Home Town:Rooted in Place and Identity
“Hometown” is a phrase that is heavy in symbolism. A person’s ties to their physical location of origin can have just as much impact upon their sense of “home” as one’s own ties to their personal identity.
Figure 1, Wright Funeral Home, established owned by Charles Randolph-Wright’s Family since 1914
Born in York, South Carolina, playwright and film producer Charles Randolph-Wright’s hometown community was a core influence upon his motivations to give back.
“When 'Preaching to the Choir' opened, and we were back in Charlotte [North Carolina] and all these people from my hometown got to go and… here's my movie in the theaters. And they're seeing the commercials and it's in the papers. You know, all those things I mean…. I'm so thrilled because in a way I do get to say thank you with these things. [T]he people in my hometown have been so supportive of me. When 'Dreamgirls' opened they had a bus that came up, and they came up to see it. With 'Blue'--I had this benefit they did--they chartered buses for that. They come to see everything I do there's always someone no matter where I am even when I've been in Europe they come up. And they have some York [South Carolina] connection some hometown connection. And I tell people who grew up in cities you don't understand what that's like. See I can fake being from a big city I can fake being that urban man. And I love living in New York [New York], this is my, my home. You know, I lived in L.A. [Los Angeles, California], which I did not like… I mean I love living in New York City. But there's something about coming from that hometown where they all--where everybody knows you. Where they know your face, they know you, they knew your parents, they knew your grandparents. You all have this--you have this bond and then they support you to have them support you this way is incredible. I go home, and they just laugh they said I make news just to--that, you know, I'm coming home for Thanksgiving it's in the paper, you know. I--but there, they're proud (of) me and I'm proud of them and I, I'm so happy to have had that background and then to be able to give back. And that's why I'm starting this arts festival [Create Carolina] at home. That's why I'm starting this foundation [Wright Family Foundation] back in my hometown these things so that I can give back.”[1]
Figure 2, Wayne Curry in front of Prince George County’s courthouse (August 14th, 1986)
[1] Charles Randolph-Wright (The HistoryMakers A2006.129), interviewed by Denise Gines, November 5, 2006, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 7, story 9, Charles Randolph-Wright talks about giving back to his community.
Wayne Curry, the first African American county executive of Prince George’s County, discusses the pride felt in his ability to contribute back to his hometown as well.
“It was in my hometown [Cheverly, Maryland] with its checkered history of race relations and the personal sacrifices and battles which had been made from childhood forward through a lot of painful and anguishing stuff… It's very rare, I think, to be granted an opportunity to be so influential in one's hometown. To actually stamp the future with the imprimatur of your service, to tattoo the future with the changes that you invoke as the leader of the jurisdiction and in a jurisdiction like this, highly political, highly publicized, on the threshold of Rome, the new Washington [D.C.] with the boys and a lifetime of political involvements here around this area. I'd be different if I was from Topeka [Kansas], I grew up around Washington and even the simple culture and climate of the community's different around here, and remains so. So the emotions are indescribable in a sense, I was very proud of the opportunity to elevate my hometown to make a difference. Everybody says it but not everybody does it nor does everybody get a chance to do it, and for innumerable reasons I got a chance to do it, we changed it, we completely reversed the direction of the place in economic terms. We changed its image, we contradicted expectation, we defied, obliterated stereotype. There were no big scandals; there were no economic and financial upheavals. There were no big mistakes in those terms.”[2]
[2] Wayne Curry (The HistoryMakers A2004.185), interviewed by Racine Tucker Hamilton, September 29, 2004, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 5, story 1, Wayne Curry reflects on his election as the first African American county executive of Prince George's County, Maryland.
Figure 3, Nkroful Village, Kwame Nkrumah’s Birthplace
Birthplace can also have deep roots of symbolism to external residents connected by a shared identity, as seen in Ghana-born artist Samuel Akainyah’s childhood memory.
“February 24th, 1966, the soldiers conducted a coup and over-threw the government of Kwame Nkrumah. And I remember they came to the campus. And I had been in this school since age eleven, and all they did was order all of us to come out and put on our shorts and our shirts. They didn't give us room to brush our teeth or anything. And they marched us from that part of school, a distance of maybe half-a-mile to the middle of the town near where Nkrumah's birthplace was. And incidentally, the birthplace was not a mansion, it was just a small mud house with thatch roof, with branches, but its symbolism needed to be erased from the minds of the military. So they had all of us eight hundred students witness this building being demolished while they were chanting names of Nkrumah is a thief, Nkrumah is this, this, and that and that. And one sorrowful thing I remember was that there were two guardsmen in the building, one of who refused to leave the building because he said that he protects the building, and that was an order given to him by the head of state, Kwame Nkrumah himself. And so he doesn't understand what the word, coup d'etat means, and that even Nkrumah himself does not explain to him that he's been overthrown, then in his mind, Nkrumah is still the head of state, and that he would not leave. There were no further discussions. The commander ordered incendiary bombs to be blasted to the building and kerosene poured, and the building was set ablaze.”[3]
[3] Samuel Akainyah (The HistoryMakers A2008.092), interviewed by Larry Crowe, July 18, 2008, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 8, Samuel Akainyah remembers the Ghanaian military coup of 1966, pt. 1
Joseph Dyer, the first African American television reporter executive in network news within the Los Angeles community, also discusses how class-based roots can impact and motivate the individual.
