My son died suddenly at 14 and a half in 1989. I have lived far longer without him than with him. I remember the morning shortly after Najeeb was born. He was in his bassinet – quiet, calm, just waking. He opened his eyes, looked at me, and smiled. It was a smile of discovery and recognition. It was the most wonderful moment of my life. He saw me and responded with joy. With all the subsequent moments of pleasure, this one is the greatest. With all the moments of pain and trauma at his loss, this moment is the greatest joy. Recalling the moment is a comfort. It’s a balm. I still feel bathed in an ointment of comfort. When I ruminate on Motherhood, I usually think of my relations with the dogs who’ve helped me manage my grief at the loss of my son. His death remains the most significant event of my life. I’ve had support from family, friends, and animals. These canine relationships help me keep my maternal muscles strong.

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The list of those killed in racist violence in the United States is long. One particularly heinous death stands above them all: the murder of Emmett Till. Emmett’s mother, Mamie, insisted that her son’s mutilated body be visible so the world could see what white violence had wrought. Murdered about a month after his fourteenth birthday, today, July 25, 2026, would have been Till’s eighty-fifth birthday.

As part of a series of short stories I’ve written that have canine narrators, A Few Whiles imagines Emmett’s dog who waits at home for him to return and his uncle’s dog who does his part to help Emmett. Recently, this dog story and several others were posted together as DOG TRIPTYCH on TORCH Literary ARTS. If you’d like to read more of this series of tales/tails (Hee, Hee), become a paid subscriber to this newsletter. Free or paid, thanks for your eyeballs.

A Few Whiles

A dog waits at home in Chicago for five years

Where is the elegy for the dog named Signal who waited at home in Chicago, in a backyard in a working-class neighborhood for the return of a boy from a Mississippi vacation?

He went to spend some summer weeks with his cousins. We didn’t want him to go – me and Mamie Mommy. But he was head-up and happy and excited to go on a trip for fun with his cousins.

Summer vacation is our time. We long for it all through the long, tedious months at McCosh Elementary School. We earn our summer frolics because we are good, we behave, we do what Mamie Mommy tells us. We long to be hot and sticky with popsicle drippings. He promised we’ll have summer when he’s back. He promised.

Waiting at the fence, on the porch. Waiting is the most of that dog’s life if truth be told. There is much running and romping and digging and all. But waiting for that boy is the largest part of it, of us. Longing. Dog longing is different. It’s perhaps less sorrowful without the realization, the certainty, that the boy will not return. Poor exhausted fool animal to wait and grieve and wait beside the back gate for five years after the summer that he didn’t come back. A couple of times she has considered putting the animal down to ease the misery of its waiting. Surely, it is more kind to ease it away from that fence, those sticks and balls and caps and jackets and sneakers, those beloved sneakers of his. She could not do that. To touch that animal’s head, to smell him, to be tugged down the street with him, was to have a fleeting feel of the boy. Let him wait if that’s what he wants. She left him to it.

My tender, sweetheart boy child. He was a tender aged child still. He wasn’t a man.

“It would appear that the state of Mississippi has decided to maintain white supremacy by murdering children.” — Roy Wilkins, head of the NAACP

Signal:

Why doesn’t he come home?

Bobsey:

The crackers who tied his body to a seventy-five-pound cotton gin fan know. They know that Signal’s boy won’t be home and they know why.

Moses Wright’s dog, Bobsey knew what he didn’t know. Bobsey figured it. Mr. Moses was scared for himself. His ass was on fire with scared. Who could blame him? Maybe he figured the milk of human kindness would keep them from killing a child. Bobsey knew better. Bobsey smelled him that last time. And Boy’s life and limb and luster was the very last thing Bobsey smelled. Bobsey understood it all. For when Bobsey ran at the man’s leg to save the boy, to slow the vicious acts, a kick came and then a bullet. Bobsey’s life oozed onto the ground. Bobsey’d set her essentials into his leg, the fat part of his calf and he had to shoot her to take her off. * Mr. Moses and ‘em cried, “Bobsey, come off!” They tried to call Bobsey off like they’d call her off a possum. Bobsey ignored ‘em.

Let me explain it this way. I smelt it all. I smelt the entire outcome. Mr. Moses and ‘em can only imagine. They’re free to hope for the best. But I smelled each and every murderous intention in the base souls of the crackers that came for Boy that night. Every muscle in me acted with the instinct to protect Boy from this horror. I put myself between Boy and ‘em killers because I knew the odor of their purpose. I did what I was able before I died. I was in The Place of All Dogs forthwith. And I witnessed the ascension of Boy’s magnificent, unblemished soul a short time later.

*Subsequent accounts of the events of August 24, 1955 do not include the fact that Roy Bryant sustained a dog bite that night.

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The year 1776 marks the founding of the United States of America. The adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, was the decisive step the 13 original colonies took to sever ties with Britain. But this grand and glorious, heroic declaration didn’t, in practice, apply to all people. In fact, it only applied to white men. Many of these founding fathers, these original white men, were slaveowners. It would be another eighty-six years before my only known ancestors became emancipated from chattel slavery and nearly one hundred more before African Americans could be considered to have full citizenship rights. The unique history of our nation’s capital is one of the things I write about in my novels. On April 16, 1862, nine months before the Emancipation Proclamation, enslaved people in the District were freed. The D.C. Emancipation Act, known as the Compensated Emancipation, manumitted around four hundred people who were enslaved in Washington, D.C., and compensated, i.e., paid their owners for the monetary loss. My direct ancestor, Alfred Clarke, was one of these people. He was ten years old and was manumitted by the ordinance along with his mother, Lizzie, and his grandmother, Mary Ann Lingon. The three had been enslaved at a tavern owned by an entrepreneurial widow, Eleanor Lang who received compensation for freeing them. The site of this tavern is now The City Tavern Club, a private social club. This building is the last remaining Federal tavern in Washington, DC, and the City Tavern Preservation Foundation preserves and stewards it in recognition of its historic significance and the events that occurred within its walls. They’ve acknowledged the lives of the enslaved who worked there and installed a photograph of Alfred Clarke to recognize his life. One moment of stunning emotion for me was while touching the original oak floor. Alfred tended to this floor; surely that would have been a job for an enslaved youngster. I wish I’d poured a libation on the planks or stomped my heels.

This photo-brooch, a family heirloom, was likely made to commemorate Alfred and Ginnie. The photo of Alfred is likely from his wedding day, while the other is of Ginnie as a very mature person. Of note: Ginnie was born a free person.

In commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, here is Frederick Douglass’ famous July 5th speech performed by the late James Earl Jones. Douglass was addressing the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society and questioned how enslaved people could celebrate U.S. Independence Day when they were kept in bondage by that same country. Jones read a portion of the historic address during a performance of "Voices of a People's History of the United States," which was co-edited by Howard Zinn. The late great historian introduced the address.

What to the slave is your Fourth of July

Typical of the era, Douglass’ entire speech is a whopping fourteen pages. But the entire speech is filled with insight, passion, and information. Read it here:

https://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1852FrederickDouglass.pdf

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would, to day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

—————Frederick Douglass

I didn’t learn the facts of my ancestor’s emancipation until after I had written a novel that includes the Compensated Emancipation and its effect on a family. Published in 2008, Stand The Storm has recently become more personal to me and my family. Through the efforts of an intrepid family genealogist, I discovered Alfred Clarke, an ancestor who was a ten-year-old boy at the time. Read more about Alfred Clarke and my reactions to this discovery: https://bit.ly/3HcuOHR

If you’d like to purchase Stand The Storm or any of my other historical fiction, check out my Bookstore.

Last week, June 5, 6, &7th, was the fourteenth annual Hobart Festival of Women Writers. We welcomed sixteen published writers to the upstate New York town of Hobart, the Book Village of the Catskills. Participating Writers read their work, conducted craft workshops, and sold their books. The atmosphere was electric! Festival 2026 brought writers from New York, Washington, D.C., Toronto, Canada, Philadelphia, PA, and Columbia, South Carolina. Read more about them at HFWW 2026.

