A Man from Another Land: How Finding My Roots Changed My Life (5 page)

The bus arrived nearly full and I climbed aboard. I always enjoyed placing my token in the receptacle and watching it cling
clang through the machine and disappear out of sight. It was always fun watching the bus driver slightly nod in appreciation
to me and pretend not to notice our transaction and this marvelous piece of technology.

As I walked toward the middle of the bus, I immediately encountered a heavyset but extremely beautiful woman standing across
from me. I had noticed her staring at me when I boarded. I tried to ignore her gaze, but she persisted in looking at me. More
people boarded the bus and I was forced to move closer to her. She smiled and said something I didn’t understand. I tried
to avert my eyes away from hers, but she wasn’t having it. Again, she said something in a language I did not recognize. Sensing
her growing frustration with me I said, “Hey.”

“Why won’t you speak your language?” she said accusingly.

“Excuse me?”

She repeated, “Why won’t you speak your language?”

“What language?” I asked.

“Aren’t you Wolof?”

“Wolof? What’s that?”

She laughed and said “You are American? You look like my people in Senegal! Are you sure you are not from Senegal? Where are
you from?”

“I grew up in Houston, Texas.”

“Texas?” she said, and then rolled her eyes as if she didn’t believe me. Suddenly, the bus came to its final stop and she
got up to disembark. As she brushed past me on the now overcrowded bus she said, “You are not from Texas, you are from West
Africa!” And with that, she got off the bus and disappeared into the sea of humanity that scrambled underground to catch the
subway train.

I was stunned, and left with a profound sense of confusion and curiosity about what had just transpired. Why was this woman
so convinced that I was Wolof? What was it about me that evoked such a response from her?

The memory of her musical voice and bright smile pierced my previous cloud of anxiety, lifted it up, and blew it away from
me. Voilà! My feelings of inadequacy dissipated like sugar on my tongue and sweetened my sense of self. There was something
here I decided I must follow, a seed planted that I sensed I must cultivate. I was determined to not only find where Senegal
was, but rapaciously learn everything I could about its food, culture, history, and its people. That year, I attended local
seminars led by the famous Dr. Ben, the historian Dr. Yosef A. A. Ben-Jochannan, a Cornell University professor considered
an expert on the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Africa.

I dreamed of saving up enough money to take a trip to Senegal and visit its slave castle on Gorée Island. One weekend, while
out for a walk in Brooklyn, looking for a good lunch, I found myself at Keur N’Deye, a restaurant in Fort Greene. I discovered
the owner, Salif Cisse, was from Senegal. He instantly made me feel like an old friend and introduced me to his wife, Marie
Cisse. Salif gave
me a menu and explained how tasty his
mafe
was.
Mafe
is couscous, brown rice, and my favorite
yassa
, a fish marinated in lemon sauce with onions. He recommended I wash it all down with a cold beer.

I was hooked. I ate there nearly every day and watched as his restaurant attracted many of my neighbors. Joie Lee, Spike Lee,
Gary Dourdan, Erykah Badu, Randy Weston, and Stevie Wonder were all regulars. Salif told me so many stories about Senegal,
that at times I felt as if I had lived there myself. He went from host to griot for me, deepening my knowledge and appreciation
of Senegal and confirming for me that there was something relating to West Africa that I was supposed to do.

The following year, on June 22, 1990, I found myself understudying a role in the play
The Third Rhythm,
being performed at the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem. During a somewhat unproductive rehearsal, our director decided
we would cut the day short. Nelson Mandela was going to speak at a rally, not far from the theater, at the intersection of
Martin Luther King Jr. and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. boulevards, also known as African Square. Gary Dourdan, a fellow actor,
and I found an upper room at the theater. We watched out the window in silent awe at the sight of Nelson Mandela being carried
down 125th Street atop a vehicle surrounded by bulletproof glass.

The sight of the huge crowds, standing behind barricades and cheering, “Mandela! Mandela!” at once intimidated and exhilarated
me. There were so many people on the street that, literally, no one could move. It looked and felt surreal.

