Imani Rashid
Imani Rashid is an “entrepreneur, teacher, visionary, event planner, Godmother to many, leader, Yoruba Priestess, mentor, friend and sister to others” [In her words] and a founding member of Salsa Soul Sisters (the oldest black lesbian organization in the United States). Imani has dedicated her life to enriching and expanding the education of young children using the principles Kwanza and creative practices such as drumming and aviation. The following conversation was recorded on April 6, 2020 at 9am over FaceTime from Brooklyn, NY to Long Island, NY.
Imani Rashid and children, Kwanza 1987. Image courtesy of Cassandra Grant.
Imani Rashid and children, Kwanza 1987. Image courtesy of Cassandra Grant.
Gwen Shockey: How have you been holding up in this crazy, crazy time?
Imani Rashid: Oh fine! We’ve been going live [on Facebook] out in the forest and stuff! I’m quarantined in the Hamptons in East Quogue.
GS: Nice! I’ve heard its beautiful there.
IR: Lovely!
GS: Thank you so much for being willing to chat with me today! Cassandra just spoke so highly of you. So, the first question I usually ask is if you can remember the first space you were ever in that was occupied mostly by queer women or lesbians and what it felt like to be there?
IR: Oh! I remember really clearly where I was! Let me just get something to cover my food because I see I won’t be able to talk and eat.
GS: Ok!
IR: Ok! So! I’m going to give you a little tour! I wasn’t prepared for this but this is my retreat house! Ok? It’s a four-thousand-square-foot home with tennis, a swimming pool, hot tub, and two acres, which out here is a lot of acres! We’re on two acres. Over here we are getting ready to have some clearing happen to plant food because we know we have to get prepared. I’ve been talking about this for two years… How prepared we must get because we know pandemics will occur more frequently. So, this is where I stay upstairs and the reason I’m showing you this is because this is our retreat center! What we do is we have workshops and what we’re known for are the lesbian women’s couples retreats. So, you can see out the window that’s the driveway and this of course is the bathroom upstairs! This place has seven and a half baths. We have downstairs a finished basement which contributes to that four-thousand-square-feet I mentioned. And we have a jacuzzi in every bathroom which means we can also have healing retreats where we come and heal and do yoga! The famous one is yoga by the beach. And so… What can I say, naturally this was the place I decided to come with some of the godchildren who are with me here. We’ve been here now for three weeks. So, you asked me how I first… Well, first of all aren’t you going to ask me who I am?
GS: Sure! Sure, yeah! Please begin by introducing yourself! Sure!
IR: I am Imani Rashid! That’s a name that I gave myself when I was in my thirties in the 1970s because my birthname didn’t suit me any longer. So, people know me as Imani Rashid! And Imani is a name that came out of the Kwanza, it’s one of the principles of Kwanza. Ok! So. Who am I? I’m an eighty-year-old! White hair to prove it! (Laughing) I’m an entrepreneur, teacher, visionary, event planner, godmother to many, leader… Did I say mentor? Friend and sister to others. I identify as “her” although I see myself as one of those boy girls that never outgrew the boy stage. (Laughing) So, in about 1975 I was just finishing up my master’s at NYU. 1975… Let me think. No! I was already finished. I was finished with my master’s at NYU where I also went to undergraduate school. I also went to Baruch and got another master’s. So, by ‘75 I was free and ready to get into some political work! And I had heard a lot about Salsa Soul Sisters and I was so anxious to get there! I was with a woman at the time and she had an African name and I liked that. I liked her name. She told me we could get one for me too! I said: We can? So, she and I went together to this meeting at the church, the Washington Square [Methodist Episcopal] Church I think it was called, right there! Everybody went to Washington Square even when you were twelve or sixteen, everybody went down there to get your orientation and to get your Fred Braun shoes and sandals and just to explore the village! And we knew that it had kind of a permissive type of atmosphere. We knew that it was creative. So, the church there let us have our meetings. I got there and met the woman that would become my best, best, bestie until she passed in 1993. Her name was Yvonne Flowers but she changed her name to Maua Flowers. Ok? So, when we got there I stood up and said: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Why is everyone talking about whether or not to send their ex-lovers Christmas cards? I know I did not struggle for years to get here to hear this conversation. So, I immediately stood up. I guess it was the anxiety and the drive that pushes me even today at eighty. They all poopooed me! They said, “Sit down! Nobody wants to hear about no Kwanza!” They still wanted to go ahead talking about Christmas cards. So, Maua said, “Wait a minute! If the sister wants Kwanza, then let her bring it here!” I was like: Who is that? I’ve got to know her! That’s my ally and I never saw her before in my life. This happened in November so we had about a month to get ready. And I knew that I wanted to have it balanced in terms of energy, you know? So, the femme who was so vocal about everything and was also one of the founders of Salsa Soul said she did Kwanza with her children! That was Cassandra Grant! So, we planned the first Kwanza! Now, many of those lesbian women had children! They had children with men that they had been with prior! And to tell you the truth, some of them were still with men! I would find that out later. I didn’t know that they were going home to their husbands. We didn’t know that. But we knew that their children were right there, the most precious, precious, precious thing to me are the children. I know Cassandra feels the same way. We went ahead and had our first Kwanza. The children learned the principles and the parents of course who were helping us learned too! We had our fruit! And a sister named Harriet Alston, who lives in North Carolina now, always had a big van and she would transport the fruit from one house to the next house, to the next house, to the next house for seven days. So, we were practicing something that was started in the larger community. It began in the Black Nationalists community but the Black Nationalists were not inviting us. And they still don’t. Less than a year ago, for this past Kwanza, I did call a brother, who comes into New York City every year to I think Boys and Girls High to have that Kwanza that they’ve been having since 1966. So, I said to him: We would like to be a part of what you do and let us meet up because we do the same work and they said, “No, no, no!” They said, “You can join us if you like but we ask that you not identify yourselves.”