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REGISTRATION IS OPEN! The fourteenth annual Hobart Festival of Women Writers is June 5, 6, &7th. There’s still time to register and snag a place to stay or gas up your ride for a road trip to upstate New York to Hobart, The Book Village of the Catskills, a.k.a. the official Reading Capitol of New York State. We offer three days of writing craft workshops, public readings, book sales, and an art exhibit in the beautifully inspirational Catskill Mountains. All are welcome. Workshops are suited to all levels and all genres. Join us. For more information, go to

Hobart Festival of Women Writers

And if you already know about us, you know that we produce our Festival each year with volunteers. We receive public arts funding, and we also depend on the generosity of individual supporters. People like you have made this Festival possible. We appreciate monetary support at all levels. If you can help us reach our goal for this year, please support our GoFundMe campaign. We can use your help!

This project is made possible with funds from the Delaware County Arts Grants, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered in Delaware County by the Roxbury Arts Group.

Our lives are intertwined in complex ways. Dogs have been on both sides of the racial divide and have been an integral part of the system of slavery and oppression from its beginnings in the Americas through the Jim Crow Era and up to the present day. The Ballad of Cindy Black is a story about the relationship between a man “bound out” and his companion dog in a 1930s-era turpentine camp in Florida. Listen to a reading at the link above. This repeat blogpost was inspired by the work of Zora Neale Hurston based on her WPA interviews. I was joined in this dramatic reading by Helmar Augustus Cooper, my husband. He’s a veteran of Broadway, TV, and regional theater. Accompanying the reading by Helmar and me is How Long, How Long Blues by Tampa Red, an example of the bottleneck style of blues guitar.

Read more stories in The Canine Atheneum of American History. I post one of these Curiosity Tales per month for paid subscribers. Join us and check out the next in the series. To All Subscribers: I appreciate you.

Lanky and Cheese

1870

throughout the South

The real story of Mr. Bojangles

*My life goes on and on in endless song. Over and over he sings it. We danced for those in minstrel shows and county fairs throughout the South. He tells the tale with tears of how, for fifteen years, we —me and him—traveled about. He says, “The dog up and died.” Not so. He up and took off. I died. Indeed, I did. After twenty years, he still grieves? Not so at all. It has been five years since I went stone dead in a gulley. I can still recall shivering and dying of starvation on a dirt road outside of Miseryville, Mississippi. It has been galling that, all these years – five years -- he has spoken ill of me whene’er he danced, at every chance in honky tonks, for drinks and tips. Up and died?

He grabbed his pants, a better stance

(he drank a good bit)
Oh, he jumped so high

(buck shot at his toes)
Then he clicked his heels

(buck shot at his heels)
He let go a laugh

(to keep from crying)
He let go a laugh

(to keep from howling)
Pushed back his clothes all around

(skipped out of town)

You must know how this particular dance step comes about. It is popular in certain places. Many are the tales of niggers with toes shot off and sloppy drunk crackers cavorting in roadhouses. He learned to jump high.

I met him outside a cell in New Orleans; I was down and out. I was starving, had been beaten, and had the tip of my ear bitten off in a fight. He looked to me to be the eyes of age, and he spoke right out. He talked of life, he laughed, clicked his heels, and stepped high. He said his name was Cheese, Chester Cheese, and he danced a lick. I was enthralled. And, on account that my ribs were showing, he said I ought to be known as Lanky. He fed me some of his food. It was meager but shared willingly. I answered to the moniker Lanky. We became Lanky and Cheese, a dancing duo, man and dog.

He danced in huge, worn-out shoes. I wove between his legs as he danced. I learned the rhythm easily. The folks liked me. I learned to take a full bow, my paws stretched before me, my butt high in the air, my wiry tail curled like an “s”. The folks liked that. He powdered his hair with white flour. He wore a ragged shirt and baggy pants. He liked to look as much like an old man as possible. He’d do the soft shoe, bent and humble, but lively. He jumped high. Oh, he jumped so high. Then he’d lightly touch down. He owned all of his toes, you see. He sometimes used a white handkerchief on his head to complete the look of obsequiousness. He also used it to mop up spit as we were regularly spat upon.

His disguise helped keep us on the down-low. We preferred to slink into a place quietly, tentatively. We danced softly, shuffling and chuckling, paws clicking gently, heels barely touching the floor. We were generally well received. We were a respite from the caterwauling singers and drunken fisticuffs that were popular in roadhouses.

Before I joined him, he said that he was often treated roughly. He was hounded, haunted by the shadows of burnt corpses and the casual cruelties of white boys. When we formed our alliance, I was prepared to lay down my life in defense of his. A moment comes when the pact is concrete in the mind of those like me. With me at his side, he had fewer enemies. There is an old saying amongst My Others: “Those who don’t know about a dog, just don’t know. But those who know dogs well know not to fuck with me.” I was slim, but muscular and fierce, and when I bared my essentials, assailants thought better of it. I understood that white men had guns, though—a potent equalizer.

Much of the time, he spent behind county jail bars. He drank a bit. He always drank a bit. He drank up what we earned mostly. We ate meagerly, but regularly, and I was capable of cadging scraps. We became known on a certain circuit of towns in several states. We walked between towns and, after seven years, I became too feeble to dance. Mr. Cheese was kind. He developed a more intricate buck and wing dance and allowed me to come on at the end and take a bow. My fans applauded wildly.

He shakes his head and when he shakes his head, someone asks him, “Please, Mr. Cheese, Mr. Cheese, please dance.”

After eight years at his side, I was resigned and prepared to die, and could have died the week before I did perish. He would not let me go. I had nearly smelled My Others on the breath of morning. I woke from a dream thinking that I had managed to cross to meet them. I knew this as the sign, the approach of the moment of passing. I knew that the morning would dawn, and My Others’ breath would be smelled, and I would follow them to the gathering place, The Place of All Dogs. Mr. Cheese cried and begged me. He wove his arms about my neck and wept onto my fur. He breathed into my muzzle. What could I do? I could not then abandon him even to alleviate my own suffering. I remained. I endured as best I could. I understood that, without me, he truly was alone.

I was certainly at my end the day I surrendered to starvation and cold. I understood how frightened Cheese was. I was frightened, too, and cold and so bitterly hungry that I was no longer hungry but simply bound to die. We had been broke and broken for several days, nay, nearly a week. I understood that Cheese, too, was hungry, desperately cold and frightened, oh so much so. I understood that white men hunted him. I understood that for the sport of chasing and lynching and burning him, a mob of white men said he’d raped a girl in their town. Yes, there was a girl raped that night, but by the very mob that hunted Mr. Cheese. I understood that he could not loiter – could not – should not hang about to care for me. He tried to carry me, but I was weak and heavy. We struggled along for a bit, but I weakened further. With tears streaming down his face, Mr. Cheese lay me under a tree. He covered my ears with his lips and blubbered. I died. The last sound I heard was the baying of the hound who tracked him. My eyes froze in a potent stare. “Go! Go! they urged. With a heart like a bale of hay, he hauled himself up and ran on. The lynch mob had set a consecrated hellhound on Mr. Cheese’s trail, and when it came upon me, it broke track and lingered over the aromas of me. It was fooled into thinking that, having been so recently held by Mr. Cheese, I was the object of its search. It lingered, and my essences hovered close and beguiled it. I was very happy to do this service for Mr. Cheese, to help him escape. Mr. Cheese slipped away successfully, and I did reach The Place of All Dogs.

But let the record show that, in truth, Chester Cheese left Lanky on that road five years ago, and he perished. He did not “up and die.”

I did not leave him.

* title of a song by Joey Curtin

In 1623, New Netherland was established at New Amsterdam (the southern tip of Manhattan Island). Michael Reyniersz Pauw received a land grant from the Dutch West India Company to establish a patroonship on the condition that he would establish a settlement of not fewer than fifty persons within four years. He chose the west bank of the Hudson, or North River (also known as Muhheakanttuck), and purchased or took the land from the Lenape who resided there. This grant is dated November 22, 1630, and is the earliest known record of European settlement at what are now Hoboken and Jersey City. All Dutch West India stockholders were authorized to buy (or steal) land from the Native Americans and set up patroonships that replicated the feudal lordships of Europe. Enslaved people were brought to the area as agricultural laborers. Slavery in New Jersey: A Troubled History

There were canines on the American continent before the Europeans arrived. The Spanish enslavers brought fearsome mastiffs to assist in controlling the people they imported into slavery. The legendary Dogo Cubano, now extinct, was one of those breeds.

Canine breeds like the Dogo Cubano were used extensively to track, subdue, and attack enslaved individuals in the Americas. In short order, through disease and selective breeding, indigenous canines were subsumed by the new arrivals.

