FON ABUMBI II

His Royal Majesty Abumbi II,

Fon of Bafut following elders
meeting with the King at
Sunnyside Café

King, elders connect in

Royal visit to community
EEIDIGEIDHEEIDIGEIDHEEIDIGEIDHEEIDIGEIDHEEIDIGEIDHEEIDIGEIDHEEIDIGE

By Al McFarlane and B.P. Ford

The Editors

S
pike Moss summed it up beautifully. “Your Majesty,” he said, addressing
H.R.M. King Abumbi II, the Fon of Bafut, “for years I have been
teaching our children, telling them, ‘You are the sons and daughters of
kings and queens!’ Sometimes it’s hard for them to believe that kingship runs
in our veins. In a country that enslaved us, robbed us of our freedom and
dignity, stole our labor and our lives, and that continues to try to marginalize
our culture and distort our identity, it’s hard to keep them believing there is
something greater in them than all the negative assaults that come from
outside. That negativity breeds self hatred and self destruction. That is why
our young men are killing each other.”
“I want to thank you for meeting with the elders of our community.
Your visit helps us refresh our own sense of purpose, our sense of
sovereignty, our duty to the ancestors and to the Creator,” Moss said.
Moss and other leaders of civic, cultural and social service
institutions met King Abumbi II at a breakfast hosted by Insight
News at Sunnyside Café, 1815 Glenwood Avenue, in the heart of
H.R.M. Abumbi II, Fon of Bafut with Spike Moss. Photos: studiotobechi
North Minneapolis. King Abumbi II is the hereditary leader of the
kingdom of Bafut, which is a region in the northwest of the nation
of Cameroon, in central Africa. Abumbi II is the 11th Fon, which completing a three week tour of the U.S.
means king, to rule the kingdom. His first visit to the United States, While in Twin Cities, the Fon received a formal welcome by
the Fon said his mission was to meet with Cameroonians in general Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and officials of Minneapolis Institute
and in particular, his subjects from the Fondom of Bafut, who now of Art, where his delegation was given a tour of the MIA’s extensive
live in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Houston and African Art collection. Rybak also gave the royal visitor a tour of the
Twin Cities. He returned to Cameroon Sunday, Aug, 26th, after I-35W bridge disaster and recovery area and operations.
Story continues on page 6 X
 Photos: studiotobechi
Top: Liz Moore; H.R.M. Abumbi II, Fon of Bafut; Elizabeth Samuels; Ora Hokes and Kelley Hardemann following elders meeting with
the King at Sunnyside Café. Bottom (left to right): Reverend Ian Bethel, Pastor of New Beginnings Baptist Tabernacle; Reverend
Randolph Staten, Co-chair of the Coalition of Black Churches/African American Leadership Summit; H.R.M. Abumbi II, Fon of Bafut;
Peter Hayden, President, Turning Point Inc and Clarence Hightower, President, Minneapolis Urban League.
 Photos: Suluki Fardan

H.R.M. Abumbi II with host, Al McFarlane, Editor-in-Chief of Insight News at the Elder’s Meeting.
 Photos: Suluki Fardan

Bottom: Victorene Ambe, a member of the Fon’s Royal Court who resides in Minnesota.
 Photo: Suluki Fardan

Photo: studiotobechi
Top: Khalil Wright with H.R.M. Abumbi II. Bottom: Kelley Hardemann and Khalil Wright with his grandfather, Insight News photographer Suluki Fardan

Alice Baker, Sunnyside Café; Ex-MN Vikings superstar and Hall of Fame professional football player, Carl Eller and H.R.M. Abumbi II, Fon of Bafut
From 1
The meeting with Elders of the Black community was a special
highlight for the Fon, his spokesperson said.
Minneapolis Urban League President, Clarence Hightower asked
Abumbi II how he came to be king.
Fon Abumbi II said his being named king to succeed his father,
Achirimbi II, the tenth king or Fon of Bafut who ruled over the town
of Bafut and adjoining areas (the Fondom of Bafut). Achirimbi II
ruled from 1932 to 1968, and was preceded by Abumbi I and
succeeded by Abumbi II.
The Fon said his society is polygamous, and that as the leader of
the nation, he is also the leading polygamist. While he has some 25
wives, he said his father had hundreds of wives and his grandfather
had more than a thousand wives. The idea behind polygamy in his
Photo: Suluki Fardan
H.R.M. King Abumbi II with Al McFarlane
Photo: studiotobechi
society, he said, was the belief that every man and every woman
should be married. Since there were more women than men,
polygamous marriages enabled the society to achieve the goal of
nearly 100 percent marriage among its population. He said divorce
was uncommon.
In response to Hightower’s question, Abumbi II said he was the
choice of his father and his father’s advisors, and beyond that, he was
the choice of the Spirit. He said his culture practiced ancestor worship
and that as Fon, he was the principal intermediary between the living
and the dead.
He said he was the 400th son of his father. All of the sons were
elegible for selection to succeed the father as king. He said his
selection therefore, reflected the will and guidance of the
ancestors…the Spirit.
His father, Fon Achirimbi II is famous for having remarked about
the choice to join independent Cameroon or independent Nigeria
from the British Cameroons in 1961. Achrimbi II called it a choice
between the “Fire and the Deep Sea”.
He was considered by many as being progressive and willing to
experiment with new ideas. He was treated with respect by both
colonial administrators and nationalist politicians, according to
internet information resource, Wikipedia.
The Germans tried to put a puppet ruler in place of the Fon after
the Bafut Wars at the turn of the century, but failed. The Fon Abumbi
I was openly hostile to the Germans, and diplomacy was not pursued.
The idea of decentralized governance by local people was put into
practice in July 1917 in the British Cameroon when the District officer
inaugurated an ‘Instructional Court’ in Bamenda.
This was an assembly of chiefs from surrounding communities who
were summoned to be instructed in the new native court ordinance
and to go on to form the new courts.
Continued on next page X
The membership of the court consisted of
27 chiefs with the Fon of Bafut Abumbi I
appointed as president due to his role as the
“supreme fon,” Wikipedia reports.
Bafut is one of the two regions in
Cameroon (the other being Bali, Cameroon),
where traditional power structures are still in
place. The Fon of Bafut also holds several
important administrative positions including
that of the head of the North West Fons’
Union (NOWEFU), and member of the
Management Board of the North-West
Development Authority (MIDENO).
The Fon participates in virtually all the
important ceremonies of Bafut. One of the
most important ceremonies is the annual
dance Abin e Mfor or Dance of the Fon:
This annual event, held in December is also
known as the Abin Lela, or Dance of the
Flutes. Village nobles play traditional flutes
and fire guns to mark the proceedings. It is
the climactic point of the annual ritual cycle,
and is supposed to signify the death and
rebirth of the year (i.e. a new year
ceremony). The ethnic dance is performed in
traditional dress. Luminaries of society (the
Fon of Bafut and his advisors) form a spiral
in the centre. The general public dances
concentric rings around the spiral in a
counter-clockwise fashion. Present-day
African American ring dance ceremonies
probably owe their origins to such
ceremonies, Wikipedia said.
Social worker and educator Liz Moore
asked the Fon about the philosophy of
education in Bafut. The king said his society
views education as the primary responsibility
of the family, particularly the child’s mother
and father. He said the schools and teachers
are partners, supporting parent in their role
as primarily responsible for the education of
the child. He said corporeal punishment,
administered publicly, in the presence of the
child’s parents and peers, is a tool to force
attention and compliance by students.
“If a child has not arrived at school for
two or three days in a row, but instead has
gone to town to be with other errant youth,
the teacher or headmaster will come to the
child’s home and tell the parents that the
child has not been in school. Punishment to
the child, in front of the parents might be a
specific number of strikes with a cane,” King
Abumbi II said.
Himself a lawyer by training, Abumbi II
said he owns several schools as well as
herding, and agriculture production, and
mining enterprises. His palace in Bafut is on
a world list of important structures that are
endangered. Some 30,000 tourist a year visit
the palace, 8,000 from the United States, Photo: Suluki Fardan
with almost none of them African H.R.M. Abumbi II, Fon of Bafut
Americans,” the King said. people of Bafut. Abumbi II said creating the in reciprocity, visits by Black Americans to
Former Minnesota Viking superstar, Carl connection was a high priority. He said it Bafut, and Cameroon. “When you come to
Eller asked what opportunities there are for should begin with more visits by Bafut,” the King said, “I will show you the
commerce between Black Americans and the Cameroonians to the Black community, and, same hospitality you have shown me.”
THE GIFT
MY BIRTH WAS AN ACT OF
PROTEST AND RESISTANCE.
Insight was born in 1974 as a
magazine-format monthly
publication dedicated to
providing alternative views
and analysis of quality of life
issues and public policy
affecting the North
Minneapolis Black community
BY AL MCFARLANE • AL@INSIGHTNEWS.COM
I entered this world at Kansas
University Medical Center in
Kansas City, Kansas. But we
lived in Kansas City, Missouri.
My parents' decision to drive past
several public and private
hospitals to a hospital across the state line that would
accept Black patients was an act of defiance, resistance
and protest. A brother younger than me by two and a half
years, and the younger brothers and sisters that followed,
were born in the glow of dignity that was the result of
protest and struggle.
Black Kansas City broke the color barrier in hospital
accommodations, and Black people were no longer forced
to accept substandard medical and hospital services from
the County General Hospital, regardless of means. The
protest earned the right to choose.
Brenda Isom was a classmate of mine from kindergarten
through middle school. We met first in the delivery room
at KU Medical Center. Brenda's mom was in the operating
room in the early stages of labor. My mother was waiting
next in line. My imminent arrival required that Brenda's
mom be rolled out of the delivery room and my mom be
rolled in. Do you call that breaking in line? I arrived, my
mother said, raising my arms skyward, palms open,
grasping . . . reaching for the world.
My dearest friends, the two people I adored most besides
my parents, were my twin cousins Bernard and Burnele
Powell. They were six months older than me, but we were
like triplets. As four-year-olds we played church on the
back steps of the Powell House, where several generations
of our extended family lived. Mr. Powell owned a
barbershop, a dry cleaners and pool hall near the famed
18th & Vine -- the historic Black commercial district. At
the Powell House, the Big House, as we called it, the
Powell family occupied the main floor and basement of
the huge brownstone-like duplex. Our grandparents and I
think an aunt and her family lived on the second floor. My
 mother, father, older sister and I
lived in the third floor
efficiency that had two rooms
plus a kitchen/breakfast area.

Playing church, Bernard,

Burnele and I pretended to be
Jesus and two of his disciples;
preaching with passion, and
singing with power that
redemption and salvation were
at hand. Bernard was murdered
at the age of thirty-three. He
had emerged at the epicenter of
the Black Power movement as a
civic leader and entrepreneur,
demanding and getting a voice
for youth at the table of power.
That conscious youth
leadership grew Black political
and economic might and
aspirations in Kansas City. He
was assassinated following a
rally for his campaign for
Missouri State Senate.
Bernard's twin Burnele finished
law school in Wisconsin with
advanced law degrees at
Harvard. He became Law
School Dean at University of
Missouri at Kansas City, a
prodigious author and legal
scholar and expert martial artist.