Figure 4, Activist leaving after “testing” Acme Café in 1965, where Joseph Dryer once worked.
“If you look at the history books, if you did an analysis of some of your so-called, some of the top African Americans who were trans--who immigrated from the South, who went on and did great things, a lot of them have very poor roots and I think one reason that accounts for that is because all of them were dreamers down there. They dreamed that I can do better. They wanted to do better. They came out here with a fire in their eye because, I know I came out with the same thing, I've been through welfare before so I don't want there to be a continuing of that, I want to go out and do something better. So when you came to L.A. [Los Angeles, California], you came out here and you said, I'm going to kick butt when I get to L.A. You will go out now, I tell people here, you take a young black guy from Louisiana, who was a product of sharecropper parents [Barbara Parker Brooks and Joseph Dyer, Sr.], who were on welfare, one of whom was disabled, to come to Los Angeles and to break the color barrier, and God forbid on television news.”[4]
[4] Joseph Dyer (The HistoryMakers A2004.047), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, April 23, 2004, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 10, Joseph Dyer talks about how his southern roots fostered his future ambitions.
The importance of roots is not lost on environmental chemist, Krishna Foster who believes:
“One of my major concerns for the African American community is that they don't have the same opportunity that I had to know themselves and define themselves. You know, I talked about the formative years of my college experiences [at Spelman College 1988-1992] but beyond that my mother [Frances Smith Foster] spent part of her appointments in African American studies, so I was surrounded by a sense of belonging. I was surrounded by a sense of history and I'm afraid that there's a real probability that people can get sucked up of African American heritage into the wrong path, into the media version about what it is to be African American. And that they don't have enough time sharing stories about their own personal history. Let's go back further and talk about shared African heritage, about their roots. When I talk to black people in Suriname--in Netherlands, I went on a trip to Netherlands. And there was people who said, "Oh, I'm not Netherlands. I'm from Suriname." This is my home, right? And they knew their roots. I think one of the reasons why black people from the Caribbean are professionally--if they have the opportunities, if they can get out of poverty which many of them live, they have the opportunities to be professionals, they thrive in that area because there's a stronger sense of self in a Caribbean culture than there is in an African American culture. So my biggest concern is that we will lose ourselves and stop defining ourselves and just try to blend without roots and that's not appropriate. That's not--that's a loss.”[5]
[5] Krishna Foster (The HistoryMakers A2011.031), interviewed by Larry Crowe, April 28, 2011, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 6, story 9, Krishna Foster shares her concerns for the African American community
Lastly, Niara Sudarkasa, first female president of the University of Lincoln in Pennsylvania, sums the importance of acknowledging origin in a powerful statement;
“[Marcus] Garvey and so many other people said it, if you don't know where you've been, you don't know where you can go, or you have to know from whence you come in order to know where you can go. I think that people need to know that not all success is rooted in success, because you can have your roots in quite humble circumstances. Your parents don't have to be professionals. You don't have to grow up speaking standard English. Ebonics was the language of the day when I was growing up, we were, my, we always said we were multi-lingual, we could speak black English, regular English and anything that sounded like English, so I think that it's important to me that our kids see that no matter what their circumstances are, if they have the desire to turn their abilities into success, they can do it.”[6]
[6] Niara Sudarkasa (The HistoryMakers A2005.014), interviewed by Racine Tucker Hamilton, January 13, 2005, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 6, story 1, Niara Sudarkasa talks about the African-American Research Library and Cultural Center
Figure 5, Niara Sudarkasa, First African American Chief of the Ife Kingdom
These accounts accurately depict as one’s sense of origin not just being determined by location, but by shared identity.
Works Cited
1. Figure 1, Wright Funeral Home. “Location.” Accessed July 9, 2024. https://www.wrightfuneralhomesc.com/directions
2. Figure 2, WAMU 88.5 American University Radio. “Remembering Wayne Curry.” Accessed July 9, 2024. https://wamu.org/story/14/07/03/remembering-wayne-curry/.
3. Figure 3, Nzema Youth Association. “Nkroful home of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah under most serious threat of complete extermination through mining.” Accessed July 9, 2024. https://nzemayouthassociation.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/nkroful-village-under-most-serious-threat-of-complete-extermination-through-mining/.
4. Figure 4, The Robert “Bob” Hicks Foundation. “Photo Gallery – Capturing a movement.” Accessed July 9, 2024.
5. Figure 5, University of Michigan. “Niara Sudarkasa: Woman of Many Firsts.”Accessed July 9, 2024. https://lsa.umich.edu/daas/news-events/all-news/search-news/niara-sudarkasa--woman-of-many-firsts.html.