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The New York City draft riots (July 13–16, 1863) were violent disturbances in New York City widely regarded as the culmination of working-class discontent with new laws passed by Congress that year to conscript men to fight in the Civil War. Protests turned into a race riot against African Americans. see: NYC Draft Riots. Maritcha Remond Lyons(1848 - 1929), an educator, suffragist, civic leader, and author, taught in the Brooklyn public schools and served as an assistant principal. Her memoir, Memories of Yesterdays: All of Which I Saw and Part of Which I Was (1928), though unpublished, includes a breathtaking account of the burning of her family’s home. It is the only first-person account of the Draft Riots by an African American woman. Read more about Lyons in a YA book by Tonya Bolden, Maritcha: A Remarkable Nineteenth-Century Girl. This month’s Dog Story for paid subscribers is a fictionalized account of the harrowing events witnessed by Maritcha’s dog, Saddles.

All of Which I Saw:

Maritcha Lyons and her dog, Saddles

Father loves me, though he likes to fuss about me. He loves me because I love, above all, to catch and kill rats. I’m a rat terrier true to name and calling. My ferocity with rats is matched only by my sweet gentleness with anyone else. It’s only rats I’m after. Single-minded. Single duty. Father Lyons brought me home one day, declaring to Mother Lyons that my mother was known to be a champion ratter, an animal that gamblers even wagered upon for her acumen with rat catching. This fact is 100% true. My mother was legendary. I have not disappointed Father. Their lovely home was unfortunately on a street known to harbor thousands of rats. I’m formidable when it comes to rodents. They cross our threshold but once.

Alas, we have lost our threshold to the mob.

We’ve become vagabonds. We had to flee our home. We left most everything. Maritcha leapt over the back fence just ahead of Mother as Father told her to. He helped Mother onto a ladder, and she hoisted herself over. Maritcha reached up to guide Mother over the fence and clutched me to her chest, afraid to let me loose. The mob had entered our house. We lifted up our skirts and high-tailed down Lispenard Street.

We were taken in by friends. Dr. and Mrs. Reason are kind people. They’ve taken us in after all. I fear for many others who fled and continue to flee from this mob. Maritcha held her tongue when Mrs. Meanlady - Mrs. Reason - said she didn’t need a ratter in her house because it was free of rodents. “Saddles is a lapdog. She is clean,” Maritcha said. Under her breath, I knew she’d added that I was cleaner than most people. Our gracious hosts have said I must not come to the bedroom; I must not sleep in Maritcha’s bed. I overheard Mother Lyons tell Marticha when she pulled the covers under her chin, kissed her nose, and begged her not to pout, that I was far cleaner than the cook’s ears. Marticha giggled. Nevertheless, I am relegated to the back of the pantry. That was a concession. The cook wanted me outside of the house altogether. Imagine the cook’s delight when, on the morning following my first night there, I had rid her pantry of twenty-three mice and two rats and had left this glorious pile of carcasses in the middle of her kitchen floor. She shrieked with glee.

I’ve been told by Maritcha, who was told by Mother Lyons, who was promised by Father Lyons that this is a temporary billet. We will have our own home again soon. My moniker, Saddles, is a reference to the black and brown splotched saddle-type of markings on the white fur around my midsection. It is said that I appear to wear a horse’s saddle. Occasionally, Maritcha will prop dolls on my back and pretend that they can put their feet into stirrups on my flanks. She calls me her dog-and-pony. Though she has grown to the verge of full womanhood, Maritcha is still playful and easy to delight. She is greatly entertained when I shrug off the silly dollies, and they fall beneath me. I love to hear her laugh. I am, however, a fierce fucker by nature and by a sincere, intelligent dedication to my duties: alert and persistent.

We sneaked back to the house on Vandewater Street. Father and Mother Lyons did not know. Maritcha thought about her box, her repository, her special thimble, her bible, her ribbons. She had to get back inside the vandalized house to get it. It was certain to be there despite the fire if the floor had not been eaten away.

The house was ghostly. The least of it was that it smelled smoky. The aromas were various. All our things were burnt and singed and had a distinctly tragic aroma. The curtains had all been ripped away. Daylight through the windows was harsh. It illuminated the mess in the rooms and displayed it for all to see. So many different things had burned, but not everything. Many things were also ruined because of the water used to douse the flames. Our furniture was broken. Our things were scattered across the floor. Maritcha and I stood on the stoop, turned to look across the street, and saw that our neighbor’s house – the home of a white woman who had a black son – was burned completely to the ground. The woman sat in the shell of it with soot on her cheeks.

When we opened the front door, I smelled human urine in the rooms. I hoped that Maritcha did not detect it, that her nose was confused by smoke. A man was in there! He was rummaging through upturned and broken drawers. He was stuffing jewelry and whatnots in his pockets. I barked. He was surprised and froze still. Maritcha screamed. I ran at him. He shook me off his pant leg. I ran at him again as he turned and grabbed Maritcha.

“Shut your black trap!” he yelled into her face. This time, I latched onto his leg, and he howled. If you would call the strangled, cowardly sound he made a howl. The pain I caused his ankle made him furious with Maritcha. He snatched at Maritcha’s shoulder and ripped her dress. She made a sound that was constricted by her shock, and the man put his hand over her mouth. She tried to scream again. “Bite! Bite him, Maritcha! Don’t waste energy screaming. Bite!” I barked. He wouldn’t dare put his hands so near my essentials! With one hand over her mouth, he thrust his other beneath her dress and tore at her underclothes. I circled furiously then catapulted myself up onto his thigh. I bit him. He howled. I held onto his pants, then jumped away. Again, I circled to gather my momentum, leapt up higher onto his leg, sunk my essentials, and took a powerful chack of him. He took his hands off Maritcha to get free of me. I kicked at him with my rear legs and bit him nearly to the bone on my second pass. Then I leapt away so he could run off. I followed him to the door and barked my full-throated repertoire as he limped down the street. I have a surprisingly deep voice when I am truly and angrily aroused.

I harked out saliva and let it drip off my essentials to flush the taste of his leg from my mouth. He was one of those despicable men who had burned and pillaged our neighborhood. What a shame I could not do him more damage. These white men, these mostly Irish white men, are in a tizzy of anger because of the draft. They’re being conscripted to fight in the Union Army, being made to fight on behalf of the very folks they are terrorizing in our town. These white mobs have ransacked or destroyed buildings known for association with colored people: two churches, the homes of abolitionists, and many black homes. The Colored Orphan Asylum at Fifth Avenue was burned to the ground. The poor children stood on the sidewalk and watched their home being eaten up by flames. Ah, these whites were pissed because of the new Draft Law and, as always, they visited their rage upon colored folks.

I shook my ears in dismay, and they made the sound of soft leather flapping against itself. I do not understand. I understand motivations, I think. I see actions. I have the instinct to act according to the things I see, hear, and smell. I wish I had heard him sooner and somehow kept Marticha from entering. But why had we come back to the house? What was so important in that box that we have risked this trouble to retrieve it?

I hate to smell Maritcha crying. I feel my chest expanding, growing bigger, when I hear her tears. But why, Maritcha? Why did we come back for this box? She retrieved it from the floorboard and opened it. She sat on the floor in a lump of flesh and dress, crying, and opened the box. I came to her side and licked her cheek. She smiled. Yes, there was her special thimble, her bible, her velvet ribbons, a small embroidered handkerchief – no doubt worked by herself – containing a clipping of softly kinky black hair that had belonged to Josie, Josephine, her little sister who had died from croup the year before.

Though it is unpublished, Lyons’ memoir and photographs of herself and her family are included in the Harry A. Williamson Papers at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library.

Our first president’s slave owning past is well documented and acknowledged. The names of specific people whose enslaved status he actively sought to maintain by cycling them in and out of free Philadelphia were inscribed on panels at The National Park Service’s President’s House. Washington’s efforts to deny freedom to one of these people were thwarted when Ona Judge escaped from the President’s House and survived Washington’s efforts to recover her. That was before the National Park Service, under a mandate from the Trump Administration, caved and had the informational panels removed with crowbars. National Park Service dismantles slavery exhibit in Philadelphia. We know Washington suffered from dental problems and that he used teeth from his enslaved people to create dentures. The practice was not rare; it was available to wealthy slaveowners. I’ve created a character in His Teeth, one of my Dog Stories, who reacts to their master’s new dentures.