GS: As lesbian?
IR: As lesbian! And I said to them: Well, surely you know that we are in a struggle right now where we need all parts of the community. And they said, “We do not mind, except we do not want you to identify yourselves.” And I said: Now, you know you have gay and lesbian people working with you to help you stay afloat! They said, “That may be but since they don’t identify themselves it’s fine.”
GS: That’s terrible!
IR: That’s what’s happening in 2020.
GS: I’m reading parts of Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider again at the moment and funnily enough I was just reading the passage where she discusses homophobia and sexism within the Civil Rights Movement and the urgent need to come together…
IR: It’s heartbreaking. But I learned all I know about it from the Black Nationalists. I had a son at the time being with the woman I was with. We were raising her son. We were together about five years and he went to a school in Brooklyn and the school had a completely African curriculum and so I learned with them! But here’s what happened! There were some people who were totally into us in terms of our relationship! They came to our home, we went to theirs. There were some people who were off-putting, almost as though they don’t want to hurt their eyes looking at us. You know? I can say though that I got some really good stuff from that group! There was one brother who after that died… I want to give that man credit! He actually worked with some of my students in terms of drumming! He was a drummer and had several wives and lots of children. I had three boys at the time in the third-grade class and I had requested the worst kids in the grade… Give me all of the acting up kids! The teachers were so happy, the principal was relieved, the teachers could go on teaching in the classrooms and I had the twelve worst kids in the third grade. They couldn’t read! They couldn’t write! Ok? And at the time I was just so thrilled because I know that there’s a spirit in the badass kids that reminds me of my rebellious spirit.
So, I had just come back from flight school. I had my pilots license. I’m skipping around a bit here… I’ll get back to the Kwanza if I have to. I just like to let it flow… So! Here we are in 1980 or around then and I would get these airplane kits and those kids were motivated because they wanted to put those kits together. So, they want to read! For the first time in their lives, they want to read! So, I would put up the charts and we would take the words, word by word, and put them on the chart and work hard putting those planes together and then we would write about what we did and then they would read about what they did! And it was wonderful!
I had one drum then from a past partner… And I just loved the women, even today. I have to be with the girls, that’s what I call it. (Smiling) But anyway, I said to them: I have a drum and I’ll bring it in! So, I showed them my conga drum that this past partner had given me. She had been a student teacher of mine in my classroom and she knew I liked drums and by this time I was going with her. But I never, never messed with people in my classroom because my children come first. Ok? But. She came through the school… So, anyway Joyce had given me this drum and I didn’t really know how to drum when I received it! But then later on Edwina Taylor, who was a wonderful master drummer, she would teach me how to drum when I came back from Africa.
We had gone backpacking to Africa with those big heavy backpacks that you strap on you and I’ll tell you there were five women that were with us. I was going through a breakup and my friend Maua – my best, best, best, bestie – she said, “Imani, you’ve been talking about going to Africa all these years! Put together a trip and we’ll go.” She knew that would take my mind off of things. So, it was me and Maua, Harriet who I mentioned earlier, Joan Ashley’s mother whose name is… It’ll come to me later and Shirley. And so we went backpacking. I’m telling this because there I got this huge balafon. Do you know what a balafon is? It’s like a xylophone but the balafon came before the xylophone and the balafon was made of wood. And so I couldn’t carry it because it was so big! So, the younger women carried it. Me and Joanie’s mother were the oldest ones. No, actually I wasn’t! I was in the middle because Joanie’s mother is ninety-one now! Maua left us and then there was me and Harriet and Shirley. So, between Harriet and Shirley, mostly Harriet, they carried that big balafon. We also bought drums there. We went to a dance company where they just about gave us the drums and when I came back I said: Edwina! I want you to give me ten lessons! We’ll barter for this balafon! And that’s how I started drumming.
GS: That’s amazing!
IR: So, now! I want to come back to the students in the classroom. We’re talking about 122nd Street between Lennox and 7th, P.S. 144, the building is still there! I started in that building when I was nineteen. My mother was a teacher before me and she said you need to get a teacher’s license while I was still in college so I used to work in that school in the summertime.
GS: Did you grow up around there?
IR: I did! I grew up in Harlem! I grew up on 135th Street in a housing complex called Riverton and Riverton was one of those deals, ok? Metropolitan Insurance Company had put up Stuyvesant Town and Parkchester but black people weren’t allowed in those developments. So, they knew that black people were… whatever little money we had, were strong proponents of insurance, always buying insurance. So Metropolitan felt they had to give us something so they put up these brand-new buildings!
