We Want a Black Poem

Fred accompanied me, after his shift ended at five o’clock, first to Small’s Paradise, to have southern-fried chicken with waffles and, of course, a double shot of Cutty Sark Scotch whisky and soda water; then through the barbershops where the gossip is more reliable than the news in the Amsterdam News and the New York Times, where you got another lecture on blackness, where you got your shoes shined, polished with your shoes still on, so diligently that you could feel the blood coursing through your toes; and a haircut if needed, as you relaxed in the womb of black popular culture, second in significance only to the Negro Church. Here, in the barbershop, one of many along Lenox Avenue, is the uncle of the Right Honourable Errol Barrow, the premier of Barbados.

And across the street from the barbershop is another Barbadian, a bibliophile and proprietor of the Frederick Douglass Book Center, a man who petitioned several mayors of New York, wrote letters to the New York Times, for years pleading, arguing, threatening, and eventually winning his case to change the name for the black population in America, and for black immigrants who come to America, when that name appeared or was used publicly, from “Negro” to “Afro-American.” The man is Richard B. Moore, a man who liked the books he sold more passionately than the customer who entered his bookstore to buy a book, so much so that he would refuse to sell a book that a customer asked for if he felt it contained a history of African culture in which he had a scholar’s interest.

A woman comes into the bookstore.

“Mr. Moore, boy, how?”

“How?”

“I looking for a particular book, boy.”

He recognizes her Barbadian accent. A bond is developed. He puts aside his formality of speech and he becomes a different man, dressed like a barrister-at-law, in white shirt, red tie, black jacket, and dark grey trousers. And brown shoes, polished deep into their cracks, and shining almost like the sun.

“And what the name of this book is?”

“I don’t really know. But it is about Africa. And the origin of names. And I trying to see if I had a’ African name, years ago, back in Africa. You know how I mean?”

“How you mean, ma’am! I know how you mean.”