June Jordan_Her Life and Letters

by Valerie Kinloch

  9. King showed support for the Civil Rights Act and delivered his famous speech, “I Have a Dream,” to hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, including members of SCLC, SNCC, NAACP, and of Asa Phillip Randolph’s labor group, gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. In part, the speech reads, “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggles on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.” For more information, see the following: King, I Have a Dream, 103. Other events by King that Jordan took note of include King’s leadership of the March 1964 march, with civil rights activists and supporters from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. (This comes after

  “Bloody Sunday,” during which protestors were attacked by Alabama officers and supremacist groups, and after the violent “hate” murder of James Reeb, a northern minister.) The march culminated at the Alabama capital. In August of the same year, Congress approved the Voting Rights Act, proposed under the Johnson administration.

  10. Jordan, Moving Towards Home, 194.

  11. Ibid., 195.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Ibid., 196.

  15. Paul A. Winters, ed., The Civil Rights Movement (San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000), 69. The version included in Winters’ edited book is excerpted from James H.

  Cone, “Malcolm X: The Impact of a Cultural Revolutionary,” in The Christian Century Journal, Vol. 109 (1992 December 23–30): 1189–1191, 1193, 1195.

  16. The following are just a few significant political events for Malcolm X: In June 1954, just two years after Malcolm was released from prison, Elijah Muhammad appointed him head minister of Harlem’s Temple Number 7. In the early 1960s, Malcolm X began to directly attack the nonviolent teachings of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, believing that integration and nonviolent tactics were fundamentally wrong—his attacks were delivered in speeches, news broadcasts, and private and public meetings. In 1959, Malcolm increased his travels, visiting such places as Sudan, Nigeria, Ghana, the Middle East, and the United Arab Republic. With Mike Wallace and Louis Lomax, Malcolm was featured in the weeklong televised program, The Hate That Hate Produced, discussing the workings of, and his role in, the Nation of Islam. His appearance on the program solidified his popularity as a political leader of black people. March 1964 was met with Malcolm’s permanent departure from the Nation. In the

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  Notes

  same year of his departure, Malcolm opened the Muslim Mosque, Inc. in New York City and traveled to Mecca, Saudi Arabia where he was convinced that it was important to join hands and fight for rights with all people regardless of race. His growing desire for an international freedom movement began to take shape.

  17. Julie Quiroz, “‘Poetry is a Political Act:’ An Interview with June Jordan,” Colorlines 1, no. 3 (Winter 1999), unlisted page numbers. http://www.arc.org/C_Lines/

  CLArchive/story1_3_05.html.

  18. Quiroz, “‘Poetry is a Political Act,’” unlisted page numbers.

  19. Jordan, Affirmative Acts, 170–171.

  20. Ibid., 171–172.

  21. Ibid., 172.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Ibid., 173.

  24. Torf, interview by author.

  25. Jordan, Civil Wars, 118.

  26. Ibid.

  27. Jordan, Things That I Do in the Dark, 40.

  28. Ibid., 41.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Ibid., 40.

  31. Ibid., 41.

  32. Jordan, Some of Us Did Not Die, 263.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Ibid., 266.

  35. Ibid., 263.

  36. Jordan, Technical Difficulties: African-American Notes on the State of the Union (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), 136.

  37. Jordan, Some of Us Did Not Die, 263.

  38. Jordan, Technical Difficulties, 137.

  39. Jordan, Civil Wars, 75.

  40. Ibid., 79.

  41. Ibid., 80.

  42. Ibid., 79.

  43. Ibid., 80.

  44. For more information on this conference, see Jordan, Affirmative Acts, 260.

  45. Jordan, Civil Wars, 143.

  46. Jordan, Living Room, 66.

  47. Ibid., 66.

  48. Ibid., 66–67.

  49. Ibid., 103. Original quotation marks and format.

  50. Jordan, Technical Difficulties, 37.

  51. Ibid.

  52. Ibid., 39.

  53. Jordan, Kissing God Goodbye, 86.

  54. Ibid., 87.

  55. Jordan, Technical Difficulties, 23.

  56. Ibid., 93.

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  179

  57. Jane Creighton. “Writing War, Writing Memory” in Still Seeking an Attitude, eds .

  Valerie Kinloch and Margret Grebowicz, 250.