I should have had my microphone on! I wanted to record this! I’m doing my memoirs right now!
GS: I’ll send you the audio Imani!
IR: Oh! That’s good! So, there we are in Riverton as a result of something Metropolitan Insurance Company gave us back. Brand new buildings we’re talking about. When World War II was over, it was 1945 and daddy was in the marine core. He came out, came home and I think we got into that housing development between 1946 and ’47. Brand new apartments! Ours was right on the water with a view of the East River Drive, which they called the Harlem River Drive when it goes up that far and you could look out and it was so beautiful! They didn’t have fences up or anything, nobody was jumping in, nobody was throwing things in and so that’s where I grew up. You asked me where I grew up. I grew up there with a bus driver father and a teacher mother. I would later get invited by some of my mother’s friends who were teachers… Once a year we would go to Parkchester to visit people she knew and sometimes we would go to Stuyvesant Town. Even that development today is very well maintained. It’s very, very excellent. You couldn’t just get in there in those days. Because my mother was a teacher of business subjects and because she kept the books for the Saint Martin’s Episcopal Church, which was down on Lennox Avenue near that school I taught at and the reason why I was at that school is because my mother knew the principal. She met the principal and the principal said, “I’ll take care of your little darling!” And that she did. She put my classroom right opposite hers so she was able to see me all the time! (Laughing) So, anyway.
GS: Were you and your mom close?
IR: (Sighs) Oh… Don’t ask me about my mom. This whole interview could be about my mom. I am because she was. She was amazing. Later on we would buy a brownstone together. And then buy another one. What happened was, mom… Mom was such a beautiful person. I have a picture of her. She was on the outside beautiful as well as on the inside. She was one of those people who when she passed from an asthma attack in 1990, her friends came to me and said, “We don’t know what we’ll do without her. What will we do without her?” She was the kind of person who if you said you wanted a particular kind of lamp, she would search the thrift shops and whatnot and get back to you and tell you! I thought she only did that for me! But everybody said she did it for all of them! (Laughing) I thought that was amazing!
GS: Oh my god, wow!
IR: She was that kind of a person. Big hearted. She told me she grew up on the poorest block in Harlem at the time. It was 114th Street. Here is a picture of her.
GS: Oh she is beautiful! I see the resemblance!
IR: Oh thank you! I think I look more like my dad. They looked like each other because they were like brother and sister-type of people. They were going together from the time my mother was fourteen and he was fifteen. So, she grew up on that really, really bad block. And she said that grandma did not want to get on her knees and scrub anybody’s toilets and grandma had a third-grade education! She came from Georgia seeking a better life when she was young and left mommy there in Georgia with her mother. Mommy did not like that. But by the time she was fourteen mommy was paying the rent in that apartment because all the teachers where she went were getting her to type their term papers. She was that skilled. She went on to teach many other kids in Harlem. She’s a graduate of City College. She was a school secretary first and after she got me through school and I had finished everything, she graduated the next year. She helped many, many businesses in Harlem get started. They didn’t need to go to college. Once they had their business skills down they simply opened their businesses. Oh! I see a bug here… Hold on. Well, I can’t get it. That’s to be expected sometimes.
GS: The beauty of being in the country! Well, she sounds like such an amazing person and it seems like she really passed down to you the power of education.
IR: She passed on everything to me and I caught the baton. When they called I was in South Carolina. My father called and said, “You’re mother died!” It was an asthma attack and it was unexpected. We knew she had asthma but you know what? I remember just screaming and then getting on the plane and coming back. Now, I was a strict, strict, strict, strict vegan and mommy was a gourmet cook. She would have her students type cookbooks and whatnot as part of their projects in school. She would always say, “Put a little Häagen-Dazs on top of that pie!” She would make my thing separate. She would have my vegetarian lasagna and my vegetarian this and that! This was as far back as 1970, you know? Maybe even back into the ‘60s. She would have my stuff all ready. And I would say: No mommy, you know I don’t eat ice cream. I don’t do dairy. Well, when she passed I stopped in the Häagen-Dazs place right there in the airport and licked my way over to the connecting flight.
GS: That’s such a sweet memory!
IR: I know. I still watch my diet. I’m still vegetarian. Once in a while I’ll eat something that’s not vegan but I’m a staunch vegetarian. I can’t claim vegan. But mommy could make sweet potato pies, apple pies, she could make any nationality’s food. She was just so good at it. She could make Italian food better than the Italians. She was so gifted with that and so dedicated to it. You know?
GS: Do you still have copies of the cookbooks she made?
IR: I do! I have one copy!
GS: Well, if we ever meet in person I’d love to see it!
IR: Oh! What do you mean if we ever meet in person? We’re not going anywhere! We’ll meet! And I’ll also introduce you to my book. I have a book called Imani… Oh, no. The book is called Kwanza in the Lesbian and Gay Family. It’s on Amazon.
GS: Oh! Fantastic! I’d love to see that. Did you come out to your mom?