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For the past several years, I’ve been working on a series of stories I call Curiosity Tales. If I were being clever, I would call them Curiosity Tails. Ha. Ha. These stories involve canines, i.e., dogs as narrators and protagonists. I’ve put these pseudo-humans in historical settings in American history. They live their lives as witnesses to the racial dynamics in the U.S., from the first European encounters to the modern Civil Rights movement. They’re working companions who have helped to settle the country. They are implicated in the brutal system of Atlantic slavery as hunters, trackers, and attackers. Yet they are also the domestic companions who live on both sides of the so-called racial divide. They are the heroic animals who brought life-saving serum to the city of Nome, Alaska. Humans have bred, developed, and trained dogs to do jobs that, by and large, no longer exist in the twenty-first century. Most of our Buddies and Queenies are now sofa surfers. The narrators of these stories use their remarkable olfactory skills, instincts about human behavior, and empathy to offer an alternative perspective on American history.

I am posting one story a month behind a modest paywall beginning in February 2026. If you find the stories compelling, please share them, comment on them, and bring other readers to my work. I hope those of you who’ve been faithful followers of this free Substack will consider paying a nominal fee to access these unique stories. To whet your appetite, I’m posting January’s story free to all.

Listen to my reading of the story. The full text is below.

A DOG OF HIS MASTER

Bledsoe Plantation

Eastern Shore, Maryland

1853

My father, the dog who fathered me, the one who fucked my mother and gave my siblings and me a start, was a tracker of people, of Negroes. He was beautiful, black and tan, with an impressive howl, with ears flat to his head hanging gracefully on either side of a face with large knowing eyes. My mother was like many of us who are undistinguished as to a breed. She was proudly a blended animal. She was, I thought, beautiful.

My illustrious father was a coonhound. He was lauded for his skill in hunting and treeing raccoons and Negroes. He was touted as having a superb “cold” nose, a talent for tracking long after the scent of the quarry had dissipated. His master adored him. The master fed him well. The master brushed him near a roaring fire. The master spoke to him in a bright, kind, authoritative voice. My father was unfailingly, unquestioningly staunch, and he never hesitated to act upon his master’s command.

He was given free rein. He was not penned or chained, leashed, or tethered in any way. He spent the long afternoons when the bond people bent over their work, sleeping in the shade of a tree. At dusk, my father roused himself and walked about his master’s entire estate, taking note of all the things that belonged to his master. He memorized the specific, discrete scent of each belonging so that, if the thing went missing, it could be more easily located with my father’s assistance. My father’s instinct was that he could find anything or anyone that was wanted by his master.

The master’s people, his bond people, were wary of my father, and some hated him. He scrutinized them with his amber-colored eyes, standing at the perimeter of the fields and barns and workplaces, taking in their scents, taking stock of them, registering, and accounting for them with his great nose. But they dared not menace him. We puppies played with the bond children but were often kicked off and chased away by the grown folks. It hurt me that I might be thought a traitor to the little ones who scratched my ruff and plucked my ears. We puppies were not like my father at all. We were very different dogs.

My father had no companions, yet all of the bitches on the estate were available to him when they were available. My mother was one of many mates, and I am one of the many progenies of my father. Father was loved by his master only. His bitches did not care for him. My mother and the others often growled and clacked teeth about his cruelty, his absolute power, that he cared only about the master. We offspring knew little, were mostly in great awe of him.

My father was finally poisoned. Finally, I say because he was trained in the avoidance of unauthorized meals and treats, and it was widely known that my father would take no edible thing from any hand but his master’s. It was necessary to protect him from being poisoned by a runner readying to fly off to freedom who needed a cover of silence and no dog that remembered the scent of them. What then accounts for his horrible death of heaving, his ribs convulsing, and then his collapse in a huge splat of blood, vomit, and saliva? How did my father ingest the virulent poison that felled him? Which person dared to poison this dog?

The women in the household fell under immediate suspicion since it was poisoning. Even the master’s wife was questioned sharply by him because she had a well-known animus toward all dogs. The woman who cooked for the master and prepared the food for the dog was, of course, the chief suspect. My mother always felt this woman’s kindness, her largesse with bones and gristle. She was beaten and punched by the master and left in a semi-conscious state while pots and pans of hot boiling food were thrown upon her. We bitches were, as always, hungry. But we did not advance upon her to lick off this food, to cool the fire on her skin. We were too frightened. My mother and I turned tail and ran. The other bitches rounded up their pups and fled in confusion, too. Flames consumed rags and other flammables lying on the kitchen floor and, as flames will do, ate up the cook and the cookhouse and headed toward the other structures.

We bitches ran for other regions, and the scent of burning flesh rang in our nostrils like bells, tolled in our heads. My father’s flesh was among those I smelled in the destruction of the master’s house. It was an irony that my father had been an elite scent hound. I can never be so keen as that because of my mixed breed nature. But I smelled him. I stood beside my mother, whose obsidian eyes brimmed with emotions. She loved my father and hated him, too. On the crest of a hillock well beyond the fire’s perimeter, we stood still, our mouths open slightly, our nostrils wide. We smelled him on the breeze, and we smelled him on our fur for many days.

I don’t believe my father should have tracked down the enslaved ones though it was his job. One bondsman was the daddy of a girl who petted me and cooed to me and caused me to wee-wee with puppy glee. She had delightful, twisted tails of hair on either side of her head behind her ears. Her daddy ran away from the master, and the master sent my father after him. This little girl collapsed and cried because, like everyone else, including her mother, my mother, us pups, and all the other bitches, she knew my father would not fail to track and tree her daddy. I don’t believe my father would have hunted and treed the man if given a choice. The man had been whipped to the point of death, and his run, consuming the last ounce of life in him, was futile. Essentially, my father was sent after dying prey. And a coonhound is meant to track the living and running, not retrieve, as some breeds do, what the master already killed. There is a bone of dignity in a coonhound. After all, Father’s line descends from a much-respected Virginia coonhound and a venerable Bloodhound. Father’s pedigree is far more distinguished than the master’s.

That day, I glimpsed the indecision on my father’s nose; it twitched, dimpled, hardened to its resolve, and only then did he act on his master’s command. I saw my father’s secret. He had a mind of his own. He was not simply a tool, not just a dog of his master. And it was this that sealed his fate and made him despicable to me. Why did he not turn on his master? He could sink his *essentials into this man and free us all from tyranny. Why should this one man rule my father’s good nature, his best nature? My mother did not care about his moral compass. She was frightened of him and the master. She was, though, smitten with his appearance, as were all the bitches. All of the bitches yip yapped about his long and lovely ears, were enamored of his howl. I was not so fond of his looks or his voice. I wanted him to be as honorable a dog as he was beautiful. And by honorable, I meant that he must be a dog who was true to his breed nature and fair, a dog who would not tree a man who was nearly dead.

What a silly, little bitch I was then! Sadly, my father was not that kind of dog. He had qualms about doing his master’s bidding in tracking people, the belongings that wandered off from his master’s lair. Still, he surveilled and scented and tracked and treed and facilitated the enslavement of many people despite these misgivings. He was relentless that night. He followed the running man’s bloody footsteps for miles. The master enjoyed the outing until the quarry ruined the fun by dying at the foot of a tree.

Even more tragic for my father that night was his master’s realization that he’d hesitated to carry out a direct order, that he had considered some other course of action than what his master ordered. Was this the first time the master had seen this hesitation in my father? Did he see the disquiet in my father’s dark gold eyes and come to mistrust him? Did the master fear my father could be coerced to betray him? Was it merely that he abhorred being disobeyed, even with a notion?

Who can say what the master thinks? Mother and I believe the master poisoned my father. Most of the other bitches and their pups agree. Who but the master could have convinced my father to take a poisoned cake? How had the poor cook been able to get my father to eat from her hand, she who was so afraid of him? He watched her most especially for her proximity to the master’s bounty. Most likely, the master got rid of my father, a dog he could no longer fully trust. And once he’d begun to beat on the old, mammy cook, he knew he could no longer trust her to prepare his food.