  58. Jordan, Naming Our Destiny, 143.

  59. Ibid.

  60. Sally Ann Brunot, Lori M. Evans, Daniela Kocoska, Megan Quinn, and Carla Silva, Website Researchers. “June Jordan, 1936–2002,” Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers and Writers of Color, an International Website, May 12, 1998. Unlisted page numbers.

  http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/jordan_june.html.

  61. Jordan, Some of Us Did Not Die, 229.

  62. Torf, interview by author.

  63. Hammond, “An Interview with June Jordan,” 43.

  THE VOICE OF THE CHILDREN

  1. Jordan, Some of Us Did Not Die, 277.

  2. June Jordan and Terri Bush, eds. The Voice of the Children (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1970), 53. This poem was written by then fourteen-year-old Juanita Bryant.

  3. Jordan and Bush, The Voice, ix.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid., from the “Foreword.”

  6. Ibid., ix.

  7. Ibid., 97.

  8. On the group, “The Voice of the Children,” editorial writer Eve Merriam, in a New York Times article, writes that the group “is the name of a group of twenty-odd black and Puerto Rican youngsters who have been meeting in a Brooklyn Community Center every Saturday for the past two years to “rap, dance, snack, browse among the books lying around, and write their stories, poems, editorials, and jokes.” For more information, see Eve Merriam, “For Young Readers,” New York Times, listed date is January 24, 1971, http://www.proquest.com or http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/nytimes/91264361

  .html?did=91264361&FMT=ABS&FMTS=AI&date=Jan+24%2C+1971&author=EVE+

  MERRIAM&pub=New+York+Times++(1857-Current+file)&desc=For+Young+Readers, BR24.

  9. Jordan and Bush, The Voice, 98.

  10. Martin Gansberg, “Voice of the Children is Stilled,” New York Times, listed date is November 7, 1971, http://www.proquest.com or http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/

  nytimes/91312247.html?did=91312247&FMT=ABS&FMTS=AI&date=Nov+7%2C+19

  7 1 & a u t h o r = B y + M A RT I N + G A N S B E R G & p u b = N e w + Yo r k + Ti m e s + + ( 1 8 5 7 -

  Current+file)&desc=Voice+of+the+Children+Is+Stilled, A18.

  11. Jordan, Some of Us Did Not Die, 275.

  12. Ibid., 277.

  13. Ibid., 279.

  14. Ibid., 282.

  15. Torf, interview by author.

  16. E. Ethelbert Miller, e-mail message to author, November 1, 2005.

  17. In Solider: A Poet’s Childhood, Jordan informs readers of her first “true” love, sixteen-year-old Herbie Wilson, Jr.

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  Notes

  18. June Jordan, Fannie Lou Hamer, 4.

  19. Ibid., 24.

  20. Ibid., 12.

  21. Ibid., 15.

  22. Ibid., 17–18.

  23. Alexis De Ve
aux, “Creating Soul Food,” 82, 138–150.

  24. Alice Malsenior Walker and June Millicent Jordan were friends. Walker won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for her epistolary novel, The Color Purple. It tells the survival story of central character and Southern black woman, Celie, who writes letters to God about her life, particularly her various “women” responsibilities as mother, wife, and daughter.

  Walker includes in the novel a community of other black women: Celie’s sister, Nettie; Blues singer, Shug Avery (Celie’s husband is, consequently, in love with Shug Avery); the reflective Squeak; and the daughter-in-law, Sofia.

  25. Alice Walker, “Fannie Lou Hamer: Can’t hate anybody and see God’s face,” New York Times, listed date is April 29, 1973, http://www.proquest.com or http://pqasb.

  pqarchiver.com/nytimes/97135122.html?did=97135122&FMT=ABS&FMTS=AI&date

  =Apr+29%2C+1973&author=By+ALICE+WALKER&pub=New+York+Times++(1857-Current+file)&desc=Fannie+Lou+Hamer, 8.