IR: Oh yes. I did. It was painful for her. She was really, really, really upset but she loved me so much. But it was painful! She wanted me to be just like her! One of the things I did was move to the village and I lived in the village on 5th Street for many years and then I moved over to 10th Street. What happened was, mommy said, “Everybody says you’re a good educator honey, but they see you out at night dressed like a man!” She said, “Why do you have to dress like that?” I went downtown and I got a fifty-dollar-a-month apartment on 5th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues and I lived my life. I had a good old life going to Provincetown in the summertime! I wasn’t playing drums yet but I was having a good old time with people I met. Lily Tomlin used to come to our house! I was the only black person in the neighborhood. Black people were further over east between Avenues C and D. I had my sports car… I always loved sports cars. I had a sports car back in the ‘60s, a little Triumph! I could jump over the door! I wouldn’t even have to open the door. Little red sports car. Before that I tried to live on 88th Street blocks from the mayor’s mansion but it was so racist over there! I had my sports car and people would take the air out of my tires at night. They were just terrible. They would push me with their carts if I went into the supermarket. They would run their carts right up into me. So… Yeah. I went down there with the only white woman I ever went with, Irene, she lived there. That’s how I got in the building. And so I was in the building and friends would come and see me there and they would tease me! They said, “You like her?” She was a Jewish woman. She always had my dinner ready for me, everything ready, and when I went to Provincetown with her everybody thought I was so beautiful on the streets! They would just stop me and do portraits and whatnot. So, I enjoyed that! But when I decided that Irene was just a little too sedentary, she didn’t really like to party and do things like I did, I called the landlord and I demanded the next vacant apartment and I got it.
GS: How did you first realize you were gay within yourself?
IR: Oh, I was always boyish! Mommy used to tell me, “You can’t wear pants.” Because women couldn’t wear pants to work. It’s very different now but the only time we could put on pants was if I was riding my bicycle. It was better to do that than to fall or something and have your dress go up. (Laughing) So, I went with the better of two evils or whatever. (Laughing) Mommy said when I put on pants my legs was wide open! (Laughing) I always sat with my legs wide open and stuff like that! So, I went to Catholic school and when we’d come home in the afternoons we’d always change our clothes. You know, it’s something people are getting back to now with this Coronavirus! Like, when you come in the house, you’re supposed to change your clothes! That was custom! That’s what we did – took off the street clothes and you put on your play clothes or you put on your house clothes! But it’s gotten to a point where it’s all become one, you know? So, nowadays with this Coronavirus people just stay in their pajamas all day! (Laughing)
GS: Yeah! Look at me interviewing you in my pajamas! (Laughing)
IR: (Laughing) You only need to have a few sets of pajamas!
GS: That’s so true! (Laughing)
IR: So, there we were… I was talking about mommy. I could talk, talk, talk all day. Lessons I learned, what she was supportive of and what she wasn’t! Because she wasn’t down with me being gay! She didn’t know first of all what it was. I think things change with generations. I think at one time the tough girls maybe wanted to kick her butt in school and in junior high school it was probably gay girls and so maybe she associated it with that. And she probably could not see me… She knew I wasn’t that. But she had put a lot into me: I went to dance school, I went to piano school! She exposed me – that’s the key word: exposure is the key, key word. No matter what community you come from or who your ancestors were it’s all about exposure for young children and that’s where I am today. I want to make sure that the children around me have that too. I call them the “Kwanza kids” but I feel they’re my kids and sometimes I even joke with their parents: You had these kids for me! So, the thing is to expose them! For instance this afternoon we’re going live from the ocean to show them that you don’t have to spend money to buy wood when we have wood out here on the property. We collect it, we build our fires, it keeps us warm, we don’t have to spend that much money on energy for the house. Also, it’s just warming to sit around the fire and read stories to the children and have them tell us what their day was like. After this education will never be the same again. We’ve always known that the true education, the best education, was a school without walls and so here we are with the opportunity to practice what we know! So, we’ll be at the ocean later on and then I’ll help them with their journals because you know journal writing is a challenge now. Writing, period, is a challenge because of the focus on electronics and then we may play drums before they go to bed and then we’ll go out to the farm where the horses are and the other animals. We get to educate them and expose them so that they can talk about this stuff like they drink water. Very fluid and whatnot. We feel we’re quarantined but we’re not stuck. We’re quarantined but we’re stimulated.
GS: How did these lucky children find you Imani?
IR: Oh! Well I’m a Yoruba priestess so that means that in my travels to Africa, back home, I observe many of the traditional ways and so we have people here who believe like I do that it’s not merely a religion, although it would probably be classified as one, but we see it as a way of life and so everything that we do has to do with the elements. So, I’m a priest of Shango and Shango in nature is represented by a great big tree. Not a puny looking tree, a huge tree that has been there many generations and will be there long after we’re gone, and then the ocean is another element. And think about it! Before we had government, before we had houses, before we had anything we had the ocean and the people happened to live near the ocean and we had the rivers and people lived near the rivers! And so, that’s what my book is about. The Kwanza book is a family-type book. It’s a book that you could read to your children, it’s a book that the children can read themselves and it tells about how wherever they were – wherever these first peoples were – that particular element… If it was Mount Kilimanjaro, that’s where the people would go and they would pray for rain, they would pray to be able to feed their families, and when it was answered they would take offerings or part of the harvest and put it there at the feet of the mountain and so Kwanza is exactly that. It’s not religious. Christians, Muslims, African-belief system people can all participate in Kwanza because it’s a thanksgiving to the ancestors and we can all relate to that. Because Maua and all of the other ancestors that we talked about in Salsa Soul Sisters, they’re all there helping us!