In sixth grade the three of us,

members of the youth branch of
the NAACP Kansas City
Chapter, joined older youth and
adults manning picket lines
outside hotels that refused to
accommodate Black convention
goers in downtown Atlanta who
were attending the national
convention of the NAACP. We
got our instructions on
picketing and civil

• L-R: Kathleen, Patricia, Alvin Jr., Raymond, Wain, and Gregory McFarlane
• Top left: Al McFarlane, B.P. Ford, and James Earl Jones; top right: President Bill Clinton and Al McFarlane; bottom right: McFarlane receives; Stairstep
Foundation Community Builder awards presentation; McFarlane and Rev. Al Sharpton with McFarlane daughters (l-r) Batala-Ra, Michelle and Kristin.
disobedience from Roy Wilkins himself, the national
president of the NAACP.
In high school we were among the students who chose to
boycott rather than attend the only one-day-a-year "fun
day" when the local amusement park would allow Black
patrons.
At Morehouse College I helped to mobilize student
turnout and participation in a student and community
march and rally to the state legislature led by Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., which protested Georgia's refusal to seat
duly elected Julian Bond because he spoke out against
the war in Vietnam. The spirit and history of personal
involvement in civil and human rights advocacy and
protest guided the development of my career in
journalism and mass communications.
Insight was born in 1974 as a magazine-format monthly
publication dedicated to providing alternative views and
analysis of quality of life issues and public policy
affecting the North Minneapolis Black community. We
bought the publication from my employer, Graphic
Services, Inc., and I spent a year working nights as a
janitor in Wayzata to keep my family afloat while I spent
my days organizing the re-launch of Insight as a
newspaper.
We have sought to remain true to the fighting spirit. We
endeavor to stand against and in protest of the incessant
barrage of negative disinformation administered to
America and the world as news. And we believe we have
a right to speak our truth, even a duty to speak our truth,
in the face of power.
While protest and the fighting spirit have remained
defining characteristics of our work as communicators, in
reflection, several principles have shaped these
characteristics. The first and greatest principle is love.
Educator Dr. Joe Nathan of U of M Hubert Humphrey Insitute, Minneapols Public Schools Superintendent, Dr. William Green, and McFarlane at live broadcast of
Conversations with Al McFarlane Public Policy Forum at Midtown Global Market in Minneapolis.

Love is the most powerful force in creation. For me, the
highest refinement, experience and expression of love is
in the relationship with my life and business partner B.P.
Ford. The respect and love we find in each other
contextualizes absolutely everything we do in business
and in life. It guides our reverence for Creation itself and
directs our stake in eternity. It shapes our understanding
of and interaction with all other elements of Creation . . .
with other human beings and with the physical
environment.
cooperation and collaboration with others: employees,
business partners and associates, colleagues in the
profession or industry, other businesses, organizations
and agencies. Knowing the value of collaboration led to
the groundbreaking business innovation in the creation of
Minnesota Minority Media Coalition and its successor,
Minnesota Multicultural Media Consortium. The
willingness to foster cooperation led to the creation of the
successful regional marketing company, Midwest Black
Publishers' Coalition.

The second principle is imagination. We hold that "if it Finally, an under-girding principle is having the courage
can be done, we can do it," whatever it is. The limit is lack to acknowledge and trust your gifts. I am trained as a
of imagination or misdirected imagination. Too often our journalist, but my ability as a communicator is greater
people are nurtured to have low expectations. than my training. It is a gift.

The third principle is recognizing that you best help It is the certainty of the value and power of the gift that
yourself by helping others. Early on, B.P. Ford and I said
has given rise to our most far-reaching and exciting
that our pathway to fulfillment would be in helping others
endeavor, the weekly public policy radio broadcast and
achieve fulfillment. We discovered that to be an internet webcast of Conversations with Al McFarlane on
appropriate role of the newspaper as a tool for community
KFAI 90.3 and 106.7 FM and online at kfai.org. Now into
building. its 10th year, this unique and powerful program connects
us to each other and creates a platform for presenting our
A fourth principle is the value of cooperation and story, in our own words, reflecting our interests and
collaboration. For us, nothing is accomplished by defined by us, to us and to the world. The program
ourselves alone. Accomplishment and success is through harnesses communications technology, amalgamating
 Public Policy Journalism At Its Best
• The weekly public policy radio broadcast and internet webcast of Conversations with Al McFarlane on KFAI 90.3 and 106.7 FM and online at kfai.org

live audience programming, radio broadcasting and placing Twin Cities high school students in direct contact
internet webcasting, video conferencing, electronic with Sudan's Ambassador to the US in Washington D.C.,
archiving and print media dissemination to present a and with relief and aid workers in Juba, Sudan - extending
robust information and identity experience. exploration of CTC's production of The Lost Boys of
Sudan.
THE UNIQUE VIDEOCONFERENCE
BROADCASTS INCLUDED: Conversations with Al McFarlane, provides me with the
opportunity to do what I love to do, engage my gift of
• Connecting our Lucille's Kitchen broadcast audiences perception and gift of description in the service of my
with Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa to guests, of our issues and interests, and for the benefit of
discuss HIV/AIDS in South Africa and in North our community.
Minneapolis, and to discuss to criminal justice issues
following the close of the Truth and Reconciliation Our community, our people, are gifted. The unending
Commission hearings follow the collapse of apartheid; warfare against our sense of humanity, the gratuitous
insult to our dignity and institutional marginalization of
• Talking directly with Jews in Germany regarding their our culture seeks to discourage us from discovering,
fight for reparations for state sponsored theft of their labor knowing and celebrating our gifts. My job as a
during WWII, connected to a Lucille's Kitchen communicator, my work, is to continue talking to our
conversation with TransAfrica president and author people, saying, "Acknowledge the gift. Redemption is at
Randall Robinson on his book The Debt, What American hand."
Owes to Blacks;

• Engaging members of Congressional Black Caucus,

directly from the U.S. House of Representatives on the
issues of education, business procurement in the food
industry, and telecommunications policy;

• Creating stellar programs in partnership with Children's

Theatre Company, connecting area students and activists
to eye witnesses of Birmingham church bombings of
1963 - theme of the CTC production, The Watson's Go to
Birmingham; and, the international video conferences

Mina Agossi with band members Alex Hiéle, (bass) (right), and Ichiro Onoe (drums)
Photo: viennajazz.org
Jazz
The language of democracy
Conversations with Al McFarlane from KFAI FM
L MCFARLANE: Mina Agossi was born in
A France in 1972. Her parents are French and
West African. In her early years she was
drawn to the stage, following her mom’s footsteps.
She says she loves to travel. She studied theater in
many countries around the world, including Niger,
Morocco, and France. When she graduated in 1990,
she continued to travel. She spent time both here in
the U.S. and in Spain and returned to France in
1992. She found herself singing the blues as a favor
to a friend who was also a saxophonist. She said
that experience changed her life, so much, that she
knew she was going to be a singer. Mina, let me let
you take it from there - how have you developed
and emerged as a singer?
Originally printed February 5, 2007
Photo: Suluki Fardan
MINA AGOSSI: If I tell you really, you’re going to
laugh. I wanted to learn Spanish so I was working in
Spain, taking care of a little girl . . . When I came
back to France, I had to go to the University to do
something. I couldn’t do theater, which was really
what I liked. So one day at the University I went to
see a show at the bar in front of the University and
there was a saxophonist playing with a kind of com-
puter electronic system. He was alone. There was
nobody there. I was really impressed. That was the
first time I could see someone playing with machines.
He saw me really having fun, and at the break he
came to me and said, “I’m sure you sing.” and I said,
of course, “I don’t sing.” He said, “I’m sure you do
sing. I could see you kind of nod your head and
everything,” So I said, “No I don’t, but if you want
me to sing, why not?” You know? I’ve never been
very shy anyway, so I went on the stage and I did I
don’t know what. But he loved it and this is literally
how I started. He gave me a tape and he said, “I have
a show in fifteen days. Please, can you learn these
four songs?” And fifteen days later I had the songs in
my head. I went to the venue. It was a restaurant.
There was nobody there. I was scared to death. I sang
these four songs and he gave me five hundred bucks!
And I said, “Is this the life of a musician? If this is the
life of a musician, I want to be a musician.”
XX
And this is how I quit the university. You have to put
yourself into this world, this musical world, which is
very tough. At first it is easy, but later you have to be
very strong in your head in order to continue. And I
decided, I’m not going to fail. So I continue.
AM: When I watched you perform last night, I had
the feeling like your body was like music. It was more
than the voice. The voice was huge, but as I watched
you, I thought “If she had a choice, I bet she could
transform herself away from the physical body into
pure sound.” Does that make sense to you? That is
how I look at you, as a person who could live, who
could reincarnate as sound.
MA: That is so beautiful. Oh wow. I’m speechless.
AM: James Wright, you are Mina Agossi’s manager.
What do you think? I noticed you last night. You were
into the music just like I was.
JW: You can’t watch Mina and not be totally fixated
by what she does. It’s an incredible experience. The
best part of my job is going somewhere new, sitting at
the back of stage looking at the audience, and watch-
ing everyone’s face. It goes from shock to wonder and
they fall in love every time. You can’t take your eyes
off her. And you just become part of the music. I’ve
worked with other bands, and other musicians, but
this is the only time it’s happened every single show.
AM: It is clear that you are so comfortable with your
voice and with sound. I had the impression, Mina,
that you have this sort of intense love affair with
sound itself. Is that correct?
MA: Oh, definitely.
AM: What does sound mean to you in your life, your
body, your spirit?
MA: I don’t really know if I can explain it, but I’m
going to try. It’s just that I hear before what I want to
sing. I know what I want to hear, exactly, at the sec-
ond it arrives. I know, for the bass or for the drums. It
makes sense for me. Like it makes sense to me to not
play with harmonic instruments, which is not really
common. But for me, it makes sense, because I hear
the bass. I hear the drum and bass. I think this is from
my Benin roots. Benin is a country where the rhythms
are hugely, highly important. Each village has its own
rhythm. And it’s very complicated - not easy rhythms.
They have their own sound. It’s not like Mali or
Senegal where they use the chords. It’s more melod-
ic. Benin is very in the ground. The earth is speaking.
“Jazz, to me, is democracy,
because everybody can
comment on the subject,
and express themselves.”
The shaking of the earth and the feet on the ground is
something that I feel. That makes my heart beat. And
then the bass is like the jazz part. Jazz, to me, is
democracy, because everybody can comment on the
subject, and express themselves. In that sense, the
pub music of the seventies and jazz are very impor-
tant to my ears. It doesn’t mean I’m not doing songs
- I’m doing songs. It’s not free, but there are free
moments where everybody can express themselves. I
also like the people to be able to catch our hands, and
not to be totally lost, so it’s a mixture of all this that
makes me hear the sound that I want to hear before
singing it.
AM: And what kind of sense do you get, as a per-
son who is European, who is African, and who is
also visiting this country?
MA: And is also American - in my heart. That’s
something - I think you guys in the States, you have
such a potential. You are not linked by old rules and
old things. You are so fresh. You have everything in
your hands. I believe in the American dream. Let’s
put it this way - I still believe in the American dream.
But there is something that is really surprising from
the European side. You have a big gun problem, for
instance. And this, it seems to me, fuels the fighting
between communities - having guns and fighting each
other. I can see a lot of advertisements on the TV and
it’s basically poor people that have guns and shoot
each other. And this is going to stay exactly the same,
here and in the world as long as, for example, in
Africa, the ethnic-this is going to kill the ethnic-that.
My message is stop fighting each other for nothing.
It’s always sad to see the Italian community fighting
the Black community or Jewish community. This is
useless. In France, for instance, we have to say that
the communities are really in a pot. It’s a melting pot.
And really, I don’t see a melting pot in the States. I
see the area of the Blacks, the area of the Hispanics.
It’s not really mixed up. So, this is just an observa-
tion. I don’t judge anything. I just feel this - you see?
That you should all really stick together, because the
American Dream is there. Just get rid of that fear and
try to change things, because nowadays, I would say,
it’s a little difficult.
AM: Your music is an expression of activism?
MA: In a way, and I always say that we are, but it’s
true, we are the United Colors of Benetton in my
band. One guy is Japanese. I’m Black, I mean half
Black, half French. There’s a French guy. I would
love to have Indian - whoever. I mean - what makes
me sad, for instance in the Black community, is that
we have to justify somehow that we’re going to suf-
fer. And we raise our kids saying, “You’re Black,
you’re going to get it, man.” I see some Black par-
ents talking to their kids in a way that that tells them
“you’re already going to suffer, because you’re
Black.” And this is something that I really think
should be taken away. If the parents just start to say,
“Be proud of what you are and of your work,” that’s
it, whatever color you are, and not talking only about
Photos by Suluki Fardan
color. Like, “This is a poor community, you’re going
to get it, you’re going to fall into drugs.” And it’s so
complicated. And I think the way to change things is
just to avoid fixating on color and just do what you
have to do, and keep on doing this without falling
into this gun thing, or the drug thing, because it’s a
trap.
AM: How did you grow up, and where did you
grow up? Do you have brothers and sisters? What
kind of family environment produced the attitude
that you have?
MA: It’s very, very weird. First of all, the name
Agossi is Fon - it’s from Benin. It’s a dialect. And in
Benin there are over fifty dialects. What is the use of
that? People can’t understand - it’s such a small
country, they can’t understand each other. We think
through language, and if you speak a different lan-
guage in the same country, it allows big industries to
come here, take what’s in the ground, like cocoa and
oil, and just give guns to these different ethnic
groups, knowing they’ll shoot each other, allowing
the foreigners to exploit the resources. “Agossi”
means the one who was born feet first. I was born
feet first. My mother immediately got trapped into
this ethnic thing. She fell in love with my father. He
was really, really Beninese, with his culture and
everything. And after a while, she found out that she
would never be able to understand him, but she was
pregnant. So she delivered me in France, and he
stayed in Africa. He didn’t want to go to France,
which is really rare in Africa, because the French
dream is like the American dream. They really think
they’re going to have a wonderful time, which is
really not the case. So my mother tried to make him
come, but he would not. It took me six years to find
my father in Africa. I don’t know if you remember,
but around the ‘80s, between Benin and Gabon, there
was a big fight in the African Union meeting.
Beninese people, who are basically intellectuals,
decided to move to Gabon because there was oil.
And I mean, it’s always the same thing - oil, oil. But
the presidents of Benin and Gabon hated each other
and one slapped the other’s face during the meeting.
So all the Beninese at that time got their jobs totally
cut off in Gabon. And that’s how my father got to be
almost starving when I met him. XX

