Odell for President
BY ODELL WINFIELD
I always loved being a librarian. I’m a collector of information and stories. Until now I have only been a word keeper. But tonight I’m going to be a word “speaker” and share my story. As a kid, I believe my life doesn’t have its own meaning. My ideas come from wanting to be someone else. When we got our first TV, I start play-acting. I always thought of my father as a strong person but as my words, as my world opened up with TV I find other people I believe in and are stronger. I decided I wanted to be Lone Ranger. He always got his man.
It’s the third grade. I’m in Ms. Kaufman’s class. She’s a nice teacher. She’s always discussed national events with us, but she never asked our opinion. She explains that Dwight Eisenhower is our President and also a war hero. She talks about George Washington, the first President and father of this country. This makes me think of my father. He’s a hero too. And he’s also the president of our family. What would you like to be when you grow up Ms. Kaufman asks. I say I’m going to be President of the United States. Everyone laughs, even my best friends, Jesse and Clifton. If my father is like the president of our family, why can’t I be President of this country? It’s 1954, and Ms. Kaufman says it will be at least 150 years before a Negro will be elected President.
After she says that, I’m never interested in school again. I just want to play football and never let my true feelings show. On Saturday nights my father used to take us, take the whole family out to dinner at the White Castle. I knew going out to dinner was special, but I don’t know until many years later that going to the White Castle on Saturday nights is about keeping our family together.
In 1960 my father buys a house in a nice neighborhood to move us out of the projects. There are still some white families on the block when we move in. But a couple of months later, those houses are abandoned. Much later I learned that the same thing that happened to us happened to many black families all over the country. A real estate agent sells a house to one black family in a white neighborhood, then because of their fear the white families flee the neighborhood, taking much less money than what their houses are worth. After that, the agent turns around and sell those houses to other black families at a much higher price. Banks won’t give mortgages or only the worst kind of mortgage to families in these neighborhoods. That tactic is called redlining. Because banks literally draw red lines around these neighborhoods and strategically discriminate against them. Redlining is one of the primary tactics that black, that kept black families in this country from building any kind of wealth to pass on to their children.
After moving to this neighborhood, instead of seeing my father as a hero, I see him as a person who gives up, someone who takes much grief from the white community. As a teenager, I started reading newspapers and I learned about racism and hatred. I started wondering why the school is always teaching us about the European’s advancement in America but not about the accomplishments of black men or Native Americans. During my days at school, I’m always asking didn’t black folks contribute to this development of America.
I decided that since I can’t use my knowledge to be president, I’ll become a community organizer. Don’t clap yet. I joined the Panther Party who was working with some white activist groups and together we tried to organize tenants in the projects. In political education groups run by the Panthers, we read books like Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Mask. We discussed national and international issues. But it’s not enough. It doesn’t explain why so many of our people are broken. And it doesn’t explain why my life looks the way it does. I’m 17, and I’ve got two kids. I’m also selling drugs from my apartment, and I’m carrying a gun. Years later, I got word that my father is going into the hospital for prostate surgery. I come home to see him and decide to rest the night before and visit him the next day. But he has a heart attack and dies on the operating table.
The next time I see my father is at the funeral parlor where I go to dress him with my wife and sisters. A quarter-mile up the road after we laid, a police car pulls up behind us. They call out my name with the bullhorn. I’m arrested and sent to prison for selling drugs. I think about all the things I wanted for my life and how I ended up being nothing.
At age 21, I’m just a number behind bars. In prison, I do what I have always loved to do. I join a reading and discussion group run by the People’s Party, a group that organizes in the prison to address the inmate's complaints and help them survive the hostile environment. My role is the Minister of Information. I collect the reading materials we need for our groups, even if those materials are not in the prison library. I spend three years in prison. My father used to say you don’t bring your business home. You don’t do that. But I did. I begin to see things differently. I begin to understand how much my father had to endure just to keep us together as a family. I went from thinking why are you taking all that grief from the white community to I can’t believe you took all that and kept your family together. I don’t do that. It took me a long time, and I’m sorry. I tell my kids that every day. I’m sorry. I’m still coming to terms with my past. I sold drugs.
Later I discovered my two friends from childhood, Clifton and Jesse, both died from drugs. One died, one of them from a drug overdose, the other from AIDS. When I close my eyes I can see them in third grade. When I open my eyes they are both dead. I learned a lot in Ms. Kaufman’s third-grade class. It was a turning point for me. I learned that I could never be President in my own country. That world didn’t, that the world didn’t care about my opinion, my hopes, or my ambitions. I learned that in the eyes of the white society I didn’t matter too much. I wonder if the third grade was the turning point for my two best friends and numerous classmates who didn’t make it past their 20s.
After I moved to Woodstock in 1996, I started working with a group of men from Poughkeepsie, a few I had been in prison with. I created the first of two African Roots Libraries, the Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library at 29 North Hamilton Street in Poughkeepsie. In 2017, we opened our second African Roots library at 43 Gill Street in Kingston. I think the community understands the need for such a center. Our centers are the places where the stories are kept. I never looked at my life as a story, but now, becoming a word “speaker,” I know that my own story is connected to all the other stories I have been collecting. And like the other stories, it’s worth sharing, amplifying, and pushing out into the community.
Odell’s story was originally written and performed as part of TMI Project’s Black Stories Matter program and was recently released as an episode of The TMI Project Podcast. Season 2: Black Stories Matter launched on October 28th, 2020, and new episodes air every Wednesday.
Black Stories Matter provides Black-led true storytelling workshops where Black folks can write about, share, and reflect upon their experiences without having to justify, explain, or defend the truth of their lived experiences. The culminating content — written stories, live storytelling performances, videos, and podcasts — is accessible to an all-inclusive audience.