Oh, we’re not only going to get through this pandemic, we’re going to come out of this, if we use the time wisely, better than we were before. Just like your project! You’re working on it now! This gives you time to plan. That’s what I’m doing too. I’m working on a conference right now and the conference has to do with trafficking children, ok? I met some women that I was very impressed with at Harvard who I know will be able to help me do what I need to do to facilitate that conference. Because they weren’t talking about that but I know that one of them is a data expert and belongs to the #MeToo Movement! I can’t get her now because she’s so busy! But I talked to some of the professors there… It was a Black women’s… Black women’s I want to say… Spiritual conference. It was given by the School of Divinity. Some of them are graduating in May. That’s where I first found out that this thing was so serious! Because we had just come home! We saw them one weekend and we came home and I said: What are you doing? And they said, “We’re packing! We gotta get outta here!” – they call Harvard The Academy – “The Academy is shutting down!” I go to Tai Chi class three times a week and now we’re doing virtual classes and in talking with my friends there who are mostly guys… I’m the eldest in the group and most of them are guys. But it’s near me and the sensei is wonderful. And so they had been talking about getting prepared and I had them over to my place and we talked about it and I’d given people literature on how to get prepared and now we’re here. And so I knew immediately to jump out here. And who did I come with? I came with my goddaughter Crystal! She’s a supervisor in one of the schools and she has four children. One is twenty-one and one is twenty-nine. And then she has another set of kids, one is nine and one is ten! And that’s because she’s such a great mom that she went on and adopted two kids into the family. And so these boys were part of our Kwanza this year and it was so wonderful. I always say: Crystal did I have you and I didn’t even know it? Because I always wanted children but I was like: Oh no! I can’t take that pain! I know I can’t take it! First of all, I’m not going to lay down… I’ve never had a man and lest I was going to have an immaculate conception it wasn’t going to happen, you know what I mean? My name is not Mary! (Laughing) That wasn’t going to happen. And I don’t even know if that could happen with Mary, ok? (Laughing) So, anyway… Imani don’t say that… That’s sacrilegious! The nuns in Catholic school would have… (Makes a wrist-slapping gesture) Except that I was goody-goody in Catholic school! I sat like this! (Sitting up straight) I wasn’t going to get that ruler on my knuckles. Oh, hell no. Because the other thing is, I’m so rebellious, I’m like… I don’t let nobody hit me! So, probably even at that stage I would have grabbed the ruler! Yeah! So, you have to be careful with me because I can sit up and look like I’m goody-goody but do not cross the line! I’m real clear about where the boundaries are.
GS: (Laughing) That’s good!
IR: I have always been that way. I was pledging the sorority at eighteen or nineteen… This Black sorority called Alpha Kappa Alpha and it was fine! One of my friends from camp days was a big sister so we were initiates. So, I was on a line of nine and one of the young women was also crazy like me and if they got bored they would tell me to do a stunt or something. “Entertain us!” and of course I would do whatever… Cartwheeling, whatever we felt like doing we would do and they would laugh and that would be that. So, here were are, initiates, and naturally I’m a favorite of a lot of the big sisters and whatnot and they go ahead and one of them who I knew from camp days…
Mommy worked a day job, she worked the afternoon session and she worked the evening session, you have to know, to get me all the special things that I had, that I got, right? And so I went to this exclusive little camp and it was run by Mildred Johnson who is the daughter of James Weldon Johnson who wrote the National Black Anthem! So, her mama who was married to him used to sit up on the big porch and we never wanted it to be said that she sent a message down. She was real old then and she used to sit on that porch and we were always so intimidated by the fact that she told us we better straighten up and whatnot. We had outhouses! So, we got to experience that. I was riding horseback at seven and eight years old! Learning how to trot and whatnot!
GS: Where was the camp?
IR: Pine Bush, New York! You’re jogging a lot of my memory and it’s working! So, I was telling that story to say… I can tell a story within a story and get lost sometimes, so let me see where I was. I was telling the story of the camp to say that Yvonne Butler – that was her name! You’ve got to do this with other elders! Because it helps us remember! You know, we want to remember our stories. No story is any greater than ours, right?
GS: It’s such a delight for me!