I saw him only twice because he passed away shortly
after. So my life was basically living with my mother
on the French side, and my mother was wonderful in
the sense that she wanted me to know Africa very
early. So I’ve been traveling around Africa. I started
in Morocco when I was three. I’ve been living in
Ivory Coast, in Niger, and I’ve been having such a
good time. So the roots were always there, calling me
up. I want to know who my father is. I want to know
Benin. And now I have a regular connection with my
aunt and I go to Benin regularly and it’s so strong.
And of course Benin used to be a big platform for
transatlantic slave trade. So you have this harbor
where the slaves were brought to come here. So I
guess maybe we have the same blood. And this is
very strong. And it’s the country of voodoo, which
was exported to Haiti. So I’m really a voodoo child in
that sense! I really started to talk with my aunt and all
this Catholic, and this Muslim and this voodoo mix-
ture in the country that is really something to see. It’s
so interesting. And this is how I decided to get the dis-
tance on every side, on my French side and on my
African side, because I would never choose between
them. I’m half White, half Black, and this is what
gives me, I think, power. In a sense, I cannot choose.
I don’t like Black people criticizing White people,
and I don’t like White people criticizing Black peo-
ple. I would have to split myself in two, I would be
schizophrenic, I cannot choose.
AM: On the way here I was talking about my mission
and vision as a newspaper owner and communicator.
I described myself as a trench fighter or a street fight-
er. That’s the spirit with which I attack journalism,
truth telling and writing. My job is to be an advocate
for my culture and my people. And when I say my
people, typically, a person could assume that means
African or African-American. But “my people” to
me, is bigger than just African people, bigger than
just Black people.
MA: And it’s good to remind ourselves of this.
AM: But we start there. We start with where you are.
You start with the skin you’re in. You start with the
parents you came from and the culture that they
brought, and that brought you and them to this place.
But then “my people” ends up being every human
being on the planet. But it’s bigger than just people.
People are only part of the equation. Humans are only
part of the equation.
We have to respect living things that are not human,
world is stereotyped. I think it’s very important that
you remind people your definition of “my people,”
because for a lot of them, it is only Black community
or this or that, which is not the case, as you said. It’s
the people that feel themselves in connection with
your fight, whatever color or whatever. And this
respect of the environment, because this is exactly
what you say - the planet is in danger and we know
that, and it is not a question of politics anymore. We
are all in the same boat - we know that we go in one
hundred years, if we continue like this, there is noth-
ing left. And what do we want for the kids, for the
future? Is that what we want? The people need to start
to think by themselves and stop only thinking about
themselves and stop only thinking, “Okay, I have to
follow this because it’s a law, because it’s imposed,
because otherwise what is my neighbor going to
think?” We really have to start standing up and think-
ing for ourselves and rethink the whole system, which
is falling apart in every country of the world, and we
know it. It is like a bomb that is going to explode, and
it’s just a question of time, and we all know that. So
what you say is to be street fighter is the same as me
doing my music without caring about what people
used to tell me. Before, when I started it, they’d say,
“Stop that. When are you going to put in a piano?
and we have to respect things that are not living. We
You’re crazy. Nobody is going to listen to that.” You
must know the living and the inanimate are equally
know? And if I had listened to these people, nothing
important, equal partners in creation. So that’s kind of
would have happened. And you have to say, “Well,
how I approach the whole thing, but I have the feel-
this is your opinion, which I respect, but I have the
ing that you have the same approach and same view,
right to be who I am, and I have the right to think
or something like that, because it helps me under-
what I think, as long as I don’t hurt you.” The free-
stand, or helps you understand how I hear your music.
dom stops where the other one’s starts. So as long as
When I was driving and listening to you, Mina, it was
this is correct, what is the problem if I do what I do?
like listening to the sound of creation or listening to
AM: Mina Agossi. Do I pronounce it right?
something that is so expansive and so big that it’s
MA: Wonderfully well.
everywhere, and I can’t describe it any better than
AM: Now, I presumed that the name would be either
that. But the music itself, the sound that you’re bring-
Italian or French. Is it?
ing is like breath - it breathes. That’s what I think, I
MA: A lot of people think that, but it’s typically
don’t know. How does it make you feel to know that
Beninese. Agossi and Agoso for the man. Agossi for
you have that effect on a listener?
the girl. Agossi is the “the one who was born feet
MA: It makes me want to give you a big hug. Oh my
first,” and also describes twins.
god. It’s so beautiful, what you say. I’m not the one
AM: Are you a twin?
who can talk properly about what I do. It’s just some-
MA: No, but my mother is a twin.
thing I feel and I hear the sound before doing it, so it’s
AM: Do you have sisters and brothers?
like I know what I want to hear, and if you feel that,
MA: When I met my father, I found out that I have
that means we are on the right path. Because this is
three brothers and sisters - two sisters, one brother,
exactly what I would love people to feel - this free-
and my mother got another life and married someone
dom. And how can this freedom be? It is because you
and had three kids, so I have six. XX
are yourself. I think the problem these days is that the
AM: So, a big family. How do you get along with
everybody?
MA: And I’m the oldest.
AM: You’re the dean.
MA: Yes.
AM: Your band is international, intercultural. The
music is rich and warm and it’s fun. You can tell that
you’re having fun with the music and having fun with
the musicians. You are enjoying each other and the
joy you share is infectious. James Wright, from
London, it was obvious to me last night that you were
just really into this music. How did you and Mina get
together? How did you become her manager and how
did you connect with her music?
JW: I started working for and still do work for the
label in London which is Candid Records. Mina does-
n’t actually know this, so it’ll be a first for her. I think
I told her after a couple of glasses of wine a while
ago, but I met Mina after about five days of working
with Allan Bates, the CEO of the company. I started
as the artist development manager - I mean, you know
better than most people, the jazz industry is a hard
industry to work and you need everything you can to
push it forward to new audiences, and that’s really
what my job was. I met Mina at the London Jazz
Festival after five days of working there. Allan intro-
duced me and said, “Now James, this is Mina and
your job is purely to make her more well-known. Just
make her famous - that’s all I care about.” And that
was my first and only task. And that’s what we’ve
been doing for the last twelve months.
MA: Oh, you should invite us every day. You will
hear so many things.
AM: Mina, tell me, what was in your mind as you
developed and chose the pieces to go on your new
CD - “Well, You Needn’t,”? Are you impressed
with yourself?
MA: No, never. Actually, every time a CD is done,
I’m only thinking of the next one. It’s like, I never lis-
ten to that CD myself. If I start to rethink everything
or congratulate myself, I have nothing to do. It’s like
I deliver a baby and it has a long life. I cannot control
the life. It’s up to the CD to please or not. I’m not
doing music to please, but I do what I feel. So after
that, I don’t know. I was feeling this at the time I did
it, and I’m happy. And of course, after when I do
another CD, I like to listen to the old ones just a little
bit just for little ideas of sounds or things like that.
But everything is always brand new and fresh for me.
It’s like a fairy tale, actually. It happens that one day,
Allan Bates got the CD on his desk and listened to it
and after maybe fifteen minutes, he wanted to sign me
up for five years. So it’s like a fairy tale. I really want
to say this in a very particular way, because all the
people that listen to this show right now might think
it’s easy, but it’s really a fairy tale, something really,
really rare. But keep on sending your CDs on because
“You have the jazz or you
don’t have the jazz. I don’t
believe in learning ‘jazz.’ ”
it can happen. So that’s what happened to me, so actu-
ally, he signed me up, and then he invited James
Wright to join the team, and he said what he said to
him. And this is like, I feel so much support. Allan
Bates has big, big ears. I mean he’s been producing
Abby Lincoln, Archie Shepp and Thelonious Monk.
I mean this person knows all about jazz history. So
it’s even like, I told you this, James, he’s like an uncle
to me. He’s more than just the boss of the biggest jazz
endeavor label in the UK. He’s a part of my spiritual-
ity, and he’s 80 years old. And he’s like a baby - he’s
so dynamic. I mean, to love what I do at his age . . . I
know people who are 40 who are more stubborn, who
have really narrow minds. This person is amazing.
He’s seen it all.
AM: How does he come to that awareness? James,
you might know about his background a little bit.
How did you come to the label?
JW: It’s like a sixth sense. It really is, because, as
we’ve been saying briefly, the music industry is a
tough one at the moment. The record industry is
dying but the music industry is thriving, and you
have to be clever. You have to outwit the public, and
give them something they haven’t heard before, and
that’s what Mina does with her music. We’re selling
the track from the Great American Songbook, and
just turned it over, flipped it on its head. And you
need innovators in the industry to open it up again
and to start fresh. And that’s what Allan saw - the
next phase for female jazz vocals, and this is what
Mina does. You need this, and it opens things up. It’s
happened in history, and it’ll keep happening. But
people need to start it. If we sit here for the next two
hours and think, is there anyone else in female jazz
vocals doing what Mina is doing? You can’t think of
a name. And that’s what it’s about - it’s about inno-
vation. And that’s what Allan saw.
AM: That’s amazing. You give tribute to America for
the creativity that has produced this great music. How
do you talk to your audiences and talk to the public
about the origin, the source of this music?
MA: I just say that I think that everybody who had
this respect of other communities and have this
respect of democracy is able to play jazz, but the roots
are American, and Afro-American, which means Afro
and Americans. I really love the States. I would love
to be American. I feel like I’m American. It’s like you
have to sing your heart. You either have the blues or
you don’t have the blues. You don’t learn the blues.
You have the jazz or you don’t have the jazz. I don’t
believe in learning “jazz.” I really respect the schools
and for the skills and everything, but the real mental-
ity - I would never do another copy of Billie Holliday.
I can’t put myself in front of an audience singing the
way that Billie Holiday was singing.
AM: But I hear Billie Holliday in your voice.
MA: That’s a compliment. But this is wonderful
because I really am inspired by Billie Holliday, but
also Bjork, also the Roots, so many bands, and
some people see Tricky or whatever in my voice, or
they hear things that are really wow, and it’s beau-
tiful, I love that. But I would never be able to sing
a jazz standard in the style of the sixties or fifties,
because I will never be.
 n June 12, 2006,
Al McFarlane and
Adrian Hamilton-
Butler, co hosts of
Conversations With
Al McFarlane, inter-
viewed actor Joseph
Phillips, culture advocate
Vivian Jenkins Nelson, business
owner Monica Hines, health
advocates Roxanne and Robert
Tisdale, and Women Venture
executive Amy Barringer at
KFAI-FM 90.3 Broadcast Studio.
The interview was broadcast live
and rebroadcast the following
Saturday, June 17, 2006 on
Independent Public Radio (IPR)
Network affiliate, KMOJ-FM 89.9.
The broadcast started with
questions about Phillips' newbook,
He Talk Like a White Boy.

