Pure As Project Mournings

“I’m from the projects.”  That’s what she said and I heard her.  I mean I listened intently, hung on to her every word, its cadence and lesson.  I wouldn’t know for a long time that being from the projects was something to scoff at and the natives would cower in shame over.  Not me and definitely not her.  She’s was to me what Biggie was to so many lost boys and girls in the 90′s.  She offered a lot of common sense mostly.  I ate it up, and yet admit that she sort of lost me when she opted to not vote in the presidential elections of 1992 after Clinton called her out, branding her a racist like David Duke, the then Republican Party presidential candidate and former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.  Apparently Clinton had taken her words out of context and attacked her character in what has historically become known as a Sista Souljah Moment.  Indeed it was.  Rather funny how things don’t change much; the Washington Post captures Obama’s accidental Sista Souljah Moment.

1992 was also the year of the “Rodney King uprisings” and the year Washington Post journalist David Mills interviewed Souljah and we got such great quotes like,

“I mean, if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people? You understand what I’m saying? In other words, white people, this government and that mayor were well aware of the fact that black people were dying every day in Los Angeles under gang violence. So if you’re a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person? Do you think that somebody thinks that white people are better, or above dying, when they would kill their own kind?”

It was that first sentence that Clinton capitalized off of.  If you’re interested in taking a trip to the 1990′s to shovel about the dust of the past and you’d like to get some reading done, click here to read the entire article that made history.  Click here to read Souljah’s response.

Wow! All of that to say, that I was influenced in a major way by Souljah.  I shared her anger at the plight of impoverished black people, the injustice, the brutality and hatred poured out on my community by the NYPD and America at large.  She declared that we were at war and I believed it.  She exuded the strength of a strong fort of Soweto youth fighting for freedom and I tried to emulate it.  It may have been ’92, but my mind was experiencing the glories of the militant past of the ’60′s and the path of iconic figures like the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X.  And to make matters even better, she was just like me, from the pj’s and proud of it.

Join me on this journey as I share my life with you (just a little bit).  You’ll get some BC days and present day glories and battles from my Christ has redeemed me days.  Maybe you can help me name these memoirs… what do you think about princess of the ghetto? Kind of reminiscent of JJ on Good Times, isn’t it?

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