  26. June Jordan, “Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer: In Memoriam,” New York Times, June 3, 1977, http://www.proquest.com or http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/nytimes/75081647

  .html?did=75081647&FMT=CITE&FMTS=AI&date=Jun+3%2C+1977&author=&pu b=New+York+Times++(1857-Current+file)&desc=Mrs.+Fannie+Lou+Hamer%3A

  +In+Memoriam, 16. This poem is also published as “1977: Poem for Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer” in Jordan, Passion, 40–41.

  27. June Jordan, Dry Victories (New York: Avon Books, 1972).

  28. Jordan, Dry Victories, 104.

  29. Janet Harris, “Review of Dry Victories,” New York Times, date listed as February 11, 1973, http://www.proquest.com or http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/nytimes/90916358.

  html?did=90916358&FMT=ABS&FMTS=AI&date=Feb+11%2C+1973&author=By+JA NET+HARRIS&pub=New+York+Times++(1857-Current+file)&desc=Dry+Victories, 360.

  30. June Jordan, New Life: New Room (New York: Crowell Company, 1975), 1.

  31. Ibid., 12.

  32. Ibid., 33.

  33. June Jordan, Kimako’s Story (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981), inside cover.

  34. Ibid., 1.

  35. Ibid., 32.

  36. Ibid., 37.

  37. Ibid., 40–41.

  38. Torf, interview by author.

  39. In the newspaper story, “Newark Pride Gets Allies,” journalist Mick Meenan writes about local slain females in Newark, New Jersey: fifteen-year-old Sakia Gunn who “was stabbed to death on the morning of May 12 on the corner of Broad and Market Streets in Newark as she waited with a group of other young women for a bus,”

  and thirty-one-year-old Shani Baraka and her partner, thirty-year-old Rayshon Holmes, who “were shot multiple times in the head and body as they stood in the Piscataway home of Ms. Baraka’s sister, Wanda Pasha” ( Gay City News, 2, no. 36, September 2003).

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  181

  Shani Baraka was the daughter of poet and political activist Amiri Baraka, whose only sister, Kimako Baraka, was killed some years before. Meenan writes, “In a follow up interview, he [Amiri Baraka] told how his sister, Kimako Baraka, herself an out lesbian, was brutally slain in 1984 during an attempted rape in Manhattan Plaza, a well-known residence for artists and entertainers. Kimako was a Broadway dancer and actress.” For more information, see Mick Meenan, “Newark Pride Gets Allies,” Gay City News, http://www.gaycitynews.com/ gcn236/newarkpride.html.

  40. Jordan, Living Room, 99.

  41. Jordan, Some of Us Did Not Die, 224.

  42. Ibid., 225.

  43. Ibid.

  44. Julius Lester, letter to author, October 2005.

  45. Ibid.

  46. Jordan, Living Room, 42–43.

  47. Jordan was not the only person campaigning for the language rights of students.

  In 1974, the Executive Committee for the Conference on College Composition and Communication, for example, proposed a resolution that argued for the affirmation of students’ right to use their language forms in educational settings so as to learn those skills deemed essential for the further acquirement of academic knowledge and discursive practices. Sociolinguistic scholars, including Geneva Smitherman, were actively involved in initiating this resolution, named Students’ Right to Their Own Language.

  48. Smitherman, Delpit, and Rickford, in individual studies, argue for the legitimization of Black English in classrooms and communities, believing that speakers of Black English Vernacular are well versed in specific structures, rules, and skills of accompanying speech acts. To diminish how such speakers communicate with members in their own communities and in communities where the “Language of Wider Communication”

  is used is to deny them access to multiple forms of engagement. These authors assert the need for educators to affirm the linguistic varieties of students as said students are taught/shown the codes of academic, or formal, English. See Geneva Smitherman, Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1977); Lisa Delpit, Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom (New York: New Press, 1996); and James Rickford, “The Creole Origins of African American Vernacular English: Evidence from Copula Absence,” in S. S. Mufwene, et al., African American English: Structure, History and Use (London and New York: Routledge, 1998).

  49. Latoya Hardman, interview by author, October 20, 2004.

  50. June Jordan, “Mississippi,” 65, 67–71, 80–83.

  51. June Jordan, His Own Where, 1.

  52. Jordan, Civil Wars, 128–129.

  53. Violet J. Harris, “African American Children’s Literature: The First One Hundred Years,” Journal of Negro Education 50, no. 4 (1990): 540–555.

