Poet, Legendary Journalist Remembered

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MICHEL MARTIN, host:

I'm Michel Martin. This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.

Later in the program, our Summer of Soul series kicks off. And we make our weekly visit to the Barbershop.

But first, usually at this time, we have our Faith Matters conversation where we turn to spiritual leaders for their take on issues in the news. But today we're going to use that time to remember two men.

Performance poet and community activist Sekou Sundiata died Wednesday morning. He depicted urban African-American life through his poetry and plays. Sundiata was born Robert Franklin Feaster in East Harlem on August 22nd, 1948. He began his career as a performance artist during the black arts movement of the 1960s and '70s. He, like other poets of his generation, combined spoken word with music. In the late 1990s, Sundiata explained to NPR reporter Laura Sydell that the most compelling political statement was a personal one. This poem, titled "Harlem: A Letter Home," was about the gentrification of his beloved Harlem neighborhood.

Mr. SEKOU SUNDIATA (Performance Poet): I walk around with this photograph of you at the African American Day parade, looking like a 33rd mason, an eastern star, an old African, a Parliament Funkadelic, a brand in flowing feather in a Marcus Garvey hat. But in your ashy, sunken face I see a falling of flesh from bone. I see your red hands, your blue eyes, your protruding ribs where once I entered and live. You were my living room, my address, and my home.

MARTIN: Poet Sekou Sundiata died from heart failure in New York. He was 58 years old.

We also remember Charles Tisdale. He was a journalist and civil rights advocate who owned Mississippi's oldest black newspaper, the Jackson Advocate. He was born in Athens, Alabama in November 1926. He bought the weekly newspaper in 1978. But even at that late date it was not easy being a prominent African American voice. His family friend and colleague Stephanie Parker-Weaver remembers. Weaver worked with Tisdale on the paper.

Ms. STEPHANIE PARKER-WEAVER: There were hundreds of different issues that were laid out before the community on a weekly basis, but there are really kind of two, maybe three, that I can think of right off-hand. The first one, of course, was the (unintelligible) with Capital Center Incorporated because of our effort to fight privatization of the municipal services once African-Americans obtained political power and became the majority of the elected officials. The second issue surrounded the fight with Nissan and the state of Mississippi over the issue of eminent domain abuse against some black landowners in Madison County. And, of course, the third issue would have to be the fire bombing, the January 26, 1998 fire bombing of the Jackson Advocate newspaper itself.

MARTIN: Although the paper's circulation has dropped over the past five years, his wife Alice plans to continue to publish the Advocate. Stephanie Parker-Weaver says Tisdale was one of a kind.

Ms. PARKER-WEAVER: There are not many people who live their lives and eat, sleep and breathe civil rights 24/7. He loved his people and he wanted to make sure that they not only received justice but equity.

MARTIN: Tisdale passed away on July 7th. He collapsed while undergoing dialysis at the age of 80.

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