I will always remember Ms. Steward as a brave, outstanding leader and fighter for working people. She did not hesitate to get right in the middle of many fights against powerful forces feeding off the labor of working people here and around the world. She was an internationalist who understood that injustice against workers in other countries is used to oppress workers in this country. She fought tirelessly against racial and economic injustice and stood up for the voiceless.
She joined several of us when we went to Austin with the AFL-CIO to fight for health care and was a powerful presence at countless rallies and protests, including rallies against the Iraq war and for Justice for janitors.
She loved art and history. Although she had a special interest in African-American art and history, she was very knowledgeable of art from many countries and taught me a great deal about these subjects. She was outraged by the effort of some individuals to destroy historically important art on the TSU campus. She was instrumental in getting me involved in opposing these actions. I am happy to say that the public outcry stopped the destruction in its tracks.
She loved the University Museum and worked hard to make it an international showcase for African-American art. She was saddened by the fact that our culture teaches people to strive for individual achievement without consideration of the common good. She was a rare individual in that she understood the importance of the common good. The University Museum has been and continues to be a battleground in the struggle for the common good.
She loved education and was working on a Masters degree in history at TSU at the time of her death. She was very close to achieving the Masters degree and I hope the University will grant that degree posthumously.
She loved music as well. She loved African music, blues and country music (which are the only indigenous music forms in the United States), Latino music, jazz and many other music forms. She had a wonderful voice herself and was related to Mahalia Jackson.
She loved the theater, movies and was trained in drama. She enjoyed attending performances at the Ensemble Theater and attending Tyler Perry movies.
She loved her mother, sisters and family. She was especially appreciative of her sister Faye. In her last days, over the phone, she told me “she is such a good sister.”
She believed in the benefits of a healthy lifestyle and believed in the curative powers of a healthy diet. She was skeptical about the profit driven health care system in this country. She was fearful that doctors choose treatment based on the money they would make rather than the benefit to the patient.
She understood the importance of peace and opposed war.
She was a union member and fought for better wages for herself and her coworkers against powerful forces opposing the progress of working people.
She was an environmentalist and believed in recycling. She fought for a recycling program in her neighborhood. She stressed the importance of recycling “everything.”
She understood the importance of political struggle. She worked tirelessly to register students and staff on the TSU campus to vote. She worked in the Obama campaign as I did and went with me to view the inauguration from the Seafarers’ union hall. I never believed that I would live long enough to see an African-American president of the United States. I never believed I would live long enough to hear Pete Seeger sing This Land Is Your Land at a presidential inauguration. Both of those things happened in 2008 and they gave me great joy.
She opposed injustice everywhere and was particularly concerned about the injustice to African-American people. She was opposed to the US injustice against Cuba and many other countries. She admired Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, the Cuban five, Hugo Chavez, Nelson Mandela and many others. When we hosted the art exhibit of Antonio Guerrero, one of the Cuban five, in Houston, she directed the hanging of the art and displayed her skill at organizing an art exhibit. She made me appreciate the difficult task of hanging art since she told me what to do and I did it and as a result, the exhibit was a great success. She told me that she had learned a lot about hanging art from Dr. Wardlaw.
I would like to conclude with a few readings. Two of them were quotes that I found in her desk that I know she liked. The others are two quotes that I hope she would have liked.
The first one is “I’m not giving my black back.”
“I’m not giving my black back! I’m not giving up my greens or my grits or saying ‘girl’ and putting my hands on my hips. You see… Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair and I’m not giving up Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Mary MacLeod Bethune, Sojourner Truth, Mdm. C. J. Walker, Toni Morrison or Dr. Maya Angelou, ‘cause you see, I am a phenomenal woman and I’m not giving my black back.
I’m not giving up my crown, waves, braids, curls, locks, kinks, scarves or Muslim garb. I’m not giving up sitting in Ma’s kitchen eating peach cobbler or sweet potato pie and hearing her ask me, ‘How you doing baby?’
I’m not giving up going to ‘You Buy, We Fry’ on Fridays, or barbecues on Saturday playing bid whist, spades and slammin’ those dominoes. I’m not given back Harriet Tubman’s train, Soul Train, Coltrane or the midnight train to Georgia. Now, you can meet me at the function at the junction but I still won’t give up B.B. King, the Whispers, Fancy Ms. Nancy, Lena Horne, the Philadelphia Sound, Motown or the temptations.
Cause you see, it’s the way we do the things we do, like building the pyramids that still stand made by our forefathers hands where the diamonds, oil, silver and gold are buried in our rich dark land.
I’m not giving my black back! I’m happy being happy with my wide hips and my wide nose and the rich melanin in my skin. I love putting lotion on my ashy legs.
Oh, I’m happy being nappy and being in the skin that I’m in. I won’t deny or forget my ancestors who lay in a wet grave at the bottom of the sea in the Middle Passage from slave trade.
And I won’t give up on our youth of today who still need a way made. I won’t give back Miles even though he didn’t smile. I won’t give back Marvin Gaye, Richard Pryor, Phyllis Hyman, Billie Holiday or Billy Eckstein, Jackie Robinson or Jackie Wilson.