IR: Yes! Yvonne picked up the switch to hit me! She picked up a belt or a switch or something to hit me with and I grabbed her hand! I’m the initiate, now. I said: No you won’t! She just put her hand down. I’m a risk-taker. And I think one of the things that helps me to take risks is, number one: I have a clear understanding, and always did even as a child, of what is right and what is not. And like I said, if someone crosses the line I can immediately nail it and identify it and resist. And sometimes it makes them stop and think. Wait a minute! You know? I learned that! And I think coming up in the family I came up with, my mother particularly, being so steadfast in terms of talking, talking, talking, talking, talking… She talked to me all the time. Coming up in the ‘40s people said that children were supposed to be seen and not heard. That wasn’t my mother’s philosophy. Her friends would say, “You let her talk back like that? She can’t answer you like that!” Mommy would not stop me from speaking and expressing myself. And as a result I was always respectful but I also knew how to say what I want to say and I’m very, very aware of consequences! Once you say something you cannot take it back so be careful of what you say to people but make sure that you express yourself. I’m not sweeping things under the rug! Why? I may do a book on this one day. Don’t put off for tomorrow what you could do today! And don’t put off saying something tomorrow! You might not get the opportunity to say it! You know? Say it now. Do what you’re going to do now. If you are on your way to the pharmacy don’t decide to go to Walmart or to go somewhere else! You were on the way to the pharmacy! Go to the pharmacy! I also believe that we are guided! For me, I just kind of look up sometimes and I hear them say don’t go to the pharmacy or don’t go on that trip and I say: Oop! Ok! Call the airport! I’m not going!
GS: Trusting your intuition!
IR: Right! We call it “the ancestors”! So, I went ahead and cancelled my trip. Believe it or not on April 11th I was going to be in Saint Martin but things changed!
GS: You know, something I’ve noticed in talking with you, Cassandra and Roberta is that you all share a strong belief in being who you are, not hiding any part of yourself and bringing all of these amazing parts of yourself to Salsa Soul as a group. I find that to be very powerful! Each one of you continues to fight for what you believe in. But you also listened to each other and seemed to have a lot of compassion for one another…
IR: Yes! And you know how we got that way? We had a Thursday night meeting and at that Thursday night meeting we got to speak, like we’re speaking, for about two to two and a half hours. I was the Thursday night planner and so I learned how to do event planning and whatnot. I stopped being the Thursday night chairperson when I went away to flight school. But there were wall to wall beautiful women! All around us! Some of them would be women who came all the time and some of them would be new women and it was so exciting, you know? All these beautiful women! But we were invested more in what each person’s mind was like. I was not interested so much in what people looked like. I would be busy doing things and whatnot and I would listen and be like: Who’s that? Because afterwards we all went to the bar next door to hang out and I wasn’t a drinker because I was a runner. I ran ten miles a day. I was very athletic and to run ten miles a day you can’t really have a drink. I experienced that once, I had a drink and still got up at five o’clock and I was putting on my things to go out to jog around the track and I realized my stomach wasn’t feeling good and I threw up all that alcohol! After that, I didn’t drink. It wasn’t worth it. But, we loved the minds of the women. See, a lot of the time the white community thought we were just a partying group. In fact, we weren’t even part of the lesbian conference back in the ‘70s. Lesbians in the ‘70s, we weren’t even a part of that. We weren’t invited. And what happened was my friend… I have little mentees who live in North Carolina and they’re very good people to interview by the way. Julia and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. You can find her on Facebook. She had her doctorate before she hit thirty. They are wonderful. Julia is also a priest of Shango but is also a minister and they have their own ministry. They are wonderful and they have a homecoming project. We say that I’m the grandfather of Julia. I’m Julia’s adopted grandfather. So, anyway! To move back to what I was speaking about! So, it had to do a lot with how women thought.
Let me just get something…
And of course this was one of the women I invited! (Holds up an Audre Lorde book) And she came to our meetings quite frequently! And we became good friends! And she’d come to the house and she would come to the parties and we would talk and I told her: Listen, Audre. I started the Yoruba Cultural Center. I founded an institution called the Yoruba Cultural Center and ran it for three years up in one of my buildings on Riverside Drive. I owned five houses at one time. See, mommy and I bought two brownstones together because she was getting ready to leave my father. She was always threatening to leave him and I said: Mommy, if you’re serious this time I’ll help you. And she said well come uptown, come from the village and lets do this in Harlem. And so we did! We found one on the prestigious Strivers’ Row in Harlem and then I said: Mommy I love you so much but I will not live with you. I cannot live with you and so then I found one for ten thousand dollars on Riverside Drive and we renovated it later. A hundred-thousand-dollar renovation. It was the most amazing place! It was a place where parties went on and when I talk about parties, I’m talking about drumming parties starting at seven in the evening and ending at seven the next morning. We were all drumming and if women would go with us they would have to be dancers because the only time they got to communicate with us the whole time through those twelve hours would be if they were dancing as we were drumming, ok? And this woman here, Audre, she told me, you want to take a sabbatical Imani? I said yes! I took two sabbaticals and I was ready to take my second and it was 1990 and she said you don’t have to go any place you don’t have to go out of your house. Because they wanted me to submit an itinerary and I didn’t want to. And she said, listen. This is what you do! She said, you have to subvert the system whenever and wherever you can. She said go get a copy of this magazine called Africa Woman that was in print then and she said, go to the back and you will find all of the addresses and whatnot of the people you need and you can write up a plan that you’re going to stop at all those places. She said, they’ll use taxpayer’s money to try to investigate you and that’s a problem! So, I did that and I never left New York City! I put on my African clothes and I would be in my African Cultural Center and I would have people coming from all over the world to a program I had on cable TV called Imani presents the Yoruba Cultural Center! And so kings and queens from all over the world and people from all over the continent of Africa came. New York is a mecca and so I didn’t have to bring anybody in because they were all crisscrossing and everybody was just coming in and I would just get them and they were on my show and now I even have some tapes by the way that I transferred from VHS to digital copy. Some of them got destroyed, some of them got stolen and different things happened but I have enough now to sit and entertain myself!