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The Emancipation Proclamation became official on January 1, 1863. The Presidential Executive Order issued by Abraham Lincoln manumitted about 3.5 million enslaved people in the Confederate States. My great-grandfather, Alfred Clarke, had already been freed in April 1862 by the District of Columbia’s Compensated Emancipation Act that paid slave owners in Washington, D.C. for the slaves that were freed. Alfred was a child of ten, living and working in a tavern frequented by the wealthy and notable in Washington. We know little about his life. His mother and grandmother were also freed after having spent their entire lives as enslaved persons. He married a woman born free, and he earned a living as a stevedore in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington. The only tangible connection we have to Alfred and his wife, Jennie, is a brooch and a pair of cufflinks featuring their images. No doubt, these items were produced as commemorative pieces after their deaths.

For a historical novelist, finding information about a loved one who experienced a particular historical event is a boon to creative inspiration. I wrote a short story that imagines the thoughts and feelings of an enslaved woman on the last night of bondage, at the dawn of a new legal reality, and perhaps the dawn of a new life. How did Alfred’s Mother, Lizzie, and his grandmother, Mary Ann, feel on that last night before freedom? African American tradition was to watch solemnly through the night and greet the dawning of the new freedom with celebration. In recognition of the lives the enslaved led on the path to freedom, I offer this story.

Blue Dawn

My leg shakin’ and shakin’. I dance when I sit tonight. Tonight, with the boy’s head in my lap, I tap my foot and clomp and stomp on the floor boards.

“Careful you don’t wake ‘im. Let’m sleep,” Mama said.

She right. But he don’t stir. He all in like ev’ry night. Boy can sleep. He put ‘imself to rest. He goin’ rest easy on ‘morrow. He goin’ free.

Mama say, “He a baby. What can freed be to him?”

I think to pinch ‘im to wake ‘im, but Mama’s right. Let a weary child sleep. Him with a peanut head resting on my arm like the little nut next to its partner. This the las’ night! They goin’ toll the church bells all over Georgetown. He won’t miss nothin’. They goin to toll bells. Bells will wake him to freed. Won’t even be dawn when the bells commence. Soon as the midnight bell’s tolled, them sister bells will start to sing out the new. Church bells will sing out as soon as the last day of bondage is over. This night’s the king of all nights before. Them bells goin’ wake the dead. No hush! No quiet before this dawn!

Hallelujah! When the midnight bell ring, I stand up and cavort. My little bun don’t rouse up. I lift ‘im into my arm like I ain’t done since the first time. I carry him and he clutch round my neck, his mossy hair smelling like a horse stall, but he don’t rouse. Mama jump up and slam her feet against the floor boards. She cry out a word I ain’ ever heard. She calling somebody?

White people sad. They shootin’ in the air to scare us. They crying ‘cause colored happy. That’s the way. They don’t wan’ colored beside ‘em. They wan’ us head down and cringin’. Huh! They shits out the same hole as us do. Ask the gal dumps out the pot. The Ma’am went up country in her carriage. She got plenty bond people there still. She ‘on’t want to see dawn in town, hear them bells, know we walking off.

I’ma sit here while the bells ring. The fire gone low a long time back. Mama put a cover over me and the child, his soupy arms dangling down my side. She pat and thump us soft while she doin’ it. April air’s still cool. Spring juices set to run. I’m goin’ sit here with the boy’s head

in my lap, and Let the las’ day go, let the dawn come. It come blue!

This story first appeared in NOW, an online journal of the Hobart Festival of Women Writers. Link to NOW and read the refreshing and insightful work of women authors who have participated in our annual Festival of Women Writers. NOW is edited by Breena Clarke, Cheryl Clarke, and Esther Cohen.

For more information, go to Hobart Festival of Women Writers

George Floyd is unlikely. He was an ordinary looking, goofy-looking guy. He was what I, as a teenager, would have called “funny-looking.” He was not handsome and erudite as Martin Luther King, Jr. was. MLK was a titan with a big voice and bold ideas. He had a dream. MLK had the good looks that women of my youth thought were handsome. He had the neatly dressed, naughty-pious look of a preacher’s son. He was the sort of person who could lead and did. George Floyd was not. Floyd obviously was not a great speaker or natty dresser. He was not a heroic army veteran like Medgar Evers. He was certainly no Barack Obama with a toothpaste commercial smile and an elite education. He probably couldn’t have been elected to anything. He was an ordinary person not at all like the Civil Rights luminaries. His portrait is not hanging next to Jesus, the Good Shepherd on anyone’s grandmother’s wall except his.
Nevertheless, in our image-obsessed culture, he is the icon of 21st-century Civil Rights. It’s hard to believe. I mean, he is so ordinary. Yet his simple declaration, his dying declaration – “I can’t breathe,” galvanized people – white and black. King and Evers didn’t get to say their last words. They didn’t say anything we can put on a shirt. (Well, “I Have A Dream” does work well on t-shirts) And that phrase – “I can’t breathe” - is symbolic of what is happening, one of the many things happening. In this country of boundless air and water and land, there is somehow a premium on air – that to allow everybody to breathe and thrive means that others cannot. The capitalist lie is that there is not enough for all to have a portion. Those in power mete out influence, and it is primarily white people who thrive. Oh, let a few Clarence Thomases through if they are willing to betray their fellow people of color.

Why would you kneel on someone’s neck until they’d died? If seeing is believing, then a lot of white people saw police brutality first-hand. Darnella Frazier, the brave teenager who recorded a video of George Floyd’s death, was recognized by the Pulitzer board in 2021 for civilian activism. Take that, Donald Trump! I am still in awe of her courage and her steady hand. Her bravery gives me hope that there will be justice if there are young people like her. We must remember her name. Darnella. Darnella. Darnella. I hope I can be as courageous in the face of brutality.

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The first beautiful thing I encountered, that I remember with clarity, was a morning glory or a clump of morning glories wound along a fence, the fence in our backyard facing the alley in Washington, D.C., where I grew up. I remember being very young and little, and I must have remarked on the flower, and my father, a person that I worshipped then and now, told me that the flower was called a Morning Glory and explained that they would close their petals, then open again in the sunlight, then close again. The color was the most beautiful violet. I remember that purple in a way that has ever after been my idea of pretty. That lovely color and the aggressive way they grow, and the aggressive beauty are, to me, miraculous. A neighbor’s fence in my current neighborhood was heavy with vines last year. With the onset of winter, the vines were trimmed all the way back. I thought they’d be completely devastated, that they would not return with warm weather. But miraculously, they’re back! They were only trimmed – probably the best thing, too. They are resilient. They are not easily discouraged. They are beautiful. They are simple. What better metaphor for my aspirations? In the seventh decade since I first saw one, I still think they are the most beautiful flowers I have ever encountered.

Jumping At The Woodside is a thrilling jazz number. It is lively in the extreme. It is the brilliant confluence of horns driven by Count Basie’s piano. In fact, if you think I might be dead, play it. If there is life left in me, I will rise up and dance. I published a story some years ago about a woman’s recollection of her jitterbug dancing youth. Jumping At The Woodside is THE jitterbug anthem. I invite you to read the story, listen to the music, and keep it handy for the next big horror. This song is guaranteed to lift your spirits. If not, see a doctor. You are going to want to hear this version featuring Lester Young, Buck Clayton, Count Basie, and others:

Jumping At The Woodside

Check out my narration of the story:

Jumping At The Woodside

“Is the meatloaf repeating on you, Ma?” Dennis asked Iris. He was going to tease his wife, Janeera, about her cooking, but then he looked at his mother again. She seemed seriously, desperately bilious. She was bent over, and he feared she was going to throw up on her shoes.

Iris ran to the bedroom instead of the bathroom, though, and Janeera followed her. Iris sat on the side of the bed away from the door. Janeera smiled. Most older church women are too vain to show off their bare shoulders. The boat neckline of Iris’ dress exposed her neck, back and shoulders. Iris’ skin was still unmarked by skin tags, moles and flab. Her skin was dark brown, warm like coffee if you like yours dark roast. Her shoulders were shaking now.

Dennis and Janeera had recently put up a framed poster of a painting by Diego Rivera to complete their living room decor. When Iris saw it that evening, she was startled. It was as if she saw something more sinister in the picture than just the naked back and buttocks of a beautiful, young woman. Too polite to suck her teeth, she grunted softly. She folded her arms and rolled her eyes at the picture before turning away.

Dennis and Janeera were surprised. They thought the Rivera poster was beautiful. Even so many degrees removed from an original oil on canvas, it was compelling and dominated the wall. Dennis thought it was his mother’s lack of sophistication and her prudishness that caused her to disapprove of it. Janeera disliked the posture of submission depicted, but it was hardly cheesy art.