Joseph Phillips
 Al McFarlane Al McFarlane: Tell us about the premise of
the book. Why the name, first of all, and
what are you doing in this book?

Joseph Phillips: He Talk Like a White Boy

is about values, about those things that we
all share in common, that we inherit, I
believe, as Americans… values of family,
faith, idealism. These are the things that
bind us together as Americans. They tran-
scend race. They transcend political affilia-
tion. They transcend economic position.
The title comes from something that hap-
pened to me in the eighth grade. I was in
accelerated English class, which is like the
gifted programs that we have now. I
answered a question in class, and a Black
girl from across the room raised her hand
and said, "He talk like a white boy."
And that was kind of the beginning of my life.
That accusation has followed me, as I began
to date as a young man, as I became an
actor and moved into show business, and
then as I began to write a weekly column.
The accusation changed from "talking like a
white boy" to "thinking like a white boy." And
so this kind of goes to this question of authenticity: What is it to be authentically Black. Who is it that decides?
Ultimately, what I would like to do is to move beyond what I consider to be very narrow and constricting definitions of race
and racial authenticity. I would like to move beyond labels and move to some higher ground where we again begin to talk
about the things that we have in common. These things, I find, far more important: the importance of faith, our love of family
in our lives, our love of this great country -- these are the things that I think are far more important and that bind us together.

Al McFarlane: Well, let's put that in context. Tell us who you are. Who is Joseph Phillips? And I raise the question to give
you a chance to say, "I'm the son of, and the grandson of, and the great-great grand son of . . ." What is the lineage? And
who are you in the context of your being an American today? You're a Black man. You're African American. What else are
you?

Joseph Phillips: I'm not sure I understand the question, but this is the way I would answer it. You tell me if I missed the
point. I'm a husband. I'm a father of three beautiful boys, ages 8, 6, and 4. I tell everybody that they are loud, stinky, and
ashy, just like little Black boys should be. They are healthy, energetic, and bright, and I have been blessed to be given the
opportunity to raise them. I am a writer. I'm also an actor. I'm the son of a pediatrician and school teacher. I grew up in
Denver, Colorado in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. So that's kind of where I come from. Does that answer your
question?

Al McFarlane: That's part of it, but run back -- who is your grandfather? Who are your grandfathers and great-grandfathers?

Joseph Phillips: No one has ever asked me that question before.

Al McFarlane: And the spirit of the question is what genes make up Joseph Phillips? What is your genealogy?

Joseph Phillips: I'll skip a couple of generations. I'm named after my great-grandfather Joseph Bassilio Phillips who was from
Tortola, and that's on my father's side.
Al McFarlane: I don't know where Tortola is.

Joseph Phillips: Tortola is an island in the British Virgin Islands. Tortola is, I think you can see it from St. Croix, which is U.S.
Virgin Islands. My great-grandmother, Elnora Connor was from Florida. My middle name is Connor. I have written down
someplace where they were married. I have a photograph, actually, in my home of my great-grandmother, and I have a pho-
tograph of my grandmother and my two great-aunts from 1912 or something. And then on my mother's side, I don't know a
great deal, but my grandfather on my mother's side, James Brookes, born in South Carolina, and drove a cab for most of his
life.

Al McFarlane: What's your sense of cultural identity?

Joseph Phillips: That's a very unusual question.

Al McFarlane: And here's where I'm going with it: What's your sense of your racial identity, of being a Black man, and being
an African -- I call us Africans in America, but some people choose not to use that language.

Joseph Phillips: I don't.

Al McFarlane: What is your sense of who you are? You're American.

Joseph Phillips: I'm an American.

Al McFarlane: Of African extraction, or --

Joseph Phillips: Well, yeah. People from America come from all over the place. I'm an
American. My children are American children. You know, a couple of years ago, I had
the great opportunity to go to Nigeria and participate in the Leon Sullivan Summit. And
it's fascinating to me because people are free to define themselves This is the point:
people are free to define themselves as they wish. This is part of what's great about
America, which is that we have a huge blank canvas, and we can wake up in the morn-
ing and paint on it what we wish, and then the next day we can say, "I don't really like
that," and we can start over from scratch.
Free men can define themselves as they wish. Part of what my book talks about is
this notion that being Black in America is a limited list of things, and that there are
other people who are able to define you racially as they wish. In my mind, frankly, it's
a very narrow definition: you must talk a certain way, you must listen to certain types
of music, and more importantly, you must hold certain ideological positions. That
makes you authentic? I say that makes you a slave. It has other people defining for
you who you are in a free society. My understanding of the struggle that my
forbearers engaged in was so that I could define myself as I wished.
That being said, never was it more clear that I was an
American than when I set foot on African soil. The
Africans in Nigeria, in my admittedly narrow experi-
ence, were not confused about the fact that
I was not African.
None of us on that plane were African, We were
in fact Americans. And I felt
very comfortable with that.
My trip to Africa, as wonderful
and amazing as it was, and I
would go back in a heartbeat,
and might have the opportunity this
summer, but it solidified and made
very clear those distinctions.
My children are, again, American chil-
dren. They have American values,
they engage in American traditions. They are not African boys. They are American boys. And that is not to say that I ignore or
invalidate that part of my heritage, but it is to say that I appreciate and celebrate my American heritage. I get into discussions
with people about this quite frequently, but one thing I say is, "You are right, I fly the American flag. You are absolutely right
that I claim my American-ness. I defy anyone to deny me my American heritage, because this American-ness was paid for with
blood. It was earned, the old-fashioned way. Our blood is in the soil of the Mississippi, the sands of New England, the red
earth of Colorado, where I come from, the rich soil of North Carolina and Virginia, the tobacco fields, the dust of Alabama. Our
blood is in the soil, so I claim this nation as my own, and you are right, I fly the American flag."

Adrianne Hamilton Butler Adrianne Hamilton Butler: You mention in the book the flack that you get for being a
Black conservative. I do believe that the civil rights movement allowed us to be free to
participate in this democracy without being bound by social parameters. Why do you
believe there is an issue in the Black community with Black conservatives?

Joseph Phillips: The tag onto that question is, ". . . especially given that Black
folk are so conservative." I think some of it comes from how we define what
"conservative" means. Which is again, why, in the book, I really want to move
past the labels, because so often, the labels are arbitrary. It's the values that
speak to what we truly believe in. So, I tell people that I don't admit readily,
anymore, to being a conservative, because I realize that what one person
means by conservative may not be how I define conservative. For a lot of
people that means what your mother tells you not to track into the house,
you know, "Boy, I told you not to bring that conservative in here! Wipe that
conservative off your feet." I don't admit to being that. But, if by "conser-
vative" you mean someone who believes in equality, someone who believes
in the principles upon which this nation was founded, believes in a nexus
between virtue and liberty, that our rights extend to us from God, not from
other men, in a limited government that derives its just powers from the
consent of the governed, that believes in traditional family structures,
that men should be the head of the house, with God at the head of
the household -- that is how I define conservative. And then peo-
ple tell me, "I know a lot of Democrats that believe that." And I say,
"Well, exactly my point." We are caught up in the labels. Let's put
the labels aside, and let's begin talking about those values. If we're
going address problems and find solutions, then we're going to have to
be able to talk to each other. Labels get in the way.
Let's go to the values.

Adrianne Hamilton Butler: One of the things that really touched me in

your book was your openness, your ability to say, "I love my wife, but our
marriage is still a work in progress." Or, "I've been a star, but still have my
insecurities." Is there a risk for you in writing a book that says, "Here I am.
Here's what I think."

Joseph Phillips: I don't know how to write any other way. The risk, and I've experienced this in the
four years that I've been writing a column, is that when people don't like what you say, and they comment on it aggressively.
They say mean things. It's very hard to sort of shake it off. Because I've written very personally, so the negative responses, I
take very personally. And I admit, a lot of the things that people have said, that range from very ugly to down-right nasty have
been very hurtful. People have said mean things about my wife. They've questioned my sanity, my sexual preference, my racial
pride, and on down the list. And quite often they forget their home training when they do it.
Adrianne Hamilton Butler: I enjoyed reading what you said about your father. You described how he lived. Your relationship
to your dad was very important to you. It impacts your life and the lives of your sons. You wrote: "It's a shame that as a social
currency, fatherhood has lost such value. A man's honor is cheap. Starlets grace the covers of magazines, celebrating the
birth of their fatherless children, actors, politicians, and any number of professional athletes are seldom taken to task for
fathering children out of wedlock." Why do you think it is the case in our society that fatherhood is devalued and what do you
think is the lesson for Black fathers, in particular?

Joseph Phillips: This is new-school. I refer to these values in the book as old-school values. I think there was a cultural shift
that happened, because this idea of devaluing fatherhood, fathers not being in the home, raising their children, of abdicating
their responsibilities in the community, that's new-school thinking.
Years and years ago, in the face of far more pernicious racism than we face today, outright hatred of Black men and Black peo-
ple, Black men were somehow able to honor their women, marry the mothers of their children, raise sons, bring home the
bacon, be gainfully employed, value academic success and education, if not for themselves, for their children. This new idea
that we're experiencing now, with starlets on the covers and everyone celebrating, and people standing up, the first thing out of
their mouths, "Well, I'm a single mother," and everybody claps, this is new-school and I would like us to go back to the old-
school. I think it's clearly no mistake. When you look at men in prison, when you look at neighborhoods run rampant with van-
dalism and antisocial behavior, when there is an entire genre of music that does nothing but celebrate nihilism, excess, and
the degradation of women -- this is the result of men abdicating their responsibility for family and for community to other folk.
And the problems are not exclusive to Black men, to Black communities, or even to poor Black people. This is an area where I
disagree with Bill Cosby. It transcends culture and economics. And the solution is the same. Men need to step up to the plate.
We need to again begin to embrace the notions of heroic manhood. I honestly believe that it is up to us.

Al McFarlane: Gangsters see themselves as "heroic men." The notion of heroic manhood right now is 50 Cent.

Joseph Phillips: That's new-school. There was a time when we used to hang pictures on the wall of W.E.B. Dubois, Langston
Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson. We hung pictures of intellectuals on our walls. Now we hang 50 Cent. This goes to
this notion of authenticity. Tongue-in-cheek we talk about "talking like a white boy," but the danger is that this becomes social
currency which we begin to trade. "Talking like a white boy" becomes "Thinking like a white boy" which becomes "Academic
success is acting white," which becomes "marriage is acting white," which becomes, "being gainfully employed is acting white."
We begin to constrain the definition of blackness so that it becomes, I can't find the word, not anti-social but anti-productive. It
becomes behavior that doesn't move us forward.

Al McFarlane: Flip the script. Are you saying act white and run the world?

Joseph Phillips: You give credence then to those who would call old-school values white values. What I'm saying is that
these values of family, faith, and freedom are not white values. They are the proper values. They were values that Black peo-
ple at one time embraced. They not only allowed us to survive but to thrive. Two generations after slavery, we were an educat-
ed and literate people. We had university trained doctors, lawyers, busi-
ness men, and so on. Then there was this cultural shift where old-school
values became white values. In order to be 'authentic', we reject them.

Al McFarlane: Vivian Jenkins Nelson is the founder of InterRace. This is

a fascinating conversation and you've got perspective on this issue of
responsibility and accountability in our community and for our people.
I wonder how the ideas you've heard so far resonate with both your
experience and observations, as a Black woman and an elder in
our community?
Vivian Jenkins Nelson: Having grown up, coming out of the Deep-
South, I was very active in the civil rights movement. I'm called a civil-
rights baby, which means I'm old now. But, I had similar experiences
growing up. My parents had me take French so that I could wipe the ghet-
to, wipe Alabama, out of my voice, so that I could have a better chance at
getting a job. What they did not wipe out, however, was the notion that

Vivian Jenkins Nelsen

there is room for all of us, however we find ourselves, and that authenticity is not about talking a certain way, it's about living a
certain way. I think that part of what our community has problems with, as far as what they have known of traditional Black
conservatives, is that they have not been in the community. They have not worked to help poor people, shoulder to shoulder.
So I don't see it so much as how you talk as how you live.
I have had the wonderful opportunity of going to Africa and being mistaken for an African. That was like coming home for me. I
mean people talked to me in the local language. But anyway, the whole sense of authenticity and belonging is one that is very
painful. If you talk like we talk, that is often questioned. I have had my authenticity questioned many times. But I say now that
I live in the "ghetto," down the street from Al.
But my work takes me everywhere where racism and gender issues still exist. And all of that is not dead yet, by any means. I
think all of us, regardless of what label we call ourselves or are called, have a responsibility to work with folks who are poor,
folks who are single moms.

