dvaughan@heraldsun.com; 419-6563
DURHAM – Saturday afternoon at W.D. Hill Recreation Center on Fayetteville Street, the voice of Martin Luther King Jr. boomed through a speaker in the hall as children made crafts in one room, an artist painted Dr. King’s portrait in another, and words flowed freely in poetic pentameter in yet another.
It was the room for spoken word that was the biggest draw, with filled chairs lining the mirrored walls of a dance room, impromptu speakers in the center, sharing their thoughts in verse and earnest.
Spoken word artist Felicia “Inkstress” Albritton came to the W.D. Hill MLK event from Washington, N.C., writing her verses on the way. She began with mention of the sound coming from down the hall, of a voice as recognizable as his words.
“Just as you hear the remnants of his dream in the background,” she said, “we dream the same dream decades later.” Albritton noted President Obama, the first U.S. African-American president. She spoke about racism and ignorance, but also trying “to break that curse of killing ourselves.” She asked the audience if they were accepting what the poets were speaking that day, or would they just go home and do what they’ve always been doing.
“What were you doing when history was being made?” Albritton asked.
B.J. Jackson is a young man but old enough to look back on his youthful mistakes and where he used to be, he said. He shared a story he wrote called “Pressure,” drawn from his own mistakes and what he hears from youth today. The story is of a teenage boy who treats life as a game, who threatens those who step at him the wrong way. Then the youth is shot, his mom screaming, his dad nowhere to be found, his life expectancy “maybe” and lying on the ground in blood.
“You choose the path of destruction,” Jackson said. “Death [is] at your doorstep.”
Another poet, Andra Kellon, spoke about the importance of youth and the future.
Out in the hall, Anthony McClain got the word out about the African-American Historical News Journal, published in Cornelius, N.C., which presents history from 1778 to 1956 as newspaper articles. McClain also runs a boot camp for Raleigh youth, called Boot Camp for Life, which he’d like to bring to Durham.
Back in the spoken word room, Wilma Liverpool began by telling the crowd she was not a poet. But she did have something to say. Words like drug dealer, robber and uneducated are not who we are, she told those gathered in the room.
“For I, too, have a dream,” she said. Liverpool said King died when he was in Memphis for trash collectors, yet “we trash our streets with dead bodies…one more gone too soon.”
Natasha Turrentine, who works at W.D. Hill, said Liverpool’s words stuck with her -- that instead of killing each other in communities, we ought to help each other.
Turrentine said she loved the poetry, and learned from a lot of different people expressing themselves.
Soniya Hardy was the artist expressing herself by painting King’s portrait with acrylics. People checked out her work as it was being created. Activities paused for a performance by the youth dance group Remyx’d Couture, but the interest in poetry was strong enough that then wanted to continue the circle and spread the word.
