Category: Columns

by Ernie McCray

I’m almost 85.
And with more years behind me
than ahead of me
I am thankful
to still be alive
and to have been brought to life
by a mother who
loved and befriended me
and guided me
towards a nice path
to take on my life’s journey,
a voyage
I’m thankful for
just for the gifts
that have been bestowed on me:

by Ernie McCray

How silly are we,
as a society,
to talk about
getting rid of
drag queen performances
to shield the productions
from the view of our children
as though our kids
sneak out at night
going to drag venues
and strip clubs
and the like.

Yikes.
Are homo sapiens’
brains on strike?

by Ernie McCray

Oh, I so enjoyed
sharing my experiences
with you
bright young people
as an 84-year-old Black man
who has
sat at the back of the bus
and put up with
a whole lot of other stuff
and, somehow in all the
huffing and puffing
against such,
managed to
keep the love in me
untouched.

by Ernie McCray

At a time
when we
should open our eyes and hearts and minds
to ways
we can
learn the rich stories
that make up
who we are collectively
as subsets
in the vast world
of humanity,
along comes someone like
Ron DeSantis,
the governor of Florida,

by Ernie McCray

Just being mentioned with Bayard Rustin
would be enough to fill me with glee.
But receiving the Bayard Rustin
Lifetime Achievement Award
is mind blowing for me.

Makes me feel
like Bojangles
dancing a soft shoe
down a stairway
in a Shirley Temple movie
or on Old Broadway.

Because Bayard was a hero of mine.
Big time.

by Ernie McCray

Black History Month
has come a long way
since a beginning
that was filled with
controversy over celebrating
it in the month that has the fewest days
when Black History, so much of it
American History,
could be integrated in historical studies
throughout a school year
and there have been those

by Ernie McCray

All that physical torture
that Tyre Nichols went through,
to me,
was way too much
déjà vu,
in the form of
“Here we go again,”
created by roguish so-called “peace officers”
committing sins against Black humanity,
stomping and punching
and tazing and spraying
and kicking
and then watching their victim
as he lay dying,
justifying
their brutality
shucking and jiving
and lying
about Tyre having done some reckless driving

by Ernie McCray

Oh, I’m practically overflowing
with joy
having my name
living on in perpetuity
as a
University of Arizona
Basketball Ring of Honor honoree,
mostly for the reason that it highlights
just how far Tucson, my hometown,
has come
since my growing up days,
as I was the second Black basketball player
to perform at the U of A
and now there are

By Ernie McCray

Back when I was playing
in the old Bear Down Gym
doing my “Easy Ernie” thing,
draining 2’s
and what today|
would be 3’s
and snatching rebounds
like I was taking back
something that had been stolen from me,
I couldn’t have dreamed
that all that balling
would someday
result in my name hanging from a rafter
in the University of Arizona’s
Basketball Ring of Honor,

by Ernie McCray

Two people kept Martin Luther King’s
spirit of love
breathing
for me
on MLK Day,
Steve Phillips,”
writer and founder of Democracy in Color,
and Grammy Award winning jazz trumpeter
and film score composer,
Terence Blanchard.

by Ernie McCray

You live long enough
you see a lot of things,
both good and bad
and in-between
in a lifetime
and I find myself
from time to time
remembering things I’ve seen
over my more than
three-quarters of a century
of being alive and breathing,

by Ernie McCray

America today is a bit
whacky
and almost
out of control,
when we should be reaching
down deep in our souls
to make our nation
at least not a country
where one turns on his TV
to CNN or MSBNC
to a scene
where one US Congressman
is being restrained by a fellow Congressman
to prevent him
from going upside the head
of another Congressman