GS: That’s wonderful! Is there a way to share those videos?
IR: Yes, we’re going to format them so that we can sell them and whatnot. The Yoruba Cultural Center is going to open again. We’ve got to build a strong foundation and then open that building because I do not want to sell that building! That building is going to be my legacy! It’s going to be where we have classes and just about everything! Everything of who I am. What am I? I’m a Yoruba Priestess, I’m lesbian, I’m an activist – all of who I am. We will have our teachers preserve our stuff so we can pass it on through posterity.
GS: How wonderful What years did the first center run for?
IR: Three full calendar years from January 1st to December 31st. Like that. 1990 to the end of ’93. When it began to get petty and some people were saying, “I don’t want to be on the same program with this person or that person…” We were having our Kwanza and it was the 31st or maybe it was January 1st! So, it went from January 1st to January 1st! Because January 1st is traditionally “Children’s Day” in Kwanza. And so all of the children were there and all my helpers and everybody! It was all volunteer! Mommy had left me some money that I used also to do that at the same time I was teaching full-time at the same time I was also monitoring grandma because grandma died when she was ninety-seven. Grandma was with me from ninety to ninety-seven.
GS: Wow! You had your hands full!
IR: She was amazing! Grandma loved me unconditionally! She said to my mother, “Leave the child alone.” Because my mother was trying to say to me, “Get married to a man…” Her main thing was she didn’t want me to be ostracized by the people that she knew. She was a member of the 100 Black Women, she was the secretary of the Strivers’ Row Association, she was on the Board of the New Harlem Women’s Y… She had a lot of interactions. With women especially. And she did not want me to be viewed as less-than in their eyes. So, I honored that with her when I was younger but that’s one of the reasons why I didn’t get the principal position that I went to school for. I went to school to become a school principal and I was good at it! I was so good that they made me President of the Black Teacher’s Association. I was for several years President of the Black Teacher’s Association. But I knew that they did not want me to be an administrator and one day Daisy Hicks who was married to Mr. Hicks who owned the New York Amsterdam News, we were all together laughing and whatnot and of course I always was who I am! I don’t know if I was wearing a pair of knickers and a cap or whatnot. One day we were in a taxi – and that’s when taxis had the little seats that came up in the front and about four people could sit in the back – and she said, “As long as I’m living you will not be principal of a school in the city of New York.” And her friend said, “Why?” And guess what she said? She said, “Because you’re too militant! You are too militant.” And see, what that was, was a euphemism for gay. And see, Gwen, what I can say to you today is that if you can risk everything, if you can risk losing your friends and I lost many… All my childhood friends, you know? Because they were narrow-minded. You can lose your family, and I had a sister at one point but she was so anti-gay that I had to cut her and her children and her children’s children off… And if you can do that, that level of risk-taking, you can certainly blow the whistle on anybody doing anything inappropriate! It’s very easy! And she knew that. Now, mind you the Black people on the Board of Education were such that they were newly instated. One man was there whose name was King. John King would see my mother come to meetings back in the ‘70s and ‘80s and whatnot and he would pretend not to know her! We had a home in Sag Harbor. I grew up in Sag Harbor from the time I was about ten in the summertime. My parents built a home from scratch next to their best friends but John King was… I can say, we were a block from the beach but he was right on the beach. So, that was the class that he was in. So, me, I’m too militant! The poster I kept outside of my room in the ‘60s, because I started teaching in 1961, was Angela Davis. And if I’m too militant. Ok? Then maybe, just maybe, Angela passed some things on. Do you know? So, in a way it was a compliment but I knew she was letting me know that it was always going to be for me… Unless I put on those heels and dressed up like they wanted me to and go in that kind of way… But I couldn’t do that. That wasn’t me. I wasn’t going to do that. And so it was their loss. It was the loss of the community of all that I could have done but I’m satisfied because now I got to use the rest of my life to make an impact on children and families like I always would have.
GS: Yes. And to me it is so powerful how true to yourself you stayed despite how upset you must have felt by that. What were your emotions surrounding that? Did you feel angry?