Al McFarlane: Vivian, you're creating dialog between African American and Somali women. That's why this question, Joseph,
of lineage is important to me. How far do we, can we go back to assemble our cultural identity? When I have interacted with
the Somali community, they open the meetings by saying, "Number one, we praise and thank you, African Americans who
came before us. Because your struggle, the blood you shed in Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, your fight for freedom, has
enabled us to come here today. So we thank you." And I appreciate that coming from them. They acknowledge the struggle
that your grandfathers and mothers and mine have waged to create opportunity for us. Then they say, "We simply are the
newest arrivals. We're here seeking freedom. We want to live with dignity as human beings." Yet, there is conflict between
African Americans and newly-arrived Africans. How are you addressing that, Vivian?

Vivian Jenkins Nelson: About four years ago I was called in by a local high school principal because the African American
kids and the Somali kids were fighting everyday and they were fighting on the bus, they were fighting in the school. At our
organization is we do dialogs. We do mediations. We do a lot of different things to try to bring stake-holders to the table to
solve problems. We had a day-long conference at Augsburg College that brought teachers from both sides, African American
and African, and we were there all day. At the end the kids said, "This conversation needs to happen with our parents." The
next school year, the principal called me up and he said, "You've just got to know one thing: the kids continued the conversa-
tion by themselves, the whole summer." We were very pleased about that. He called me again and said, "You have to come in
again. It's four years later and we have a new group of kids and the same problems."
We started in my living room, and we are now on our third conversation where we've trained women on each side to be facilita-
tors. We are dealing with issues that we bring to each other and issues that we can confront together. And we've been able to
bring in some organizations, like the Somali PTA, for example. I think we're making some progress. Our notion is to move our
conversations out further, to have conversations between African Americans and Liberians. We have a very large community of
Liberians here. I do a lot of work in health care organizations, and they're clashing something fierce in those organizations. So
we've got to really be able to talk to each other, to find our commonalities, and to work together on what matters.
And you see, that's my only comment here. I don't care what anybody calls themselves, or is called. The real test here is
whether or not you're willing to invest the same blood that was shed in the old days, now in the streets, where we really need
to reach young people.

Joseph Phillips: I absolutely agree with you. It's one of the things that I
think my book is about.. And if we're going to be able to find solutions to
the issues that we face, as Americans, we have to be able to sit down and
talk. The values create bridges. If we sit down and one of us is convinced
that the other is evil, that is the end of conversation. But once we are each
sitting down, and we begin talking about our children, the importance of
family, how we raise our children, the importance of faith in our lives, and
in the life of our republic, the issues of character, idealism, then we find
that we have a lot of things in common.

Al McFarlane: The big immigration issue now is the issue of the southern
border, Mexico. What is the relationship between African Americans and
Mexicans, those who are here legally and those who are here illegally,
seeking citizenship and economic opportunity.

Joseph Phillips: I wrote quite a bit about it, but I want to make clear that
my book is not about this issue. Well, I think that there are two things that
are happening.
The first thing is that I do believe that there is an element at work here of the suppression of wage. You have people who are
competing for low-skill jobs. They undercut the wage. They don't have the pressure of unions. They are at an advantage. In
that respect, I do think that there is unfair competition for young Black men. The New York Times, a couple of months ago, I
think it was March, published an article about the plight of young Black men. They talked about these men who did not go to
high school or who had some high school but did not finish. Some had served time in jail and had no skills, or could only get
low-skill work. That group is facing immigrant competition.
But on the same token, going back this idea of these old-school values, there was a time at which Black men did not stand on
the corner doing nothing. This was not seen as manly behavior. It's incumbent upon these Black men to enter the job market
and compete for jobs. We can take the stance that we're going to close the borders, close the southern border and the talk
about the competition between Black men and illegal immigrants, it is still incumbent upon Black men to apply for those jobs
and enter the work force and get jobs. We've seen it time and time again where the authorities come down on some local
industry. In Alabama it was the chicken industry. Black men within twenty mile radius did not fill the void. They stayed unem-
ployed. So that creates another question, another issue that we have to address. Even at prevailing market wage, they weren't
taking jobs. I want to tie in something else that Vivian said earlier, she was talking about Black conservatives being in the com-
munity, and I had wanted to say that I absolutely agree with what you're saying, that part of the thing that has happened over
the years is that Black conservatives have been seen as critics, standing on the sidelines, telling everybody what's wrong,
instead of getting their hands dirty. And I think that for the "Black Conservative" movement, to what extent there is one, what
will help will be that people who call themselves begin to come into the community, role up their sleeves and begin working,
not just telling everybody what's wrong. That tends to create distrust.

Amy Brenengen
Vivian Jenkins Nelson: It makes you want to slap people.

Al McFarlane: Amy Brenengen is with Women Venture. She's heading a program called
FAIM, Family Assets for Independence in Minnesota.

Amy Brenengen: Women Venture as a whole is an economic development agency for

women and for men. I think the success of families really has a lot to do with how they
can grow economically. That has so much to do with their own stability, what they stand
for, and how they live their values through how they choose to spend their money and
what they acquire. The FAIM program is an excellent opportunity for folks who are low-
wage workers who maybe have not had the same opportunity to save and to take
advantage of opportunities maximize their assets that the government and private
investors are providing.

Al McFarlane: Describe your program.

Amy Brenengen: Family Assets for Independence in Minnesota is actu-

ally a state-wide program across the state of Minnesota, and Women
Venture is a provider. In this program you save thirty to forty dollars
a month for two years. It's matched three times: once by the state,
once by the government, and once by a private funder. The idea
is that savers get to save for an appreciable asset like starting a
business or continuing higher education or owning a home.
And at the end of the two years of saving, they have enough
matched funds to start on one of those endeavors.

Al McFarlane: What is the maximum that they can save?

Amy Brenengen: The maximum they can save ends up

being $3,800 with the matching, at the end, so that's
about $490 a year. It is limited to those three assets,
and every saver, regardless of the asset that they're saving
for, has to take twelve hours of financial literacy education, which is just an excellent
overview of connecting your values, needs, and wants to the economic choices that you
make, for yourself and for your family. They also have to do specific training around the
asset that they're pursuing. So if it's a home, they have to take a home-buying class. If it's
a business, there are vsome business classes that they take, and the
same for education.

Al McFarlane: Women Venture is the sponsor, but is the program for women only? Or is it
for anybody?

Amy Brenengen: It is for women and men, and we are sponsoring this in conjunction with
community action agencies across the state of Minnesota and with United Way, so there's
opportunities all over for folks to take advantage of it. We have a lot of openings right now
that we want people to take advantage of.

Joseph Phillips: I think this idea, families saving, is very important. But the idea that it is for families, for men and for
women, is significant. Married couples do better than singles. And we know that there are some things that people can do to
help themselves along, and one of those things, I tell kids this all the time, one of those things is to graduate from high school.
The other thing that you can do is to not get pregnant in high school. It's important to get married and to stay married. But
you should wait until after you're twenty-five to get married, and then, again, to stay married. There are some reports that
came out recently talking about the expense of divorce, and how much wealth it costs people to end a marriage. So, I think
these are all things that are in line with old-school values of saving and frugality. People saved for education. They saved for
business. They saved for property. It was important. And in this notion of getting some new rims on your car when you can't
pay your rent, that's new-school.

Al McFarlane: I want to bring two more voices in to the conversation. Robert Tisdale and Roxanne Tisdale are here on behalf
of Open Cities Health Center. They want our community to pay more attention to our attitude toward health, our commitment to
health, our awareness, understanding and utilization resources in the community that can help us be healthy as individuals.
Ultimately it's our personal choices, and our personal capacity and our willingness to use the resources.

Roxanne Tisdale: Open Cities Health Center is a federally funded health center that houses medical care, mental health
care, and also dental care. We do a Father's Day Health Fair in celebration of our men and to get some of our resources out to
them. It's just not the woman who can bring the child in, it's just not the woman who needs to be educated about asthma, dia-
betes. It's not just the woman who needs to know how to use a child car seat safely and appropriately. So we want to encour-
age, engage our men in the community to take on some of these roles, to get educated about health, to be empowered, to
work on behalf of themselves and also their families and the community.

Robert Tisdale: We spend a lot of time talking about, what are we going to do for our community. What are we going to do
for the parents? What are we going to do for the mothers and the fathers, to be better parents? My role in it is to talk to the
men and let them know that we can be better men for our families. We can take care of our daughters. We can take care of
our sons. Even if you're not in the home, you can still be a parent.

Al McFarlane: Tell me about your relationship, the two of your, your backgrounds.

Roxanne Tisdale: A I am a paramedic by trade. I am in nursing school right now. Robert and I met when I was in college and
he has supported me through college and supported the family through college.

Al McFarlane: Robert, you sound like the kind of guy that Joseph was talking about a minute ago! (Laughter around room.)

Roxanne Tisdale: I started working at Open Cities as an outreach worker. One of the things that frustrated me was that
there was no one to talk to our men. We were having women's support groups. We were having diabetes support groups. We
were having mental health support groups, and who showed up? It was the women. And so I got frustrated, and ended up
coming home and saying, "You know Robert, there's got to be something done. There has got to be someone out there. There
has got to be a voice. There's got to be a role model." And from there, he was excited about it too, so we were doing health
fairs, and going out into the community. People saw us as a team, working together. Now he is actually a volunteer for Open
Cities Health Center, and I have called him up on a moment's notice and said, "Hey, look, I've got this brother down here who
needs some talking to and he just cannot hear it from me. I need you down here." And before I hang up the phone, he's
already down here, got the brother in a room asking, "Okay, what's going on, what's happening? Here are some of the
resources you can use. Here are some of the things that you can do."
And as frustrating as it may be for me that I'm saying the same things, they hear it differently from a male perspective, from a
male point of view. I don't know if he uses his 'and's and 'but's in a different way, but they definitely take it differently, and they
see him as a role model.

Al McFarlane: And so Robert, let me ask you, what's the mission and the vision, from your point of view? What's inside you
that gives you both the confidence and the motivation to be on the front line, as you are called to be by your partner?

Robert Tisdale: I didn't grow up with a father. There is a gap growing between men and their families.
I can't even walk down the street without seeing another Black man and almost getting into a fight. We need to stop that as a
community. We need to be able to walk down the street, see another Black man, say, "How ya doin?" And address them as
'sir.' We don't do that anymore. So my role is to educate the Black men, emotionally, physically, and spiritually to get us on a
different path. I am reaching out to young men on their level.

Al McFarlane: Joseph, what do you think?

Joseph Phillips: There is an iconic vision that I have of the man, the father, in the old West, standing in front of his cabin with
the loaded shotgun as his family stands behind him. That image is of the man, as the head of the house, protecting his family
from evil that would come through the front door and harm his children and his wife. He's willing to sacrifice his blood, his life,
if need be, to protect them. That is the image that I think that Robert shares, reflecting our role as protectors of the communi-
ty, protectors of the home. And we have to be at the front door. We have to be at the gates of the community. Evil doesn't nec-
essarily ride in on a gang of horses with six-shooters anymore, but there is evil out there. And we are the guardians at the
gate.

Al McFarlane: Let me share a different perception. I see my role as a Black man, husband, and
father, differently from what you've described. It probably includes that, but I wouldn't describe it they
way you did because I fear that your description, which I think is a real for you, some may say relegates
to women a role of being protected and not part of the protection class.
I see Al and Bobbi McFarlane in partnership. My iconic vision is of two units, two humans, sort of
standing back to back, both equally committed to, equally responsible for creation of harmony, order,
and opportunity for individual and collective growth, for safety in the community, and for creation of a
space that allows the community and society to advance. I don't see myself as the guy with the gun. I
see us both equally committed to and sharing responsibility for our lives and our community.

