The new edition of my Memoir, LONG JOURNEY HOME, an African American’s journey from my home town, Seattle, to our ancestral Home Land, Africa, is available on Amazon Kindle and at Verbatim bookstore in North Park, San Diego.
TIME OUT
Dave Brubeck departed today after bringing Jazz to millions
of music lovers everywhere
TAKE FIVE was the first Jazz album I purchased in High School
when David Yamamoto turned me on to Progressive Jazz—
Now your piano riffs carry you into the stratosphere
of syncopated rhythm & soaring solos
where you are welcomed into Jazz heaven
by Satchmo, the Duke & Count, Diz, Miles, Yardbird, Coltrane
Wes & Monk among other maestros in the sacred number with whom you can play on ebony and ivory forever
WHEN I WAKE
from sleep early In the morning
laying on my pillow
I peer out the bedroom window
and witness mother nature’s
white cumulus clouds
gracing clear blue sky
and Green branches of tall trees
welcoming me to another
serene & sunny day in San Diego
LIVING ABOVE LA FRONTERA
I live on a hill in San Diego
where when i wake in the morning
I look out my bedroom window
to see the sun rise on la frontera
and watch the urban river flow
to and from the border
with toxic fumes rising
into the blue spring sky
and wonder-
Are we doomed by our DNA?
JUNETEENTH
Today is the anniversary and reminder that on June 19, 1965, enslaved African-Americans in Texas finally received the Order that they were emancipated. Congress ratified the 13th Amendment finally abolishing slavery on December 6, 1865. On June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act – making it a federal holiday.
Soon after the Civil War, we saw the rebirth of white supremacy and the rise of racist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The KKK was successful in defeating Reconstruction with the help of Rutherford B. Hayes. He was elected the 19th President of the United States in 1877, and soon after he withdrew federal troops from the Confederate States.
Almost a century later, responding to the legacy of slavery; racial discrimination and segregation, the Civil Rights Movement led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. took to the streets to end Jim Crow.
Fortunately for me, my paternal grandfather, John Thomas Gayton (JT) was a Black pioneer, and in 1889, he escaped from the Jim Crow South and settled in Seattle, Washington. In Seattle, my grandfather, John T. Gayton, and his wife, Magnolia, were liberated from Jim Crow racism and prospered.
My parents were both raised in Seattle, and my father, Leonard Gayton, was a prominent Jazz percussionist. My mother, Emma,
was a loving wife and mother of four children. I was the oldest.
When Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States, we celebrated our nation’s “triumph over race.” Obama’s election
was touted to be “the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow.”
Today, as we celebrate the liberation of my ancestors from slavery, we also see the legacy of slavery resurrected in “The New Jim Crow,” and “The New Slavery,” the prison-industrial complex.
There are more African American adults under correctional control today – in prison or jail, on probation or parole – than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.
Today, a Black child is less likely to be raised by both parents than a child born during slavery. The disintegration of the African American family is primarily caused by the mass imprisonment of Black fathers.
If you include prisoners, a majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled “felons for life.” These men are permanently relegated, by law, to second-class caste status. They are denied the right to vote, excluded from juries; and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits like in the Jim Crow era.
As we celebrate the end of slavery let us not forget that the racial caste is alive and well in America and police killing of Blacks is a testimonial to legal lynching:
LEGAL LYNCHING
In a nation anesthetized by consumer capitalism
its soul riven
by George Floyd’s crucifixion
on the cross of the Ku Klux Klan
Protest and Rebellion
against the legacy of slavery
have risen on the city streets of America
across the sea and around the world
We repeat and repeat
BLACK LIVES MATTER!
I hope and pray you hear us
Sambajia 