  54. Jordan, His Own Where, 13.

  55. Ibid., 9.

  56. Torf, interview by author.

  57. Jordan, His Own Where, 1.

  58. Jordan’s Soulscript: Afro-American Poetry, a collection of poetry that contains the works of June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Sonia Sanchez, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Gwendolyn Brooks, Countee Cullen, Richard Wright, Claude McKay, Gayl

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  Jones, various young and emerging student poets, and countless other luminaries, was first published in 1970. Harlem Moon publishers released a revised and updated edition of the collection, named Soulscript: A Collection of African American Poetry, in November 2004.

  59. Jordan, Naming Our Destiny, 102.

  60. June Jordan, On Call: Political Essays, 123.

  61. I discuss Jordan’s essay and the educational implications of adopting her guidelines for Black English in my 2004 essay, “June Jordan and the Linguistic Register: A Statement About Our Rights.” The essay can be found in Kinloch and Grebowicz, eds., Still Seeking, 71–86.

  62. Jordan, Naming Our Destiny, 204.

  63. Ibid., 205.

  64. Ibid., 210.

  65. Lauren Muller and the Poetry for the People Blueprint Collective, eds., June Jordan’s Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint (New York: Routledge, 1995), 7.

  66. Ibid., 7.

  67. Ibid., 200.

  68. Ibid., 201.

  69. Greene, “Women Talk,” 63–68.

  70. Jordan, Naming Our Destiny, 210.

  71. Jordan, Civil Wars, 163.

  72. Ibid.

  73. Jordan, Affirmative Acts, 120.

  74. Jordan, Technical Difficulties, 119.

  75. Ibid., 121.

  76. Jordan’s discussion of censorship as pertains to Jackson’s pursuit of the Democratic Presidential nomination is related to the role and significance of black leadership in this country, particularly after the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. For more information on this topic, see Robert Charles Smith, We Have No Leaders: African Americans in the Post Civil Rights Era (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996). This book challenges conservative and liberal notions of U.S.-based political struggles for black Americans, institutional proces
ses, and censorship in political discourse.

  77. Jordan, Technical Difficulties, 121.

  78. Ibid., 123.

  79. Ibid., 132.

  80. Jordan, Civil Wars, 3.

  81. Jordan, Affirmative Acts, 120.

  82. Jordan, On Call: Political Essays, 3.

  83. Jordan, Some of Us Did Not Die, 41.

  84. Ibid., 58.

  85. Ibid., 28, 31.

  86. Jordan, On Call: Political Essays, 115–116.

  87. Jordan, Naming Our Destiny, 143.

  88. Ruth Forman, “Travelin’ Shoes (for June Jordan),” in Muller, June Jordan’s Poetry for the People, 225, 227.

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  AFFIRMATIVE ACTS: POLITICAL ESSAYS

  1. Forman, “Travelin’ Shoes,” 225, 227.

  2. Ibid., 225.

  3. In conversations with poet E. Ethelbert Miller, I was informed that Jordan was close to her students and appreciated the mutual support afforded by their collaborations and learning experiences.

  4. Muller, June Jordan’s Poetry for the People, 15.

  5. Ibid.

  6. In the brief course description of P4P included in the text, June Jordan’s Poetry for the People, 15, is written the following: “We publish student poetry in suitably splendid form, and distribute these anthologies at the student readings and through the kind offices of Berkeley bookstores, such as Black Oaks Books and Cody’s. This is an integral part of coursework.”

  7. On how the program began, Jordan writes: “I did not wake up one morning ablaze with a coherent vision of Poetry for the People! The natural intermingling of my ideas and my observations as an educator, a poet, and the African-American daughter of poorly documented immigrants did not lead me to any limiting ideological perspectives or resolve.

  Poetry for the People is the arduous and happy outcome of practical, day-by-day, classroom failure and success.” It is important to note that Jordan collaborated with others at UC Berkeley and in the community to raise necessary funds and attract attention for the program—a program which, from its very first class, had an immediate student following. For more information, see Junichi P. Semitsu, “Course Profile: Poetry for the People,”