Then, when the cd player shuffled in "Jumping At The Woodside," Iris had begun to look ill. At the first, ominous bars of Lester Young’s version of the tune, she bolted out of the room. What could be wrong with her?

“Ma! Ma!” Dennis cried out.

Janeera entered and sat on the side of the bed next to Iris. She patted the top of Iris’s hand. Immediately, Iris started to tell her a story.

The shy, retiring woman who had worked for twenty years on the night cleaning crew at the Bureau of Engraving had also been a semi-legendary, award-winning jitterbug dancer in and around Rutherfordton, N.C., her hometown. In her last year of high school, Iris gathered her loose-limbed body, her unerring sense of rhythm and her dedicated practice of dance steps and entered the Jump And Jive Time Review Radio Program’s jitterbug contest. She won and she earned the title Queen of The Jitterbug.

“No matter how hard she toiled Honey always had plenty juice left for dancing,” Iris said wistfully. She and her sister, Hannah called Honey, spent hours listening to the radio and putting together routines. “Honey was easy-going and energetic where most of the women of Ruffton were not. Ruffton was what we called the town. Everybody did - black and white. Honey liked to whirl around and stretch her muscles even when she was mopping and dusting and cooking.” In the framed photograph on Iris’s dresser Honey is tall and lean. She is pretty. She is caught in a moment of youthful loveliness that can’t be spoiled by her dowdy chamber maid’s uniform.

“For hours on Saturdays me and Honey jumped and hollered and worked out dance steps. Honey would push the radio louder and wipe and buff the floor to put on a glossy surface. We danced all over that floor in our slips and white socks. When we were done, we were wringing wet and smelly. Then Honey heated up the water and filled the tin lizzie for our baths while I pushed the furniture back.

“It paid off when the Jump And Jive Time Review announced a contest. How it went was that each girl who entered danced a set with Shorty Green, the show’s MC. The girl would show off her own stuff and keep stepping with Shorty and follow his intricate moves without faltering,” she explained.

Framing with Shorty was sublime. Anticipation, recognition and follow-through – he and Iris had it all together as a couple. They held each other in a magnetic whirl of arms, legs, butts and whiplash necks. Iris had an unerring instinct for anticipating Shorty’s moves. The first time she bounded over Shorty’s head she simply knew that he would hold onto her.

“Jitterbugging is a couples’ dance, Baby,” Iris said to Janeera. “It’s the give and the take of the dance that stirs folks up. Phew! It was a thrill, something like skinny dipping. I could really go when I let loose, I will tell you. My feet hardly touched the ground. I tooted my butt and backed into Shorty. I did it all!"

Iris took up Janeera’s two hands in hers as though she meant to pull her up and show her the steps. But instead, she rocked back and forth. "’Jumping At The Woodside’ was the song! By the time the clarinet comes in the dancers are about to collapse. Oh, oh, o-o-o-! Whee!" she cried and kissed Janeera’s hands.

“Some church people around town really disapproved of the jitterbug. Bumping and gliding and sliding and being handled around the hot spots displeased the saints. Oh, I showed my panties in more than a few towns in that part of North Carolina. Honey sewed them up for me. They were pretty -- different colors.” She called out the towns and chuckled as she remembered each one.

"You're a beautiful girl," Shorty had told her as though he were surprised to realize it. Fully dressed Iris was not the ideal of the day. She was too lean and straight. But naked she was a jewel. Her lean was lovely muscled and fluid.

“You ought to relax yourself, girl. You're too tensed up," he said, kneading her spinal column. "You should not never put your clothes on again.”

When Iris looked at the girl in the Rivera picture, she figured that girl must have been like her -- a pretty, little dumb bunny. The country towns were full of them. Iris smiled wanly and cupped Janeera’s chin.

“Honey always said not to show a man your bosoms. I say you can’t trust them with your back either,” Iris laughed and snorted lightly.

Iris told Janeera then that she never actually married Shorty, Dennis’ father. He was looking for a Queen -- a partner for only a moment or two. There was no piece of paper. There was no divorce. The only proof and substance and bond between Iris and Shorty had been Dennis and a handful of jitterbug programs.

“I think I loved him, Iris said. “I know I enjoyed myself with him It was a wonderful summer. It was full hallelujah the whole time.” She looked sheepish then and put her hand over her mouth.

Iris gave up jitterbugging when she came to Washington and went to work. She could have kept it up at the church dances or the Oddfellows’ balls, but she didn’t.

Janeera rose and went out to tell her husband that Iris was okay. A languid, bluesy tune was playing in the other room.

“Women’s business. I’ll tell you later,” she said and went back to the bedroom.

When Janeera returned, Iris was still sitting on the bed and still sitting bolt upright. She jumped up to illustrate a few dance steps, tears drying on her face. She showed Janeera the two- step and the rump roll. She still had good legs. She executed a high kick and hooted, “Honey and me could link arms and bring our legs up to our ears!” For her finale, Iris did a perfect split.

“Oh Iris, please get up . . uh . . . don’t . .” Janeera wailed. Iris went completely flat to the floor with her arms flung in the air. Janeera reached toward her to hoist her, but she rose back up from the floor on her own and looked triumphant.

“You know my mother and father died of the influenza when I was very young. My grandma and Honey brought me up. When I left home, I had only my baby inside me,” she said, gesturing toward the bedroom door and toward the grown man on the other side of it. Janeera smiled imagining Dennis as something so small -- a zygote, a fetus. Dennis unplanned. Iris unmarried. Of course, Janeera knew this already. She and Dennis kept no secrets from each other.

Iris took Janeera’s hands again and folded them between her own. After a moment, the two women went back to the living room.

“Hey, Ma, are you all right?” Dennis asked.

“Your mother can do a split clear down to the floor!” Janeera said. He winced. “Yes, she can. Believe it.”

This story was first published in The Washington Post Magazine in January 2009.

NOW online journal

From the Editors

How does a crone, elder, senior, or old woman writer coalesce a range of experiences to produce an understanding of the past, future, and the “moment”? NOW Crone Special Issue features the work of “vintage” Participating Writers of the Hobart Festival of Women Writers. Poets, fiction writers, and essayists share their perspectives on aging, activism, fire, muses, and inspiration.

The Festival of Women Writers has become an annual and highly anticipated event in Hobart, the Reading Capital of New York State. This year’s Festival occurs on June 6, 7, 8. In celebration of twelve years of offering a platform for the work of Women Writers, NOW, the Festival’s on-line publication, features current and past Festival Writers, specifically addressing the issue of getting to be old women.

Contributors to NOW are current and former Participating Writers at The Hobart Festival of Women Writers. The editors of NOW are Breena Clarke, Cheryl Clarke, and Esther Cohen.

Come to Hobart and join us for the Festival of Women Writers 2025 on June 6, 7, & 8th.

Workshop spots are still open.
Register HERE

For the complete schedule, click HERE

The Cleveland Gazette, an African American newspaper, suggested in 1886 that the Statue of Liberty's torch not be lit until the United States became a free nation "in reality":

"Liberty enlightening the world," indeed! The expression makes us sick. This government is a howling farce. It cannot or rather does not protect its citizens within its own borders. Shove the Bartholdi statue, torch and all, into the ocean until the "liberty" of this country is such as to make it possible for an inoffensive and industrious colored man to earn a respectable living for himself and family, without being ku-kluxed, perhaps murdered, his daughter and wife outraged, and his property destroyed. The idea of the "liberty" of this country "enlightening the world," or even Patagonia, is ridiculous in the extreme. More about The Cleveland Gazette

Speaking of Liberty — speaking of statues, The Statue of Liberty is only a short distance from the Dunkin Donuts Office of Immigration Troublefixing near Journal Square in Jersey City, New Jersey. So, pull up a chair and grab a dark roast, Emma Lazarus, I got a scene for you. There’s a Dunkin Donuts near the Journal Square Transportation Center, as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey calls it. The Port Authority is the rogue that charges high fares and gives bad service for people traveling between New York and New Jersey. Dunkin Donuts is the working person’s coffee cafe on the outer perimeter of the station complex across from a huge, ugly Beaux Arts bank building that stands in ridiculous contrast to the workday world around it. The entire complex is undergoing a metamorphosis that promises to offer more comfort and access for commuters. We’ll see. In Dunkin' Donuts, there are plastic seats and small tables, seriously jostled for. This is the spot for the tired catching the crosstown bus and taking a blow inside until it comes, or the poor snagging a hot cup of joe and a donut on a budget. The huddled masses yearning to be free are huddled here at the plastic tables, too. They come to meet the low overhead, sympathetic immigration lawyer/fixer who waits at a table in the back. They come in looking nervous, often brought by a friend, and introduced to a middle-aged man with an attaché case and papers spread out on a table. He tells them to go get a coffee at the counter and they do. Maybe they get a muffin or donut. He has a coffee and a donut on the table before him as well. They fix up their coffee and sip and tell him details in Spanish and there is a lot of conversation and there is hand shaking.