I won’t give back the electric slide, Alvin Ailey, Bojangles or Debbie Allen. You think I’d give up reading my Jet, Ebony, Essence, Emerge, Black Enterprise, Heart and Soul or Upscale magazines? For we are a colorful people.
Like Curtis Mayfield sang, we are people that are ‘darker than blue.’ We are honey, cinnamon, mahogany and chocolate. We are REDD Foxx, James BROWN, Barry WHITE, The Mothers of the Church dressed in WHITE, The Color PURPLE, the Lady Who Sings the BLUES and we are Al GREEN with love and happiness. Oh, NO…I’m not giving my black back!
I’m not giving back Maxine (Waters), Martin, Medgar, Malcolm, Mandela, Marley, Marcus, Mohammed Ali, Michael (Jordan) or the Million Man March. I’m not giving my black back.
Join me in lifting up the black woman’s spirit.”
The second reading is a quote from Frederick Douglass.
September 25, 1883. “Though the colored man is no longer subject to barter and sale, he is surrounded by an adverse settlement which fetters all his movements.
In his downward course he meets with no resistance, but his course upward is resented and resisted at every step of his progress.
If he comes in ignorance, rags and wretchedness he conforms to the popular belief of his character, and in that character he is welcome; but if he shall, as a gentleman, a scholar and a statesman, he is hailed as a contradiction to the national faith concerning his race, and his coming is resented as impudence.â€
The third is from a book by Angela Davis “Women, Culture and Politics.” This was written in 1984 from the section “On Women in the Pursuit of Equality and Peace” and the chapter “Peace Is a Sisters’ Issue Too: Afro American Women and The Campaign against Nuclear Arms”
“These are times of great suffering for black people. When we consider that the assaults on the
rights and lives of Afro-Americans have been menacingly complemented by the proliferation of sexist discrimination and by concerted attacks on workers of all races and nationalities, we find that we are not alone in our experience of social affliction. We furthermore share with every human being on this planet the historically unprecedented peril of nuclear omnicide. As black people, as women, as black women, we need to develop a more serious appreciation of the peace movement and the hope it alone is capable of generating for the future of our children. It is imperative that we reevaluate our failure to participate in the peace movement in numbers that are commensurate with our peace sentiments, and that we hastened to rectify this situation.
We can no longer afford to assume that peace is a white folks’ issue. How can we in good conscience separate ourselves from the fight for peace when nuclear bombs do not know how to engage in racial discrimination? And if it were at all conceivable that nuclear fallout could be programmed to kill some of us while sparing others, I can guarantee you that the war makers in this country would see to it that black people would be its first victims. What would be accomplished by victory in our struggles against racism, what purpose would be served by assisting our sisters and brothers in South Africa to overthrow Botha’s apartheid regime, when, in the final analysis, we might all be annihilated in a nuclear conflagration? Peace, my sisters and brothers, is a black folks’ issue and it is a black women’s issue. The failure to realize this might well cost us our lives.
Our history as Afro-Americans should render us especially sensitive to peace issues, for since the days of the African slave trade, we have been subjected to warlike aggression by a white ruling class in its quest for profit and power. More than anyone else, we should also understand that peace is not an abstract state of affairs, but rather is inextricably connected with our ability to achieve racial, sexual and economic justice. When we speak of peace, we must also speak of freedom.”
The next reading is from an article by Henry Winston “From the Anti-Slavery to the Anti-Monopoly Strategy.” Henry Winston was an African-American leader who fought against racism and was a labor organizer during the Great Depression and afterwards. He was incarcerated during the McCarthy era and lost his eyesight while in prison. “Frederick Douglas and Paul Robeson. In our time, the towering figure of Paul Robeson has personified the link between two significant periods–from the betrayal of Reconstruction to the new era of black liberation began with Martin Luther King and the civil rights decade.
Frederick Douglass had himself been a slave and Robeson is the son of a slave. Like Douglas and his time, Robeson has devoted his life to the cause of black liberation. And, like Douglas, he recognizes that black liberation cannot be achieved via a separatist path, but through black power in alliance with the oppressed and exploited of all colors. Robeson has always seen black independents and black-white alliance as related, indispensable components of the liberation struggle.
The principles that should “dictate policy,” Robeson has declared, are the following: “dedication to the Negro people’s welfare is one side of the coin; the other side is independence. Effective Negro leadership must rely upon and be responsive to know other control than the will of the people. We have allies-important allies-among our white fellow citizens, and we must seek to draw them close to us and to gain many more. But the Negro people’s movement must be led by Negroes, not only in terms of title and position but in reality.
Robeson struggles for self union of his people at home, and for solidarity with the oppressed and their allies at home and abroad. Whereas Douglas traveled widely in Europe to win support for the anti-slavery cause, Robeson traveled even more extensively, rallying support for black liberation and championing liberation from imperialism everywhere.”
So, in conclusion, we will all miss Ms. Steward and will never forget her. Let us remember Joe Hill’s words before his execution in 1915 “don’t mourn, organize!”