I realized at that moment that the flyers I distributed, the buttons I handed out, and the protest rallies I’d participated
in while living in DC were now no longer necessary. Nelson Mandela was right there in the flesh, a mere fifty yards away from
where I stood. He was free.

“Oh my God, is this really happening?” I wondered to myself. I felt an inalienable connection to Mandela at that moment. My
strong sense of pride literally made me tremble. I knew that somehow my prayers, boycotts, and participation in rally meetings
had helped to make this happen. I felt as if in my own small way I helped free Nelson Mandela. It felt good, really good.
In that moment, the world stood still and everyone was on the same page. It was a page that read, “… with liberty and justice
for all.”

And on that glorious day Gary, a “light-skinned” brother, who sported a “nappy afro” and I shared a bond that transcended
our hues.

As I got to know him, it became resoundingly clear to me that Gary was not interested in using
his
skin color to advance himself or his art. Gary was free. He was not like some of the “light-skinned” people I had previously
met in my life—from the neighborhood, Howard University, and other places—who seemed to think their lighter skin color made
them smarter or more insightful about how white people think, who used their skin color as a badge of honor, as a way to hold
on to some
perceived power
. They were not
free.

As I gazed down at the sea of people lining 125th Street, I realized that if Nelson Mandela could spend his entire life resisting
bigotry through patience and the love of humanity, then why couldn’t I do the same thing? I guessed that going forward whenever
the misguided notion that lighter was somehow “better” revealed itself or made an appearance I would have to challenge and
resist the notion, just as Mandela did, with elegance and dignity.

Nelson Mandela was free. Gary Dourdan was free. And as I stood there that day, watching all kinds of black people of every
shade and hue cheering Mandela and his freedom—even whites in the crowd in Harlem were screaming his name—I was free
too. It felt good. It felt natural. On that day we all were one people with one cause, and that cause was to resist bigotry,
ignorance, and hate, and be free.

I now know that to overcome inequity and change the course of history is in my DNA, and the DNA of my people. I now know that
just as bigotry from whites is dated, dangerous, and just plain silly, so is the bourgeois ideology of organizations such
as “Jack and Jill”—formed in the 1930s by black prosperous families to provide their children access to teas, debutante balls,
and other social practices of wealthy whites, from which they were excluded because of prejudice. The group’s critics accused
it of practicing its own brand of bigotry, favoring well-to-do and lighter-skinned blacks for membership.

The diversity train has taken off. People need to get on board or risk being run over by it.

My story is clear. Ignore Africa at your peril. Africa is in ALL of us and she is reaching out for help now in more ways than
ever! Africa gave us the first civilizations and Africa will give each of us our freedom, just as she gave me mine. When we
help Africa, we help ourselves.

Whap, whap, whap
! I felt the sting of each measured blow on my back and my neck being administered by a very large and focused hand. I was
strapped onto a machine hanging upside down in the darkness and unable to breathe. I was beginning to wonder whether I was
going to die of asphyxiation or a broken neck.

Everything seemed to slow down and become very quiet. People were gathered around speaking in hushed tones and frantic whispers.
The air was filled with urgency as someone hit me again and again.

I couldn’t help but wonder, “Damn, is this what it felt like when I was born and not breathing? Did the doctor hang me
upside down and violently spank me into existence? Shit, this sucks!”

This was not the first time I had experienced this feeling. I had nearly drowned twice in my life. But each time, someone
or something always brought me back to life. This time, a peanut shell was threatening to kill me. A huge man was fighting
back, hell bent on not letting me go. That man, my savior, was Mr. John Amos.

We were all backstage during an intermission at the Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany, New York. I was playing the part
of Cory Maxson in August Wilson’s
Fences
and John Amos was portraying the powerful patriarch Troy Maxson. Hundreds of people were patiently waiting in the audience
for the second half of the play to begin. It would have been in extremely poor taste to die backstage before the paying audience
could see how one of Wilson’s greatest works ended.