People who are waiting for people having physical therapy at the facility around the corner are nursing coffee here, too, and are looking around at folks, though they try not to seem to be. These folks take pains not to appear too vulnerable to snatch and grab. People who’ve just done the therapy come into Dunkin Donuts afterwards for a coffee pick up and a beloved donut before getting on the bus or the senior citizen jitney. There’s stiff competition for the precious plastic seats and tables. The immigration fixers at the back take up several seats and one large table. They are inviolable. The Indian American franchisee of this location doesn’t want to change anything in his spot. He knows this is a Dunkin Donuts of distinction. It is a landmark. You can say to someone, “Meet me in front of the Dunkin Donuts near Journal Square, across from that bank.” Yes. People know that if they have immigration trouble and know somebody who knows this fellow who meets people at Dunkin’ Donuts they go there. I guess he doesn’t charge a lot because he doesn’t keep an office. The people he speaks with, who talk to him, seem less worried when they leave. Not all are Spanish speakers. Some converse in creole. Our community and our DD are diverse. The women, who are still a bit youthful, are getting plump and are not pleased about it. They have a peculiar way of eating the dry, tasteless donuts they buy to go with the coffee, to seem to be in Dunkin’ Donuts for some reason other than to meet the fixer. Still, these donuts taste like sand, though it is a donut and who can pass on a donut when you’re on a diet and you get a chance to have a no guilt donut because you have to seem to be there in Dunkin Donuts for the coffee and donuts.

Some DD locations are senior citizen meeting spots. A store near me had a very elderly woman working at the counter alongside several Indian immigrant women with poor language skills. Things were generally friendly and smooth until the day a couple of elderly men started arguing and began throwing cups of coffee all over. The young women shrieked, and the elderly woman called the cops who did not hurry to respond. By the time they got there, the chief instigator had crept off to the parking lot and driven away at ten miles an hour.

I like their coffee, especially the dark roast. I like their gritty ambience. But I’m putting them down now. Lucky for me, Jersey City has gotten hipper, has got more coffee shops and restaurants. My brunch posse and I have got lots of choices. I feel betrayed by DD. They used to be a “for the people” franchise, or so I thought. They were never as chic and pricey as Starbucks. They specialized in basic, tasty regular old joe (and strangely tasteless donuts). They’ve rolled back their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs to curry favor with the oligarch in charge. They’ve betrayed the people who felt comfortable enough in their plastic precinct to discuss their immigration problems there. They’ve betrayed the Indian American residents who fought back against discrimination and violence in the Journal Square area in the 1980s, perpetrated by a group known as The Dot Busters.

And they’ve betrayed the seniors who’ve passed the time nursing a donut and coffee alongside their neighbors. We’ve come a little way toward diversity, equity and inclusion in Jersey City. When corporate giants decide to disavow policies that support these concepts, they betray all the people who’ve spent their hard-earned bucks in their establishments, who made them successful. You don’t need us? WE DON’T NEED YOU. The sad part is that we often boycott a business and our neighbors who depend on these businesses for a paycheck as well. That’s heartbreaking. I wish everybody got a livable wage and that these corporate entities would see that their customers are making choices and WILL decide where they spend their money. WE’VE GOT THE POWER!

As you probably know, I’m one of the Hobart Festival of Women Writers organizers. We’ve begun planning for our annual Festival weekend on June 6, 7, &8th. This is our twelfth year of programming and platforming the work of women writers in the small town of Hobart, New York, the reading capitol of New York State. Home to seven independent bookstores, The Hobart Book Village has hosted our yearly festival. This year, we’re facing a real headwind in funding. We didn’t receive support from some of our regular sources. Programs that feature diversity, equity and inclusion are under increasing attack. We are reaching out to friends, neighbors, colleagues, and all readers, writers, and lovers of language to give whatever amount they can spare right now to aid us in producing this year’s Festival of Women Writers.

Check out our GoFundMe here, watch the video, and visit the Hobart Festival of Women Writers blog for more information on our writers. Thanks in advance.

I’m reading the following story as a special Black History Month post. I’ve developed a few short stories that feature canine witnesses to historical events. I love dogs, and I’ve often pondered what dogs think of the events they’ve been part of. It all started with the question: What if Sacajawea had a dog? This story imagines a pet dog belonging to Maritcha Lyons, an African-American educator in early twentieth-century New York. Lyons wrote an eyewitness account of the New York City Draft Riots as a young girl.

All of Which I Saw:

Maritcha Lyons and her dog, Saddles

Father Lyons loves me, though he likes to fuss about me. He loves me because I love, above all, to catch and kill rats. I’m a rat terrier true to name and calling. My ferocity with rats is matched only by my sweet gentleness with anyone else. It’s only rats I’m after. Single minded. Single duty. Father Lyons brought me home one day declaring to Mother Lyons that my mother was known to be a champion ratter, an animal that gamblers even waged upon for her acumen with rat catching. This fact is one hundred percent true. My mother was legendary. I have not disappointed Father. Their lovely home was unfortunately on a street known to harbor thousands of rats. I’m formidable when it comes to rodents. They cross our threshold but once.

Alas, we have lost our threshold to the mob.

We’ve become vagabonds. We had to flee our home. We left most everything. Maritcha leapt over the back fence just ahead of Mother as Father told her. He helped Mother onto a ladder and she hoisted herself over. Maritcha reached up to guide Mother over the fence and clutched me to her chest, afraid to let me loose. The mob had entered our house.

We were taken in by friends. Dr. and Mrs. Reason are kind people. They’ve taken us in after all. I fear for many others who fled and continue to flee from this mob. Maritcha held her tongue when Mrs. Meanlady - Mrs. Reason - said she didn’t need a ratter in her house because it was free of rodents. “Saddles is a lapdog. She is clean,” Maritcha said. Under her breath I knew she’d added that I was cleaner than most people. Our gracious hosts have said I must not come to the bedroom, I must not sleep in Maritcha’s bed. I overheard Mother Lyons tell Marticha when she pulled the covers under her chin, kissed her nose and begged her not to pout, that I was far cleaner than the cook’s ears. Marticha giggled. Nevertheless, I am relegated to the back of the pantry. That was a concession. The cook wanted me outside of the house altogether. Imagine the cook’s delight when, in the morning following my first night there, I had rid her pantry of twenty-three mice and two rats and had left this glorious pile of carcasses in the middle of her kitchen floor. She shrieked with glee.

I’ve been told by Maritcha, who was told by Mother Lyons, who was promised by Father Lyons that this is a temporary billet. We will have our own home again soon. My moniker, Saddles is a reference to the black and brown splotched saddle-type of markings on the white fur around my midsection. It is said that I appear to wear a horse’s saddle. Occasionally still Maritcha will prop dolls on my back and pretend that they can put their feet into stirrups on my flanks. She calls me her dog and pony. Though she has grown to the verge of full womanhood, Maritcha is still playful and easy to delight. She is greatly entertained when I shrug off the silly dollies and they fall beneath me. I love to hear her laugh. I am, however, a fierce fucker by nature and by a sincere, intelligent dedication to my duties: alert and persistent.

We sneaked back to the house on Vandewater Street. Mother Lyons did not know. Maritcha had thought about her box, her repository, her special thimble, her rosary, her Virgin Mary card, her ribbons. She had to get back inside the vandalized house to get it. It was certain to be there despite the fire if the floor had not been eaten away.

The house was ghostly. The least of it was that it smelled smoky. The aromas were various. All of our things burnt and singed had a distinctly tragic aroma. The curtains at the windows had all been ripped away. Daylight through the windows was harsh. It illuminated the mess in the rooms and displayed it for all to see. So many different things had burned, but not everything. Many things were also ruined because of the water that had been used to douse the flames. Furniture was broken. Our things were broken and scattered across the floors. We stood on the porch, turned to look across the street and saw that our neighbor’s house – a white woman who had a black son – had burned completely to the ground. She sat in the shell of it with soot on her cheeks.

