They challenged his dream that would replace the Dream he once thought he needed a “carbon copy of white claims to civilization” (50), but now wondered about the validity of the claims themselves.Ĭoates tells his son the names of all of his literary, historical, and philosophical influences so Samori knows his father did not do it alone. He wrote bad poetry and recited it at open mic nights and sought the wisdom of older poets.
He made friends who thought the same, including Samori’s Uncle Ben.Ĭoates sought out fellow travelers. He came to realize that his personal freedom was in books, not the classroom. He would take breaks in the Yard and think about Malcolm. His ancestors fought and disagreed just as often as they agreed, if not more. Unfortunately, though, he quickly saw his heroes debate, create factions, and fight amongst themselves. He devoured everything and thought his investigations would reveal “history to be a unified narrative, free of debate, which, once uncovered, would simply verify everything I had always suspected” (47). He read more and more, going to the library and checking out all the books he could from the authors he heard about in class and in the Yard. When she was refused a seat by the Europeans, she had an adviser make a seat with his body for her. He wanted a new story and a new history and the Dream of the “black race.” He read Chancellor Williams’s Destruction of Black Civilization when he got to Howard and learned how Queen Nzinga resisted the Portuguese. He wanted to create a new language for himself. Their history was inferior.Ĭoates had Malcolm X, though, and his other readings.
He remembered a quote from Saul Bellow asking whom the Tolstoy of the Zulus was black people were outside civilization, outside culture. All heroes were white, serious history was white, serious writers were white. Black people also have a world, but one chosen for them by the fences and laws of white people.Ĭoates contrasts what he began to understand with what he knew before. The black world was opening up for him and it was not just a photonegative of the white world. He saw the power out on the Yard with all of the diverse students, saw it in the history of Howard itself.
The former is an institution, the latter a force that gets its power from the institution and contains the energy of all African peoples. There may be something in its tradition, though, that Samori must acknowledge.Ĭoates was admitted to Howard but “formed and shaped by the Mecca” (40). It might not be his son’s, which is fine, since they cannot be black in the same way.
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