IR: Ok… In interviews I had this sense of: I’ll share with you my ideas and then it’s cut off time. So, I would go to the interviews and after they would pick my brain for about forty-five minutes, I would say: That’s it gentlemen. Time to leave! I’ll wait for your call. You’re not going to get all of my ideas and all of my interventions sitting here thinking that you’re going to hire whoever you want to hire before inviting me in. I had a gay man, I loved him, Charles and he had a nice place upstate and we used to go up there and party! Woo! We would go up there, men and women… We would just come together! Sometimes we knew the people, sometimes we didn’t, but we would put together some sort of show and go onstage and do it on Saturday evenings. He was mentor because Dr. Dunn was a principal in a school in the Bronx. But here’s what he had to do: He married Kitty, they had a lovely house up on the hill and mommy used to go there with her teacher friends! And she would talk about Dr. Dunn and I’d say: Well, mommy. You know he’s gay? She said, “What? I met his wife!” I said: Mommy, that’s not what it looks like. Kitty is one of us. She’s a lesbian too. I said: You know the man who is their faithful bartender? That’s his long-term partner! Mommy’s mind was blown. I kept her relevant you know? As to what was going on… And so I asked Charles afterwards because he had prepared me for the interviews to become assistant principal at Wadleigh Junior High, which was mommy’s alma mater! When I didn’t get hired I said: Charles, what happened? He said, “Nothing happened Imani.” I said: Well, I remember when they were asking me what kind of programs they would have me plan and I wanted to bring an aviation program into the school so they could have simulators and whatnot and somebody who was planted there said, “Now that you have us up in the air can you bring us down to the ground so we can go on with our interview?” That was the statement of the one who was planted there. Because the mamas were saying, “Yeah? Really?” I said: Yeah! They can become captains of these planes! Let them get the skills and everything, blah, blah, blah, blah. She brought us right down. So, that was obviously her influence over the mamas. She obviously knew them better than I knew them. And so that was my last interview that I went to. I said: I’m not going to be badgered and used in this way, right? And I’ll tell you why it hasn’t made me angry: Except for the salary increase and the money I would have gotten as an administrator I really have the life that I would have had leading a school and maybe even more influence. Maybe even more. It’s more gratifying, ok? So, no. It’s not like I had an aptitude for something and I never got to express it. Revolutionaries like this woman here [pointing to Audre Lorde book] will always have impact and will always do what they’re destined to do and they can’t stop us.
GS: Well said. And you’ve done so many things in a way that most people could never fathom or would never have the guts to do.
IR: I’m driven to do as much as I can while I’m here.
GS: I’m curious how you got interested in flight.
IR: Ohhh! Well, that’s another story! So, daddy was in World War II, a marine, and actually he didn’t get there by the noblest of actions. He was not taking care of the baby. He was together with my mother but he didn’t have a job. He turned down a full scholarship to go to Michigan State before I was born because he was president of the track team and the football team at school in the Bronx. He wanted to hang out on the corner with the guys. So, that’s what he did. He hung out on the corner with the guys and blew that opportunity. Grandma did not like him. She did not like him. He was handsome… He was so good looking. And so mommy had to pretend she was going out with some other boys who grandma approved of and then meet up with him later. So, his best friend was Augustus Martin who the high school would later be named after. And we’re talking about the early ‘70s and I’m seven years old! Gus would come over. And he had been a wonderful pilot in World War II so you would think that he would then be able to be employed by the airlines. Mhm. Nope! But he would over and tell us stories about his adventures. And I would listen to the stories and I said: I’m going to do that one day. That’s going to be me. And it was hard for him because he ended up flying for an African airline and at the time there was a war in Africa and he ended up getting killed over there at an airport because he had to come in with no lights. He couldn’t announce that he was coming in. He had one of his African wives with him. I remember him talking about buying and selling wives. He was doing all kinds of things that people here in the U.S. could never have imagined went on. Our only communication was what was happening in Africa at the time. Flying just really, really impressed me as something to do. He kept up with us until he was killed later on. His son was a little younger than me and when he was getting ready to go to college he wanted to be a pilot too and Gus brought him to me so I could help him with what school he could go to so he could get a college degree and his flight credentials. Now, I’m a private pilot and I haven’t flown in years now. I am private pilot meaning I’m not supposed to fly above the clouds. But actually sometimes you do end up in the clouds. I’m not flying by instruments, I fly by visuals. I knew Gus only as a child, with a child’s mind. I didn’t really know he was complicated… Complex. But the fact that they named a school after him is wonderful and one of my students from the middle school West Side High ended up going to that high school. Cause here was a student they said was special… I was in the resource room… After I saw how difficult it was for me to get the position that I really wanted I went back to school to become a resource room teacher. So, I had a student whose mother fought really hard for him to get a teacher that would actually walk with him from class to class because he lacked organizational skills. He couldn’t write his homework down, he had difficulty with that stuff. He came at a perfect time for me because I was also running the Cultural Center! So, I’m like: Yes! This is good! I could walk with him from class to class because I didn’t have to write lesson plans that year. Hold on one second…
Hello Gwen! I’m bringing my family with me! Here we are!
Imani brings her goddaughter and her goddaughter’s children to the camera
GS: Hey! How’s it going?
IR: So, that’s Gwen! This is Crystal here! And these are her children! Ok, so right now it’s just the four of us.
GS: It’s so good to meet all of you!
IR: So, Gwen interviewed Cassandra already! Can you tell us where it will be? The interview?
GS: Well, I interviewed Cassandra and Roberta! We hope to take Imani’s portrait when the quarantine ends! And we are planning an exhibition which will possibly have to be postponed but we’ll see!
IR: Ok! Very good! Well, this makes a nice portrait right here! (Gestures to her family)
GS: You and your beautiful family!
IR: Yes. Ok! So, that’s about it I guess!
GS: So good to meet you Crystal! Bye everyone! Thank you so much Imani, this was so inspiring!