When we opened the front door, he was in there, rummaging through upturned and broken drawers. He was stuffing jewelry and what-nots in his pockets. I barked. He was surprised and froze still. Maritcha screamed. I ran at him. He shook me off his pant leg. I ran at him again as he turned and grabbed Maritcha. “Shut your black trap!” he yelled into her face. This time I latched onto his leg and he howled. If you would call the strangled, cowardly sound he made a howl. The pain I’d caused his ankle made him furious with Maritcha. He snatched at Maritcha’s shoulder and ripped her dress. She made a sound that was constricted by her shock and that the man put his hand over her mouth. She tried to scream. Bite! Bite him, Maritcha! I cried. He wouldn’t dare put his hands so near my essentials! With one hand over her mouth, he thrust his other beneath her dress and tore at her under-bloomers. I circled furiously then leapt up onto his thigh. I bit him. He howled. I held his pants, then jumped away. Again, I circled to gather my momentum, leapt up higher onto his leg, sunk my essentials and took a chack of him. He got his hands off Maritcha to get free of me. I kicked at him with my rear legs and bit him nearly to the bone on my second pass. Then I let him loose, leapt away so he could run off. I followed him to the door and barked my full-throated repertoire as he limped down the street. I have a surprisingly deep voice when I am truly and angrily aroused.

I harked out saliva and let it drip off my essentials to flush the taste of his leg from my mouth. He was one of those despicable men who had burned and pillaged our neighborhood. What a shame I could not do him more damage. These white mobs have ransacked or destroyed numerous buildings, buildings known for association with colored people: two churches, the homes of abolitionists and many black homes. The Colored Orphan Asylum at Fifth Avenue was burned to the ground. Ah, they were pissed because of the new Draft Law and, as always, they visited their rage upon colored folks.

I shook my ears in dismay and they made the sound of soft leather flapping against itself. I do not understand. I understand motivations, I think. I see actions. I have the instinct to act according to the things I see and hear and smell. I wish I had heard him sooner and somehow kept Marticha from entering. But why had we come back to the house? What was so important in that box that we have risked this trouble to retrieve it?

I hate to smell Maritcha crying. I feel my chest expanding, growing bigger, when I hear her tears. But why, Maritcha? Why did we come back for this box? She opened it. She pulled it from its hiding spot beneath the floorboards. She sat on the floor in a lump of flesh and dress and crying and opened the box. I came to her side and licked her cheek. She smiled. Yes, there was her special thimble, her Venetian glass rosary beads, her Virgin Mary card, her velvet ribbons, and a small embroidered handkerchief – no doubt worked by herself – containing a clipping of softly kinky black hair that had belonged to Josie, Josephine, her little sister that was dead from a croup the year before.

about Maritcha Lyons

more about Maritcha Lyons

there is also a great children’s book about Maritcha Lyons written by Tonya Bolden called, “Maritcha”

https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/maritch

Please support an important project. The Hobart Festival of Women Writers has launched an early fundraising campaign. GoFundMe

In 2013, Cheryl Clarke, Breena Clarke, and Barbara Balliet founded the Hobart Festival of Women Writers, a three-day weekend dedicated to recognizing and celebrating women who write. We’re facing a shortfall in funding this year, though we are determined to have our Festival. We’re asking for help. Help us if you can.

For information about the women who have been Participating Writers, go to HFWW

The unique history of our nation’s capital is one of the things I write about in my novels. On April 16, 1862, nine months before the Emancipation Proclamation, enslaved people in the District were freed. The D.C. Emancipation Act, known as the Compensated Emancipation, manumitted around four hundred people who were enslaved in Washington, D.C., and compensated, i.e., paid their owners for the monetary loss. My direct ancestor, Alfred Clarke, was one of these people. He was ten years old and was manumitted by the ordinance along with his mother, Lizzie, and his grandmother, Mary Ann Lingon. The three had been, along with others, enslaved at a tavern owned by an entrepreneurial widow, Eleanor Lang. The site of this tavern is now The City Tavern Club, a private social club. This building is the last remaining Federal tavern in Washington, DC., and the mission of the City Tavern Preservation Foundation is to preserve and steward the City Tavern in recognition of the importance of this historic building and the events that have occurred within its walls. They’ve acknowledged the lives of the enslaved who worked there and installed a photograph of Alfred Clarke to recognize his life.

Of course, this building is not the only site linked to enslaved people and the work they accomplished to build Washington, D.C. A New York Times article reports that former Vice President Kamala Harris' residence was on land that was once owned by a slave owner and thirty-four enslaved people worked there.

If you’d like more historical information on the D.C. Emancipation Act and the enslaved people who built the nation’s capital, check out First Freed: Washington, D.C. in the Emancipation Era by Elizabeth Clark-Lewis.

LISTEN TO “BLUE DAWN”

a short story inspired by what I imagined were the feelings of my ancestors and many others of the first freed on their last night of bondage.

READ THE PRINTED TEXT of Blue Dawn.

Blue Dawn was first printed in NOW, the online journal of The Hobart Festival of Women Writers.

The report, stemming from an investigation announced in September, is the first time that the federal government has given an official, comprehensive account of the events of May 31 and June 1, 1921, in the Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood. Although it formally concluded that, more than a century later, no person alive could be prosecuted, it underscored the brutality of the atrocities committed. - NYTimes

In 1890, a group of migrants fleeing the hostile South settled in an all-black town called Langston, 80 miles west of Tulsa. Oklahoma wasn’t yet a state, and its racial dynamics weren’t set in stone. The architect of the settlement, Edwin McCabe, envisioned Oklahoma as the black promised land. He sent recruiters to the South, preaching racial pride and self-sufficiency. At least 29 black incorporated towns were established in Oklahoma during the late 19th century.

Following World War I, Tulsa, Oklahoma boasted one of the most affluent African American communities in the country, known as the Greenwood District of Tulsa. This thriving business district and surrounding residential area were referred to as “Black Wall Street.” In the early morning hours of June 1, 1921, Black Tulsa was looted and burned by white rioters following unsubstantiated claims of the rape of a white woman in an elevator. Individuals used private planes to deliver turpentine bombs onto homes in Tulsa’s black neighborhood. The governor declared martial law, and National Guard troops arrived in Tulsa. Guardsmen assisted firefighters in putting out fires, took blacks out of the hands of vigilantes, and imprisoned all black Tulsans not already interned. Over 6,000 people were held at the Convention Hall and the Fairgrounds, some for as long as eight days.

It is important to note :

The report described the initial attack as “opportunistic,” but by daybreak on June 1, “a whistle blew, and the violence and arsons that had been chaotic became systematic.” According to the report, up to 10,000 white Tulsans participated in the attack, burning or looting 35 city blocks. It was so “systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence,” the report said.

Twenty-four hours after the violence erupted, it ceased. In the wake of the violence, 35 city blocks lay in charred ruins, over 800 people were treated for injuries, and contemporary reports of deaths began at 36. In 2001, the Tulsa Race Riot Commission released a report indicating that historians now believe close to 300 people died in the riot. A long lost manuscript by Oklahoma lawyer, B.C. Franklin, father of famed African-American historian John Hope Franklin (1915-2009), describes the attack by hundreds of whites on the Greenwood neighborhood. It is a handwritten, breathtaking, eyewitness account of the events. Tulsa Massacre – Smithsonian Magazine

I feel a personal connection to Tulsa and the events of the massacre. Though not directly involved, my maternal grandmother lived in one of the black-incorporated towns in Oklahoma and was part of the migration. It is thought that she and her family returned to North Carolina following violent episodes in the state. I’ve written about Tulsa several times in my fiction. Whenever Oral Roberts, the televangelist from Tulsa, would appear on TV, my grandmother would talk about how exciting Tulsa was. She didn’t mention the destruction of Black Tulsa, though she must have known about it. However, information about the events was systematically suppressed.

Since I named one of the characters in my debut novel, River, Cross My Heart for my grandmother, I chose to include some bits of Tulsa history in the story. Recently, I posted my reading of the entire book. I’m gratified that some of you listened, and I hope you enjoyed it. Here in Chapter Eleven, Hattie Miller, mother of Pearl Miller, describes their lives in Tulsa before coming to Washington.

If you’d like to read the entire novel, link here: River Cross My Heart on Kindle