I Knowala Kamala
I knowala Kamala, not from meeting her at some slick party with the who's who in Hollywood. Not because of attending the same law school with her, like my DST line sister did.
No, I knowala Kamala from a deeper place than that. I knowala Kamala's Bay Area soul. Why she opens her hands so wide, why her smile lingers like the evening fog rolling over the East Bay hills - deep, lasting, real.
I know how her smile was formed under clear blue skies stretched out over the Golden Gate and Bay Area bridges, like God's own canvas painted fresh each morning.
I know how happy Black people were about FREEDOM in the 70s! We'd survived Martin Luther King's assassination and a few more: Medgar Evers and Stokely Carmichael and more. Our parents had survived, and now they were movers and shakers in the Bay Area - the most beautiful, scenic part of the world, where dreams took flight on Pacific winds!
I know that Willie Brown was there, a dapper brother who knew ALL things in politics, smooth as silk and sharp as a tack. I know the 1975 music he was grooving to in Jack London Square as he slapped five on the Black and white sides or bumped a fist. From the Black Byrd's "Places and Spaces" to the People's Choice "Do It Any Kind of Way You Want to," Black people were creating, shining, and breaking down barriers. Like when Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby teamed up with Curtis Mayfield and The Staple Singers to create the soundtrack for their new movie "Let's Do It Again." The music was funky and uplifting - it was the soundtrack of liberation!
In 1975, Kamala was 11 years old while I was 15 when my mom, wearing an Afro like a crown, arrived in the Bay Area, leaning to the side in her Cadillac like royalty. She came armed with a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Michigan and a Rockefeller Fellowship to study under Dr. Ruth Love, who then was the first Black Female Superintendent of Oakland Unified School District and who later became the first Black Female Superintendent of Chicago Public Schools - breaking barriers, setting precedents, making history.
Because I knowala Kamala, I understand why FREEDOM was her campaign's theme song. I know that the sunshine of the Bay Area permanently chiseled the smile on her lips. That her hip stride – that's not too much -- in bell bottoms pants was practiced on the runways of San Francisco's fashion district. I know why she opens her chest so wide, flings her arms 180 degrees as she says "I want to be the president of ALL of America." She says it because she means it deep down in her heart. That's what we were taught in the Bay Area - that we were to love our neighbors: white, Black, Asian, Jewish, Indian, and Latino, all of them. I fondly remember our neighbor Light Foot, an Indian who still wore his traditional dress, adding his own beautiful thread to our tapestry. Everything, everywhere SHOUTED L-O-V-E!
The sweetest voice in the world, Minnie Riperton, whispered to us L-O-V-E. How fitting that her daughter Maya is now tickling our sides with her smart skits as I Knowala Kamala!
We loved America for transcending the cruelty of Jim Crow and segregation. We were to love thy neighbor because we were creating a new chapter in America's history entitled FREEDOM! A chapter written in the ink of hope, bound in the leather of perseverance, and illuminated by the light of love.
Now, all I’m left with are tears and sorrow. America missed a beautiful African American and Asian American Butterfly ! They missed the magic of her metamorphosis, the grace of her ascension, the power of her dual heritage spreading wide like those arms that wanted to embrace all of America. In missing her, they missed a piece of themselves, a glimpse of what America could be when it dares to let all its butterflies fly free.