From A Little Brown Girl
(Play Audio)

Little brown ears heard up close
The Civil Rights movement
explained inside our home.

Mr. Clemons, fired sanitation worker
shared personal updates on the strike
connecting 1968 Memphis to 1955 Selma.

Daddy, career Army sergeant
ordered away from us to fight for freedom
for our country in Viet Nam.

Mommy, southern homemaker
gone into the streets to march for freedom
for our people in Memphis.

Little brown mind turning over and over
to understand
courageous parents and our country’s rejection.

Daddy left first
to a place I could only reach
with my bedtime prayer, God please bless my Daddy.

Mommy said I could not march
along side of her
it was her time to fight, not yet mine.

Fear was heavy in me
lose Daddy in a faraway war
lose Mommy in a war up close.

Little brown eyes watched
on Easter morning
soldiers in tanks rumble through our neighborhood.

When the news came that Dr. King was murdered
Mommy’s screams changed me forever
I stood as a little brown girl and whispered.

Please Jesus, Let Mommy and Daddy live
Dr. King is dead
You could have taken me instead

This poem is from Poems, Dreams and Roses

Poems or Stories can not be reproduced in any manner without the written
permission of Fabu.

This Woman I Love
For Effie Florida Cunningham Partee
(Play Audio)

Down a winding dirt road
with rust colored rocks
and glistening beige pebbles
is where my grandmother lived.

She woke up to clear blue skies
and billowing white clouds.
My grandmother went to sleep
when the shimmering sun was just down
and the still stars were floating outward.

Yet all the beauty
of Mississippi land
cannot nearly compare
to this woman I love.

This poem is from Poems, Dreams and Roses

Poems or Stories can not be reproduced in any manner without the written
permission of Fabu.

Black Christ
(Play Audio)

mixing
the sublime and the simple
the rich and the poor
the master and the slave
the white and the black
the Spanish and the Igbo
this is truly spiritual.

St. Martin de Porres
from Lima, Peru
17th Century Holy man
dedicated entirely to our poor
a humble man of great beauty
this is truly spiritual.

Black Christ
of the Andes
rising up into the sky
hewed out of mountains
I pray to thee
I play for thee.

Dedicated to my two cousins named Cassandra: the first
who was my friend, dorm roommate and who died much
too young and the second who has yet to fully live her life.

Poems or Stories can not be reproduced in any manner without the written
permission of Fabu.

Telling Our Stories
(Play Clip of Story)

Each of us has a story to tell.  Both telling and listening to our
stories are important connections between people and form the
basis of healthy, wonderful human relationships.  If the person
is five or fifty, each has their own personal story that begs for a
listening audience.  There were three people who told me stories
as a child.  The first was my father, Herman Grant Carter, who
was the parent who tucked me into bed and told me bedtime
stories.  He would reach up and grab a volume from The Child
Craft series and read to me.  I was eager to read the stories my
Daddy told me.  When I could read and looked for the stories, I
discovered that they were not in a book but rather his stories
came from his imagination.  The second person to tell me stories
was my maternal grandmother, Effie Florida Cunningham Partee.
When I was visiting her in Mississippi she would tell her
grandchildren stories about slavery and life in the South.  When
I followed her around the yard as she tended to her flowers, she
would tell me even more stories about when she was a child.  My
grandmother made me see life from the viewpoint of an artist.
Lastly, I attended a very small church in Fayetteville, North Carolina
before my father was sent to Viet Nam and we moved permanently
to Memphis, Tennessee.  There was a minister in the church who
was elderly.  He told all the children his ghost stories from Texas
and we were fascinated by this master storyteller whose stories
came alive in his voice and in the movements of his body.  This
is the beginning of the story “The Day The Sun Refused to Shine”
and it is based on my Grandma Effie’s stories about Mississippi.
These people formed me into a storyteller.