Dear Editor,
They say you shouldn’t speak ill of the departed. However, I am of the opinion that the truth doesn’t count in that equation. As an avid Amandala reader (it sometimes costs me $2.50 a week for both issues), I have been reading the Publisher’s recent columns on Creole leadership with great anticipation for the subsequent installments.
Upon reading the one featuring Curl Thompson and the one C.L.B. “Lindy Rogers”, I couldn’t help remembering the campaign leading up to the election in which Rogers lost to Curl Thompson.
As the column pointed out, it was a time of heightened color consciousness. I had been working at the BTL Duck Lane offices at night, due to the paint odors affecting the employees during the day.
While I was riding past a PUP meeting being wrapped up late that night at the Pound Yard, Rogers ripped into Curl Thompson with a black-on-black racist tirade. It was too much to remember verbatim, but what burned into my memory was when he said, “How unnu gwine vote fi da man, dah man black till ih han eenside ahn aal black.”
As a Rastaman, I damn nearly fell off my bike hearing a black man cursing another black man, BLACK. The large PUP crowd, some blacker than Mr. Curl, cheered loudly.
Then Lindy continued, “I know I black, but hihn BLACKARA dahn me”. More loud cheers.
Next morning at work, I relayed what I had heard to my coworkers. None believed me until Jacinto, who lived on the canal side, came and corroborated my story. He said the loud speakers at Pound Yard kept him awake, and he heard CLB’s tirade as well.
Although we had a good laugh, it wasn’t funny. Mostly, I was laughing “at” Mr Rogers. I am still amazed by the fact that a deputy PM was bold enough to say that on a public rostrum to black people, who co-signed.
Blessed holidays to all.
Orlando Warren,
Toledo