Joseph Phillips: But here's the other difference. In my marriage we are very much partners, and I
would hope that no one would take what I'm saying to say that my wife has no role, because that's
clearly not what I'm saying. My wife has a very important role in the family. But men and women do have different roles.So
while my wife also protects, I think the notion -- I want to be careful how I say this -- I think the danger is that if we start to talk
about this unified kind of everybody standing at the gate, what it does is it alleviates responsibility from men. And what I'm
saying is over the last forty or fifty years what we have seen is the result of men stepping back and waiting for someone else to
join them at the gates, or to take that role, which is a male role, of standing, of being the guardian.

Al McFarlane: Vivian, is that a male role?

Vivian Jenkins Nelson: I'm hyperventilating here. I'm definitely hyperventilating.

Al McFarlane: Think about it, before you answer.

Joseph Phillips: I can't imagine what I've said that you would disagree with.

Al McFarlane: Before you answer, let me bring one more voice in. Monica Hines recently graduated from Dunwoody College
of Technology. She's forty-two years old. She's been divorced twice. She is the mother of seven children and she has seven
grandchildren. Monica, you are a breast cancer survivor and you have been in the construction business, is that correct?
 Monica Hines
Monica Hines: Yes, Sir. I wanted to be an example to my children. I
don't have a male role model in the home, and I can't be a father. But
I can be a productive person that shows my sons to go to work and
shows them how to pursue what they want to do in their life. I would
love to have had, and I looked for male role models for them. They
had my brothers and my uncles for male role models. But I had to be
a role model within the house and I believed I could show them what
they need to do to be productive in their life. I went to Dunwoody after
doing construction for six years. I went against all odds because
it's a male-dominated type of school. I have four brothers and it
was kind of easy for me to be in that role.

Al McFarlane: Well, let me ask you to respond to the

question, then, of what's the man's role in the house? You
just said, number one, "I can't be the male role model for
my sons." What is the man's role versus the woman's role.
Monica Hines: I can answer it this way: I know that if my sons had had a man that would have read to them, growing up, and
a man that would go to their schools and make sure that academically, they were doing okay, they would have achieved their
goals a lot easier. I did those things. I made sure they knew I was there. I read to them. But there is a relationship between a
man and his father that is important. I believe that a son wants to prove himself to his father. I believe he is a lot better individ-
ual if he has someone
looking out for him.

Al McFarlane: Vivian Jenkins Nelson?

Vivian Jenkins Nelson: I want to follow up on that. We're not too far away from understanding that there is a role for both
parents to protect children from the things out in this world that may damage them. But I think it's very important the kind of
picture that we have of families, whether it's their mothers standing there alone with their seven kids, or whether it's the mom
and dad. As the Urban League said some years ago, "There is strength in Black families, and we have to find it." The strength
is really around values, which is the word that you brought up earlier, Joseph. I think about my family. My folks were married. I
come from an African American family. They were married for sixty-three years. My husband and I have been married for thirty-
six years. Now, the iconic figure that I would like you to go away with is that my mother and dad held hands. They were equal
partners, and if you really looked closely at my family, you would see a picture of my dad holding me, the only girl, on his lap,
reading books. We read Edgar Allen Poe. We read everything together. I had very high ideals about who I would marry. The
thing about it is that my brothers came out in interesting ways. My dad, I told you earlier, was in the civil rights movement. My
brother was a Black Panther. So the two of them held hands in the community, even as my brother talked about the impor-
tance of the Panther breakfast program. What I'm saying is that families should be able to embrace people who are very dif-
ferent. We can embrace people who are very different in the community. If we can't do that, then we have problems.
Women and men can only be as good as each other is in assisting the other one. So we have to hold each other's hands up --

Joseph Phillips: I agree with everything that you've said.

Vivian Jenkins Nelson: We absolutely must.

Joseph Phillips: I agree with that and I think you said it beautifully. Monica, I cannot believe you have seven grandchildren. I
just want to say one thing, just to tag on, because I tell my wife all the time, I say: "Listen, you have the very important job of
raising children. I have the job of raising men." And I believe that it takes men to raise men. That is where I was going.Conversations
Editors Note: Biography from josephphillips.com - Joseph was born and raised in Denver, Colorado the only son of four chil-
dren. After graduation from George Washington High School he attended the University of the Pacific in central California as a
communications major. Having been bitten by the theatre bug early on, Mr. Phillips decided on an acting career and trans-
ferred to the acting conservatory at New York University where he graduated with a BFA in Acting in 1983.
After graduation Mr. Phillips continued his education, studying with Michael Howard, Chicago City Limits and the late Nora
Dunfee. He also participated in acting workshops with Anna Deveare Smith and Carmen Delavallade.
Phillips' theatrical credits include starring roles in the Broadway production of Six Degrees of Separation, the Kennedy Center
and American Playhouse productions of A Raisin in the Sun, starring Danny Glover and Esther Rolle, and the off- Broadway
production of Coriolanus with Christopher Walken and Irene Worth. Mr. Phillips also had the honor of creating the title role in
Dreaming Emmett, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison's only theatrical play. Joseph's solo performance
piece, Professor Lombooza Lomboo was a featured production at the 12th annual National Black Theatre Festival and the
2001 Minnesota Fringe Festival.
His feature film credits include starring roles in Strictly Business, Let's Talk About Sex and Midnight Blue. On television he
starred on the hit series The Cosby Show and was a three time NAACP Image Award Nominee for his portrayal of Attorney
Justus Ward on the Daytime Drama General Hospital. Most recently he appeared as Mayor Morgan Douglas on the CBS
series The District and has also had guest starring roles on Las VegasVegas, Jack and Bobby, The King of Queens, Judging
Amy, Family Law, Martin, The Larry Sanders Show, City of Angeles, Any Day Now, The Parkers, Popular, V.I.P. and Living
Single among others.
As a writer Phillips has had essays published in Newsweek, Los Angeles Daily News, Essence Magazine, Upscale, USA
Today, Jewish World Review, Turning Point, College Digest, BET.com and the Indianapolis Recorder. His column "The Way I
see it" appears weekly in the The Columbus Post, The Los Angeles Wave, Akron Reporter, The Michigan Chronicle, The
Michigan Front Page, The Chicago Defender, the New Pittsburgh Courier, The Tri-State Defender, Long Beach Times, The
Atlanta Daily World, Miami Times, Tempo News and the web daily's Blackamericatoday.com, Blacknews.com, EURweb.com,
attackmachine.com, Netlistings.com, Michaellwilliams.com, JewishWorldReview.com, and PoliticalVanguard.com
Joseph has also contributed commentary to BET Tonight, BET Nightly News, The Dennis Miller Show, America's Black Forum,
American Urban Radio Networks, was for 3 years a regular commentator on National Public Radio's the Tavis Smiley Show
and currently appears as a regular commentator on NPR's News and Notes with Ed Gordon.
Acting and writing are just two of Joseph's many passions. His interest in community service has led to Mr. Phillips involvement
with the Special Olympics, The Green Chimneys Foundation, of which he was an advisory board member, The Red Cross and
most recently the Big Brothers of Greater Los Angeles.
He has been a visiting speaker for organizations such as the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Black America's Political
Action committee, Council for African-American Republican Leadership, Colorado Sickle Cell Foundation, Sickle Cell Disease
Association of America, The United States Post Office, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., Youngstown University, California State
University At Northridge, Towson State University, Pepperdine University, The Green Chimney's Foundation, Los Angeles Boys
and Girls Club, Fullerton College, The Chicago Black Expo the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Mountain View
Community Church Elections forum and at elementary and primary schools across the country.
Phillips has taught acting workshops at the National Black Theatre Festival, The College of William and Mary, California State
University Long Beach, Louisiana State University, Delta State College, Canoga Park High School and The Lutheran School.
Joseph is a member of the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Actors Equity
Association, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated and was the National
Co-Chair of the African American Steering committee for Bush/Cheney '04, was named a member of the Republican National
Committees African American Advisory Board and was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the board of direc-
tors of the California African American Museum.
An interest in Law resulted in Joseph's acceptance to Rutgers University School of Law-an auxiliary career path he has put on
hold. He is also a graduate of culinary school and has had recipes published in Soap Opera Digest, Essence Magazine and
the best selling cookbook, Cooking with Regis And Kathy Lee, and is the Celebrity Chairman for Real Men Cook, Los Angeles.
However, his greatest passion is Nicole, his wife of 11 years, and their three children, Connor, 7, Ellis, 5 and 3 year-old
Samuel.
WomenVenture is a leader in providing the technical tools and emotional support to help clients start a business, find a new
job, or develop a new career path. Today's woman has many career and business opportunities in an ever changing market-
place. With this vast array of options comes the struggle to make the right choice, sort through all the information and under-
stand all the options.
WomenVenture is committed to helping its clients focus energy, systematically plan, identify resources and carry out
goals in a setting that is nurturing and supportive. WomenVenture serves women - and men (in most programs) - of all eco-
nomic and ethnic backgrounds. In its 28 year history, over 78,000 women and men have been served. Contact Amy Barringer
at Women Venture at 651-646-3808 and on the web at womenventure.org. Women Venture is located at 2320 University, St.
Paul 55114.
Open Cities Health Center:
For all ages. Mental Health, Dental, Prenatal Classes, Diabetic Education, Smoking Cessation, Social Service.
North End
135 Manitoba Avenue, St. Paul, MN, 55117
Phone: 651-489-8021
Fax: 651-489-4402
Bus Routes: 12
Dunlap Street
409 North Dunlap Street
St. Paul, MN, 55104
Phone: 651-290-9200
Fax: 651-290-9210
Bus Routes: 16A, 21A, 50
Hours:
Monday-Thursday 8:00 am - 8:00 pm
Friday 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Saturday 12:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Insurance Accepted:
Medicare, Medical Assistance, UCare, HealthPartners, Medica, Blue Plus, Blue Cross, PreferredOne, Most private
insurance,Sliding Fee Scale Other Languages: Hmong, Vietnamese, Spanish
Staff: Family Practice, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Ophthalmology, Surgery, Dentistry
Hospitals: Regions Hospital, United Hospital, St. Joseph's Hospital, Children's Hospital and Clinics - St. Paul

Vivian Jenkins Nelsen is the cofounder of INTER-RACE: The International Institute for Interracial Interaction, a diversity think-
tank dedicated to improving race relations through research, education, and consultation. Nelsen participated in two
International U.N. Conferences on Women, advised the Carter and Reagan White Houses on urban issues, and was recog-
nized by President Ford for her work in the resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees. She is the former Director of
Administration at the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and served as the Director of Human Relations Programs for
teachers at the University of Minnesota and Hamline University. In her role as Director of Mission in Communities, Vivian was
the first African American woman to become an executive with the American Lutheran Church National Offices.
A third generation educator, Vivian has varied and extensive teaching, training, and curriculum design expertise. As the found-
ing Chair of the Minnesota Academic Excellence Foundation and the Minnesota Chapter of the Political Congress of Black
Women, she served school districts, city governments, and neighborhood councils as a strategic planning consultant, work-
shop facilitator, and trainer.
Recently, the Minnesota Association for Counseling and Development awarded Vivian their Distinguished Achievement Award
for her outstanding contributions in teaching, role modeling, and publishing. She is a frequent guest on Twin Cities radio and
television.

