Gloria S.
Torontonian
I Said It Loud...I'm Black And Proud
In the 1960s and through the early 1970s Greenwich Village was my home. Weekends and after work I spent my time sitting on the walls of the fountain in Washington Square. Sitting there I was surrounded by musicians, photographers, tourists, protesters and so many orange-robed youths and their melodious voices singing ‘Hare Krishna’. Anything was subject to be rebelled against and debated. I think it was then that I realized my earlier civil rights causes and struggles were linked somehow with other struggles. A social conscious revolt by many of the youth of the day was being waged against a stoic, uncaring society. This society was content to go on with the ‘business as usual’ motto.
My red-headed Irish friend Michael with hair half way down his back was rebelling against the notion that going to war would make him a man. He didn’t want to go to some other country to fight a war he didn’t agree with. Natalie, who had closets full of haute couture clothes, yet never wore anything but gypsy skirts and blouses, rebelled against her so called ‘reserved’ place in society. Natalie wanted to carve out her own place in a more equal society.
And there I was, with my twelve inch high Afro hair. Symbolically, I think my Afro represented my need to demonstrate my love of my ‘blackness’. I refused to conform to society’s ‘whiteness’ (straight hair). Michael, Natalie, and I were all someone’s child rebelling against our own idea of injustice in a world that seemingly didn’t care. We wanted the world to know that we cared; we wanted change and we would die for change.