't know it's racial problems before, she voiced it today when she visited our class: "Wofford was showing it's slip today," she said. She wrote a poem in honor of Old Main's builders (see below) -- a line of this poem is to be etched into the glass covering a display of bricks on the basement floor of Old Main. These are the originally bricks that were layed by these fateful slaves; when they were uncovered last week, our B.A.M. class went downstairs to touch the bricks and talk about our reaction to them. In response, we also wrote poems, which we handed out in booklets at the convocation.
A note about these poems: some people believed they were a protest to Nikky Finney, which is in NO WAY true. Our class truly supports this phenomenal poet and wanted only to include more student involvement in the convocation; we wanted the student's voice to be heard. We hope, and have already found, that many of our classmates and professors support this voice and are making every effort to hear it -- by demanding more copies -- if they haven't already. I'll include mine below; the other poems are on facebook!
I'd just like to say that this day spans beyond college into the real world of which we're standing on the outskirts. This is more than race or education or politics or literature: this is life, simply put. Our decisions this early in the game will affect our evolving attitudes as we continue through this journey; if we don't make that conscious effort to evaluate the world around us and make our own conclusions about it and try to affect it in some way, we're merely clutching a string of floss that's pulling us through each day -- hoping it doesn't break or slip through our fingers. It's not just about making a mark on this world, your eternal fingerprint that can never erode away, but it's more about not living a wasted life.
Here's Nikky's poem, which she delivered with passionate voice and a rich explanation:
The Thinking Men
for the builders of Old Main, circa 1856
"Thinking has it that the workmen were Negro slaves; but whether that applies to only the common laborers or to skilled workmen I cannot say." History of Wofford College, David Duncan Wallace
We were more than fingers & endless backs. To teach us was against the law.
Our math, mind, and muscle could see beyond what they thought they had enslaved.
We knew more than we could say.
In the middle of a cow field every heart hammered purpose, nailed a learning floor, poured tower one and two one hundred feet high,
while arms & legs ballooned and sweltered in the endless daily march & task, holding close okra soup, waist beads, and the old old names back across the water.
We slide and pushed adze & auger, laid roof & wall, from east to west, all progress depending on weather, twentypennies, and architect's disposition.
We were thinking men. Our hands were living blackboards.
A true and readable account is what we wanted left behind.
The toil and task
of character planted in the soft stew of dirt, rain, oak, tar, & longleaf pulp.
From can see to can't see, in between the pegging and plugging of labor,
a man can sign his name to his grindstone task with or without budget or permission.
With or without quill or lead a signature can still be minted in vermilion mud. Who he is and the thing done, melded into his own cash & coin, as long as the walls
themselves stand tall. This was no simple field fence, some easy throw of dung,
sod & sop, meant to keep hog & mountain lion out. We raised this place
in the name of the new day coming, how we would one day be counted, along with the day to day blight of life equally wormed out.
We carved out these doors and hallways for the long grasp and bright understanding that one day would arrive, realizing all the while that those who entered might not only
fish for answer, root and dive for more than heads or tails, but also memorize for the beauty for the words themselves, even if
we could not join in the lifelong hunt for any of it ourselves.
In every arch & swirl of ruby brick there is a mix of fingernail, spit, Bantu and Gambian oil. Tin cups of elder chokecherry blood run along 226 feet & cord.
In every whorl of mud a print of history has been made great and permanent.
Math, mind, and muscle plied deep into each and every dark seam.
The part of us they could see was tethered like a mule's back.
The part they could not; our levitation into one whole sky of black & beating wing.
It took math and muscle, mortise and tenon, to build ten plus one recitation rooms,
to cut chapel (48 x 80), laboratory, office, and one museum (30 x 37).
I stood, many a day, in the shadow of the next day coming, just before the big
bell had finished sounding, just after the shout to line and circle up, testing my
mind against the tired muscle of my spine, walking the plank before myself, thinking plain, and in the loud, with reaching outstretched hands. Once done, I would bow
to the eyes of that nearly finished room, where I had cut the floor and windows through myself, making certain with rule & plane that the good sun could bounce
here and there and high enough, to reach the precious printed page. This light and learning floor was the way forward through the wilderness. Why else was it kept from
us with such force and might. They would like us to believe that some men are born to read and turn pages, while other men are born to walk on nails and turn the earth.
Our hands were living blackboards. Math, mind, and muscle, the long-drawn fingerprints of thinking men, left behind for good -- here -- in every wall.
All of this can leave a clear mark upon the world.
-- delivered March 20, 2008
Also, here's my poem that I wrote in reaction to my class experience when we went and touched the bricks: (PS the formating is weird, so it won't tab in places that it's supposed to...)
"I touched a brick today"
I touched a brick today
It was crumbling
disintegrating... dusty on my fingers
I rubbed my hands together
Hoping the dust would become
a part of me
--- whose hands touched these bricks?
when they layed
them down
It's funny how they're in a window there
Instead of looking out
I can look in
See the foundation of my school
just through a window
isn't it neat
But now the glass is gone
And instead of looking
through
from far away
I can touch
I touch
the brick
you touched
I'll never know you
Just a little glimpse instead
inside
A past I'll never know
Unless
You tell me so
I've got to look through a window
to a hole
in the wall
to get a glimpse
Isn't it pretty
that window
you would never know
the bricks are crumbling
unless
you reach out and touch them
through that glass You put
there to keep it contained
Are You scared that I might touch those bricks...
and know?
If we really cared about those brick-layers
those people, don't cha know?
We'd smash the window glass
peel the border
wrench apart the wall
direct all our staircases to it
put it on display
get a bright light to burn on it all day long
and say thank you
thank you, bricks
thank you, people
For holding up ---
our college
What a foundation
you are
Sweet bricks.
Thank you, Nikky Finney for such an inspiring day.