It’s arguably the very best omelet
ever made -- anywhere. Listed on
the menu as The Basquais, this
omelet is the chef’s forte at the
Sunnyside Cafe, 1825 Glenwood
Avenue North, Minneapolis. Its
creator, French and Italian chef and
culinary artist James Baker,
personally makes and serves the
mastercaft breakfast entrée by
special order Fridays, Saturdays and
Sundays when the restaurant is open
James, Alice and J.T. Baker to the public.
The beauty of the dish is that it is virtually impossible to
consume in one sitting. Consequently, it’s a breakfast that will
serve you an additional one to two days because you can take
what you can’t finish home in a “to go” container. And believe
me -- this exquisite omelet just gets better when reheated in a
stovetop pan, oven or microwave the second and third day. You
can even freeze it, banking the savory delight to enjoy at a later
date.
At Sunnyside, the making of an omelet is a huge affair. If
memory serves us right, Chef Baker starts with eight extra
large eggs. The omelets feature three types of cheeses. Pork
omelets are made with ham and bacon and include four
varieties of sweet peppers -- red, green, yellow and orange,
and two varieties of onions, yellow and red. It is tasty. You
can request turkey as an alternative or you can go vegetarian
and discover the garden medley. This light and fluffy omelet
is served with toast and a choice of potatoes or grits. The grits,
creamy, cheesy and buttery, are the embodiment of Southern
culinary art itself. It’s comfort food at its finest! Then there is
the venue. It is warm and inviting, with an air of authenticity
that relaxes you like sitting in your own home.
Sunnyside Café is the retail restaurant division of Elite Catering.
The company caters breakfasts, lunches and dinners for groups
as large as 3,500. From weddings of all sizes to small custom
affairs and business meetings, Elite Catering serves customers
for whom quality in product, presentation and service is a must.
Owner James Baker specialized in French and Italian cuisine and
ice sculpture at the renowned Washburn Culinary Institute in
Chicago. He entered the culinary school after serving in the
military, where he developed an interest in cooking and food
service management.
“I was in Vietnam,” he said, “and the First Class Petty Officer
noticed my interest in food preparation. He got me reassigned to
the food service operation. Later, the commanding officer,
complimenting me on what I had learned and accomplished,
recommended that I pursue culinary school training when I left
the military. That’s what I did.”
The world’s
best
omelet
BY AL MCFARLANE AND B.P. FORD, THE EDITORS
LISTED ON THE MENU AS THE BASQUAIS, THIS OMELET IS
THE CHEF’S FORTE AT THE SUNNYSIDE CAFE, 1825
GLENWOOD AVENUE NORTH, MINNEAPOLIS
Baker’s partner in business and life is longtime Northsider Alice
Bender Baker. Alice Baker is the daughter of the legendary chef
and entrepreneur Timothy Bender, who owned and operated
Timothy’s Pizza and Soul Food Restaurant on West Broadway
and Emerson in the 1960s and ‘70s. Bender, now deceased,
retired and moved to Hawaii in the 1980s. Timothy’s Pizza, was
one the first advertisers in the original Insight Magazine when the
publication launched in 1974.
James Baker is a native of Chicago. He says that he thoroughly
enjoys Minnesota for the quality of life this state affords anyone
who is willing to work hard and honestly. That attitude, which is
reflected in the quality environment of Sunnyside, is guided by
the Bakers’ shared commitment to self-discipline and self-
reliance. It is an attitude they share with our community by their
decision to locate the successful catering operation in the heart of
the community. Their business presence brings stability and
confidence to Glenwood Avenue, the central corridor of the
Harrison neighborhood, an area that is about to benefit from $250
million to $500 million in investment and renovation. The
development of Heritage Park, the new baseball stadium and the
reclamation of the city impound lot will converge to convert the
area to what may become hailed as a “most livable, most
desirable, and most diverse urban community.”
The values of discipline and respect that the Bakers invest in their
excellent eatery are the same values that guide their family life
and parenting. Pictures line the wall showing the Bakers to be the
proud parents of young master J.T. Baker. A martial arts student,
one of J. T. Baker’s main challenges in life right now is how to
juggle the rigorous martial arts training schedule with his desire to
become a pilot -- at the age of eight.
The Court of Public Opinion in Session Friday Mornings at
Sunnyside. As Insight News editors, we will hold informal
Editor’s Roundtable meetings at the Sunnyside Café every Friday
morning at 8:00 a.m. The meetings are intended to keep us in
contact with neighbors and friends, business and civic leaders,
politicians and advocates who want to share their issues and ideas
with us and consequently, with Insight readers.
Our expectation is that community folks and business leaders
who drop in to chat over breakfast, like us, will become adoring
fans of Sunnyside Cafe and the impeccable elite service of James
and Alice Baker.
For more information:
Sunnyside Cafe
(612) 374-5914
1825 Glenwood Ave
Minneapolis, MN 55405
ADDIE’S SWEET SECRETS:
DIVINELY INSPIRED TRIBUTE
TO THE SACRED YAM
BY AL MCFARLANE AND B.P. FORD, THE EDITORS

IT’S THE KIND OF COLLABORATION THAT FORMS THE BEDROCK OF BUSINESS SUCCESS.
Entrepreneurs James and Alice Baker, owners of Elite Catering and its retail restaurant subsidiary, Sunnyside
Café on Glenwood Avenue in North Minneapolis, determined that their businesses had excess capacity.
They had down time for their commercial kitchens which served the restaurant and the catering operations.

ill Fridge, a native of Chicago, potato muffin went over so well, we decided to have some fun

B IL, started his career in law

enforcement and corporate
security as a police officer for five years
in Gary, IN. He left that job, moved to
Minneapolis, and became Director of
Safety and Security for Prudential
Financial, here in Twin Cities. His wife
and partner in life is Dolores Fridge,
former Minnesota State Human Rights Commissioner, and
former Associate Vice Chancellor at Minnesota State Colleges
and Universities (MNSCU).
with it and add different flavors and fruits to it and make a line
of sweet potato based muffins. Each one has a unique flavor
and they are all as healthy as the original. Along the way we
took a detour and picked up a lime, a key lime, to be exact, and
made a pie with a hand-made graham cracker crust.”
As a boy, Fridge was like most children. He sat in the kitchen
with his mother as she baked. He waited for her to let him lick
the remaining batter from the mixing bowl. Fridge’s mother, like
her mother before her, baked her pies using a coffee cup instead
of a measuring cup, adding ingredients by memory and taste.

But from his days as a young man, Bill Fridge harbored a

vision of bringing to market a food product that he
believed was divinely inspired. Described as
authentic and “down home” dessert, Fridge
says his work pays tribute to the “sacred
yam” - known in America as the
sweet potato.

Modeling the spirit of

collaboration that characterizes
legendary Black business
ingenuity, the Bakers and
the Fridges struck a deal
that provides first class
commercial production
facilities at Elite
Catering for the
creation of Fridge’s
masterwork, Addie’s
Sweet Potato Pie.
“It is simply delicious,”
Fridge said. “We also make a
healthy, tasty sweet potato
muffin. The original Addie’s sweet
Fridge had only a vague idea of ingredients and measurements
of his mother’s sweet potato pie. His interest as a child was the
final product: the exquisitely delicious pie. There was never a
written recipe for this special family treat. When his mother,
father and three siblings died in an auto accident, the then 18-
year-old Fridge was more focused on surviving and helping his
remaining eight brothers and sisters than preserving family
recipes and traditions.
But after many years of combining different ingredients and
spices, Fridge was able to reconstruct his mother’s sweet potato
pie. It was first introduced to family and friends during the
holidays. It then made its first public appearance at David
Howard’s Fish and Seafood Restaurant in Minneapolis in 1991.
The pies made their second appearance at the Bill & Jerry’s
Shrimp Boil, an annual Twin Cities charity event.
In October of 2004, William Fridge decided to go into business
full-time, making his mother’s sweet potato pies for the masses.
He formed Addie’s Sweet Secrets, L.L.C., naming the company
in honor of his mother. The signature and staple of the
company is his Addie’s ‘down-home’ sweet potato pie, as
remembered by her son. Addie’s Sweet Secrets pies and muffins
are available retail at Eastside Coop Grocery Store, 2552 Central
Avenue, and North Country Coop Grocery Store, 1929 5th
Avenue S, in Minneapolis. Addie’s Key Lime pie is on the menu
at Crave Restaurant in the Galleria Shopping Center in Edina
and the pies and muffins are available at Keith Baker’s Palm
Court Restaurant, 2424 Central Ave NE, Babalu’s Restaurant,
800 Washington Ave N, Minneapolis, Market Bar-B-Que,1414
Nicollet Ave, Minneapolis, and 15320 Wayzata Blvd, Wayzata,
Baker’s Ribs, 8019 Glen Lane, Eden Prairie, MN, and Cuppa
Java coffee restaurant, 400 Penn Ave. S, in Minneapolis’ Bryn
Mawr neighborhood. The muffins are available at Diamonds
Coffee Shoppe, 1618 Central Avenue NE, Minneapolis.
Fridge says his desserts are huge hits at company and agency
meetings and events. Bill Davis, director of Minneapolis
Community Action Agency, and Attorney Jerry Blackwell are
among regular agency and corporate clients who serve Addie’s
Sweet Secrets products at events and meetings they host. The
delectable desserts can be custom ordered for events, meetings,
banquets and the like by calling 952-974-1232.
The Fridge’s say they are fortunate, blessed, to have their
daughter Denise Burnett as vice-president of the company with
responsibility for business planning and marketing. Burnett
moved back to Minneapolis from New York for two years to
help convert the Fridge’s dream from a sideline to a full-fledge
business operation. Burnett, a marketing and computer science
professional, earned her degrees at University of Minnesota. She
lives back in New York but visits frequently and participates in
the daily businesses of the family business via internet.
For further information about Addie’s Sweet Secrets, visit the
company online at www.addiesweetsecrets.com.

