‘Me and My People Are Masters at Overcoming’

by Ernie McCray

I came across a picture of me
rehearsing a scene
from August Wilson’s
“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone”
with two other actors,
back in the late 80’s,
if I remember correctly.

We were portraying characters
in a boarding house
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
in the early 1900’s,
grappling with their pasts
and who they are,
reaching for love
and promising futures,
up against a world
that opposed,
through a variety
of discriminatory ways,
their folklore and spirituality,
their very beings as a culture,
leaving them to their own devices
to survive.

This particular play by Mr. Wilson
was one of ten others written
by him about what it was like to be in the skin
of African Americans throughout the 20th Century
and when I bear witness to matters of race today,
during the third decade
of the 21st Century,
I see vestiges of old prejudices
still in play
like a chronic illness
that just won’t go away,
as Latinos
and Black immigrants
are being hauled away
in disproportionate numbers,
as those in power boldly
tear away at the history
of who we are,
shredding the truths of what our stories
and beliefs are,
leaving what’s ahead for us
unknown in the noise
of the nulling and voiding
and downright cruelty,
rendering our survival up for grabs,
in the hand of fate.

But they don’t make allowances for a truth
we’ve brought to the fore
for centuries,
that being
there is no quit in us.

The characters in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,
in spite of the trials and tribulations
they had undergone
in their search for identity
and belonging,
come out at the end
feeling a deep sense
of self-discovery and transformation
and self-reliance
and resolution
for their various situations.

All to say,
these tools in high places
don’t seem to understand
that we descendants of Africa
are masters at
overcoming.