PREPARED TO LEAD
Superintendent Dr. Meria Carstarphen ready to lead St. Paul Public Schools
M
AL MCFARLANE AND B.P. FORD, THE EDITORS
Minnesota should provide much more aggressive
leadership to create a long term, stable funding strategy
for all public school districts in the state, according to
Dr. Meria Carstarphen, superintendent of St. Paul Public
Schools, the state’s second largest school district.
In St. Paul,” she said, “the conversation about the
budget started almost a year ago, before I even came to
the district. We had conversations about what it would
take to get as close as possible to a stable funding
strategy through what was in our control, and what we
could do to offset the instability that was happening at
the state.”
“St. Paul is not alone in the ups and downs of funding
while trying to hold together high quality programs. It
starts with the state and federal funding programs and
trickles down into our communities,” Carstarphen said
last month in a broadcast interview for the
Conversations with Al McFarlane public policy
program.
St. Paul Public Schools for the last several yeas has
experienced about a $68 million budget cut. “It’s been
incredibly demoralizing,” she said. “And over time that
really takes a toll on staff moral and on our ability as
executive leaders to do a good job.” Carstarphen said
before she came on board, the district launched a very
aggressive multi-year referendum strategy. That
strategy was part of a long-term formula for setting in
place a funding strategy that would work for students,
families and district employees.
“I hit the ground running on July 21st of last year. So I
haven’t even been here a year yet. I feel like we’ve done
seven years of work in seven months, and I’m being
honest about that. I don’t think I have a single staff
member, from custodians to my senior leadership team,
that hasn’t felt the burn. We’ve been sprinting up hill.
Hats off to my staff and the community, for taking this
challenge, putting it underneath their wing, running up
that mountain! We passed that referendum with a
passage rate that was higher than any district in the
“WE ARE RESTORING ABOUT
$2 MILLION OF FUNDING
DIRECTLY BACK TO SCHOOLS
TO MAKE UP FOR SOME PAST
WRONGS PUT ON THEM
DURING THOSE SEVEN YEARS
OF BUDGET CUTS.”
state, definitely in the history of St. Paul. Over 62% of
our voting population said ‘yes’”.
Carstarphen praised St. Paul as a community that
understands and values quality education. “We have a
community that has said they value, in a world of
choices in education, charter schools, home schools,
private schools, St. Paul Public Schools -- that St. Paul
Public School is a real choice for our families and
communities. That is great news for us. And they
voted. They went to the polls and told us so. So I am
taking that on as a vote of confidence that we are going
to do the right thing in St. Paul,” she said
The legislature and governor recently approved an
education bill that was good news for many districts
across the state because it provided funding for the
2007-08 federal mandates for special education. “They
did one thing that we have needed for the last seven
years. It is still not enough. It is not enough. We
cannot stop now. But we did get some relief, which
means no hardcore budget cuts for St. Paul this year.
That is a huge win. A huge win. And from that we are
able to do things that we have never done before,” she
said.
“We are restoring about $2 million of funding directly
back to schools to make up for some past wrongs put on
them during those seven years of budget cuts. We’re
restoring special education funding to our schools.”
“I am a former accountability officer. I take money and
data very seriously. I want the public to know that we
are not going to short change them,” she said.
St. Paul Public Schools is one of 66 districts across the
nation that are known as Great City Schools. The
designation reflects size, budget, challenges, and the
number of students. The Great City Schools network
leaders get together throughout the school year and
track what’s happening in these 66 districts. Great City
Schools include large systems like New York City’s
public schools and get as small as a district serving as
few as 30,000 students. St. Paul is on the lower end in
size and capacity of these 66 districts, with New York
City, Los Angeles, Miami, being largest, St. Paul is
about the 50th largest, she said.
The district has 42,000 students, 6,000 employees in
120 buildings and programs. There are about 74
traditional school facilities, actual buildings and a
teaching staff topping over 4,000. In Minnesota, St.Paul
Public Schools is second in size to Anoka County Public
Schools. “I have all intentions of changing that. I want
to see St. Paul be the largest school district,”
Carstarphen said.
While the district is number 2 in size, it ranks first in
percent of kids in poverty, in percent of kids identified
as needing special education, and in percent of students
who do not speak English as their first language at
home. No single ethnic group is the majority. Each
major ethnic group is around 20-25%, up to about 30%
of the student body. “That makes us incredibly unique,”
Carstarphen said. “We have a special set of challenges,
but it is also our strength. If we play to that strength and
say that we welcome, respect and want not only this
diverse population of our kids to continue to work and
learn together, because we’re trying to prepare our kids
for a global economy, this will serve them in ways that
when you were in school, when I was in school, we
didn’t get to experience.”
“So I think in St. Paul we are preparing the future in
real, tangible terms. As you can see, that’s very exciting
to me. I’ve never worked in a district like this. And I
think that we can build on that as our strength that is
going to make us number one in the state. Not just for
enrollment and diversity but for achievement, and
closing achievement gaps, and engaging our community
in a way that says, despite what might be happening
across the large educational landscape for urban
districts, St. Paul Public Schools will be, and we are,
head and shoulders above the rest -- and we’re going to
stand tall for this next round and be number one for
excellence. And I think I heard that from our voters
when I interviewed for this job. I heard it from our
constituencies. I know that’s something we can deliver,”
she said.
The district annual budget is $623 million. Only one
percent of that funding comes from the federal
government and for that reason a lot of education
administrators don’t like the federal “No Child Left
Behind” mandates. “We all love the mandates and
requirements, but these unfunded mandates and
requirements break the backs of school systems across
the nation. So we love the high standards, but we really
want the federal authorities to put the money where
their mouth is,” she said.
Some suggest “breaking the back of public schools” is
precisely the agenda and goal of conservative
ideologues who use unfunded mandates as a tool to
cripple and destroy public education. Like goading the
U.S.S.R. into an arms race that ultimately led to the
Soviet Union spending itself into bankruptcy, then
dissolution. You create noble high standards and
requirement under the No Child Left Behind Act, but
don’t provide federal money to pay for the requirements
and eventually public schools. Advocates for public
schools say that may be the real and insidious intent of
conservatives who want to eliminate public education
as we know it.
“I absolutely agree. The last superintendent, Pat Harvey,
did a really outstanding job of putting St. Paul as a
school district up in front of the nation, having us as
part of a national conversation that could influence
legislation. This year alone, we sent our English
language learner staff to testify with Senators Kennedy
and Clinton on the work that we’ve done and why it’s
so important that the federal government get funding for
No Child Left Behind,” she said. “We also get 84% of
our dollars from the legislature of the State of
Minnesota, and then fifteen percent comes from our
local tax base.
ST. PAUL PUBLIC SCHOOLS WILL BE, AND WE
ARE, HEAD AND SHOULDERS ABOVE THE REST -
AND WE’RE GOING TO STAND TALL FOR THIS
NEXT ROUND AND BE NUMBER ONE FOR
EXCELLENCE
We put 77% of our monies into our classroom and 12%
of our dollars in our buildings and facilities. And 8%
goes to transportation and meals. Transportations is a
big, big, big conversation within St. Paul, because we’re
a district where we value choice within the school
system. We’ve said to families, ‘your experience in
education should not have to be determined by your zip
code. You can live anywhere you want. If you want
Spanish Immersion, you got it. You don’t have to be
zoned into a school. We will bus your child to the
program of your choice,’ and that is very expensive for
us,” she said.
Carstarphen said St. Paul Public Schools spends only
three percent of its budget on central administration, a
figure lower than state or national averages. “In my
reorganization, I have been very careful and thoughtful
about not expanding the administration. I want to be
respectful of those things that people in St. Paul say
they value. They don’t want a big, robust
administration. And at the same time, as the executive
officer of a school system, I am going to say that we
need to do more investment there. So it’s a
conversation that we’re going to be negotiating over the
years, but one that when we have the right people in the
right place with the right bus going in the right
direction, they’ll see how that will pay off for them in
the long run.”
Education watchers say a principal challenge of urban
school districts is creating a unity of purpose between
stakeholders in the education apparatus. Does to school
system owe its highest allegiance to organized labor,
teachers represented by their collective bargaining
agreements? Or do taxpayer interests and priorities
come first? What about the interests of students and
families?
“My whole training has been fairly controversial,
considering the traditional training that most
superintendents experienced. I was raised,
professionally, in the era of accountability. So
conversations about No Child Left Behind and closing
the achievement gap and rethinking our relationships to
unions and teachers is a norm for me. I have found in
my time here that because there are so many people who
are used to doing business in the old way, my
professional training, sooner or later, comes in conflict
with what they are used to,” she said. “If there is one
thing I am, I am always very consistent about my
message: I want to better support schools. I want more
transparency. I want us to be accountable for our work. I
want to talk more about achievement. I want less low-
level thinking. I want more high-level thinking,
preparing kids for the future. And I just keep saying it
over and over again, and that just keeps building while,
you might see some of the old guard conversation about
‘What about us? What about us?’”
Carstarphen said the relationship between the district and
the teacher’s union here is so different from any she has
seen anywhere else in the country. “I am encouraged by our
union president and her vision for accountability in the
classroom,” she said.
“If I had no other choice but to invest in one thing, hands
down, I would put money into developing the highest
quality teacher that money could buy so that our kids are
getting taught by the most competent, the most interested,
the most dedicated, the most embracing and welcoming and
loving teachers in this country. So I want to do what is
typically the opposite of what most urban districts are
seeing: I want to invest in my teachers. I want to put more
money into materials and resources for them. I want them to
be happy and engaged in their jobs. I want them to apply
consistency in the rigor of their instruction, for every child.
I want all expectations high, for every baby, regardless of
their ethnicity, or their socioeconomic status or their
language or their special need,” she said.
“So that’s a different kind of conversation my union
president, Mary Katherine Wicker and the administration
under my executive leadership are starting. A high quality
teacher is the premier indicator for a higher achieving
student. So if I could get my arms around what it would
take to get every teacher in St. Paul to be the best teacher,
we don’t have to worry about achievement gaps, we don’t
have to worry about enrollment, we don’t have to worry
about money, because ‘if you build it, they will come.’
They will come back again and again and again,” she said.
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT:
I believe in our teaching staff in St. Paul. There is still work
to be done. Not everyone knows their content or has the same
belief system about every child that comes to our schoolhouse
gates. But I believe we are going to have what it takes to
address content area expertise through job-embedded
professional development, so they're getting real-time
feedback on how they're doing, making sure that we're
matching the best teacher to the best classroom structure and
giving them things like time during the day to plan
collaboratively, and time to really prepare for class. We can
take their advice when they say, "This isn't working, the
administration needs to go back and rethink this." I want them
to have all the strategies in their tool belts to be able to teach
a kid who has an English language need and at the same time
provide rigor to my gifted and talented kids.
I can't tell you how often I see us in urban education pushing
middle class families out the door, of every race; we push
them out the door. We get so wrapped up in dealing with the
lowest performing student. Because of all of this pressure
behind No Child Left Behind, we have forgotten that we
actually have a large student group, thirty percent of our kids,
that are basically holding the center line on achievement.
They are keeping the districts afloat. That percentage gets
smaller and smaller. And we don't serve them well.
So what does it take to get a child who is very capable, very
interested in learning and to get them engaged. What does it
take to be comfortable with the idea that we might actually
have a third grader who is five grade levels ahead of where
they need to be. How do we engage that student, give them
support? They are not an adolescent. They're a young learner.
So that we don't want to have unrealistic expectations for
them, but at the same time, we should be able to bring them
along and let them grow, just blow the charts off. What does
it take to get us as educators being comfortable with that?
SELMA, ALABAMA ROOTS:
I see myself as a documentary researcher with a passion for
visual arts that has manifested itself in photography. I was
born and raised in Selma, Alabama, a very small town with a
large, infamous reputation. I was not born in the 1960s, but
my father was there. My mother's family and my father's
family are all from that area. I have a very deep sense of the
value of education. I had a grandmother who, in addition to
telling me that I had an old soul, told me that she really
believed that my destiny lies in doing what I think not a lot of
people are comfortable with, and that is bringing quality to all
around education.
She told me about her beliefs for education. She insisted that
all of her kids, even in the worst of segregation in the South,
got a high quality education. My father refused to go to
boarding school and ended up going to school in a one room
schoolhouse. He spent a lot of time talking to me about that.
My path in education has been one where I had a healthy
respect for what it meant to have a high quality teacher, even
when the building wasn't right. It was a dilapidated one-room
schoolhouse. We see it behind the church. We still go there
because our family is buried there. I see that little building
and think, 'how could so many great things come out of that?'
My dad and my grandmother and everyone always said it's
not about where you are, it's about who is teaching you. He
had a great teacher who for all practical purposes probably
could have taught him in a paper bag, and that has stuck with
me forever. It is what I believe. I wanted to become a teacher.
I knew that my greatest chance at influencing the lives of
kids, breaking a cycle of poverty, breaking a cycle of
ignorance, breaking into all those wonderful things that kids
can actually do if we expect them to do it, was at the heart of
being a good teacher. That's not true across the board. Not a
lot of people feel that way consistently enough to have a
critical mass to move an organization quickly. In a big,
bureaucratic Great City school district like St. Paul, it takes a
lot to turn the ship.
In the South, I grew up in a tracked school system, meaning
you were predetermined to go low-level, vocational. My
parents fought almost every school year to ensure that their
four girls would get a least a track that would send them
college bound. They had to fight for it. My parents are a hard-
working middle-class family that wanted the best for their
kids. It became very clear to me, as early as third grade, how
tough it was to keep us at the forefront of what was divided
by race into a completely white college-bound educational
strategy and everybody else who was not going. We
dismantled that in my hometown. But the residual effects
have never been overcome. I made a personal commitment to
my grandmother, and certainly to myself that I would never
let that happen to kids on my watch.
PREPARED FOR LEADERSHIP
So I've been well-trained and had a deliberate, aggressive, and
I'm going to say accelerated path to the superintendency. I did
it with the intentions of having a job like this. It wasn't
hastened by any stretch of the imagination. I had great
mentors who took me aside and tried to help me get there
sooner rather than later, so that I could make a dent in this
work as soon as possible.
There are great needs in our community and a dearth in
leadership. There is no doubt that in St. Paul Public Schools,
our largest achievement gap is our African American students.
It's my belief that we can offer whatever we want on the back
end, but it starts at birth. I can't say it enough; it starts at birth.
It is really important that you start the day you decide to have
a child and you commit to understanding what the work is
from the family's perspective to get a kid ready for the first
grade.
So I want more money in early childhood education
programs. Money for three-year-olds in programs for families
in high poverty and ethnic communities where there language
needs and everything else. We have four-year-old programs.
We have all-day kindergarten. With that referendum, I said,
'equalize it.' Everybody gets a high-quality all-day
kindergarten experience in St. Paul. You don't have to be
poor, you don't have to be middle class; everybody gets it.
Here's what I know about our data: if a child is not reading at
or above grade level by the third grade, they will be in the
bottom ten percent by the time they are in high school.
So there is a real need to get in early, good attendance with
parents being engaged, reading to the child. That will help
them on the path. Then it won't even matter what happens on
the back end because they will have learned what they need
to do to be good in school.