The script called for my character to shell and eat peanuts onstage, listening intently as his father spoke. The monologue,
designed to warn his son against the false hope and promises of the sports world, was delivered beautifully each night by
Amos. Troy Maxson wanted his son, Cory, to focus on finding a real, steady-paying job. Cory had scholarship offers to play
football and was confused as to why his father resented his chance for advancement.

I remember hearing the part in the dialogue where the father says, “You need to stop worrying if somebody likes you. You need
to make sure that they pay you.” At that moment I knew something was wrong. For a minute I thought John was speaking directly
to me and not my character. I started to perspire and the room seemed different, as if every single person in the audience
was looking not at me but right through me. I felt confused and desperately wanted to run off the stage and hide. I couldn’t
breathe. I tried to swallow, but nothing happened. Something was stuck in my throat.

My eyes began to water and I could see that John sensed
something was wrong. I wasn’t supposed to actually cry at that moment, but my eyes were tearing up. He forged on as did I.
All I could do was hold my breath to keep from gagging and choking onstage. There was no way that I was going to go down in
this theater’s history as the guy who embarrassed the hell out of Kunta Kinte (the central character John played in Alex Haley’s
Roots
). To this day, I don’t know how I managed to contain myself for the rest of act one of the play. When the lights finally
went down, after what seemed like an eternity, I could hear the applause rise up as I ran off stage straight into the restroom.

As I was gasping and grabbing at my throat, someone gave me a glass of water. Another applied the Heimlich maneuver. Nothing
worked. At this point, I could barely speak and panic was setting in. Some people watched on with shock on their faces, looking
powerless as to what to do. Others smirked, acting as if they thought I was overreacting.

Luckily for me, John had a back problem and needed an elaborate machine that looked like a huge stretcher with ankle straps
and hooks on the bottom of it. The stretcher was attached to a huge metal stand that allowed one to be strapped on and then
literally flipped upside down. Apparently this contraption helped him stretch out his spine and back muscles.

The next thing I knew, John had strapped me to this thing and turned me upside down and then upright again with such force
that I blacked out. The centrifugal force alone should have made that loathsome peanut shell fly up and out of my throat immediately.
But nope, I was still choking.

A quiet hysteria filled the very same air that I needed to breathe. I could hear the weighted and growing concern in John’s
voice, “Someone needs to make an announcement, because we need to get this boy to the hospital.”

“What? I hate hospitals!” I remember thinking, “Oh hell no, people die in hospitals!”

It was either my sheer will, or perhaps my fear of hospitals, that had me demanding, through my own version of sign language,
to go back onstage and finish the play. I began to flail my arms all about trying to signal to them to let me up. Everyone
backstage paused for a moment and then sprang into action. The show must go on! And that is exactly what we did.

The same calmness I felt as a child, plowing my way through the woods into unknown territory, washed over me. The last half
of the show was probably the most focused and best stage performance of my career. I left my body—it was no longer responding
to me as I wished. I called on my ancestors to get me through, to show me the way out of this. I wasn’t ready to die. I prayed
for assurance of more time on the earth to fulfill my purpose, and to become an influential artist. And they answered.

The final curtain came down and the executive director of the theater demanded that I see a doctor immediately. I was driven
to the emergency room and X-rays confirmed that I had a sliver of peanut shell embedded in my esophagus. The doctor removed
it, but the trauma of the choking had left me with a small laceration and a loose piece of skin that felt like a feather tickling
the inside my throat whenever I spoke or swallowed. It bothered me for weeks.

I was put on twenty-four-hour watch. The theater arranged for the wardrobe mistress, Melissa Toth, to monitor me. She took
very good care of me that evening. As we were talking she said, “You should become a writer.”

I had heard that before. I asked, “Why do you think that? I’m an actor not a writer.”

She smiled. “No. You are an artist. You can do whatever you want.” She later gave me a copy of Walt Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass
. It was a gesture that greatly resonated with me. A year later I found myself living at 231 Clermont Avenue between DeKalb
and Willoughby streets, in Brooklyn. This was the landmark
neighborhood where Walt Whitman lived and was inspired to write
Leaves of Grass
. I don’t think it is an accident that I now write this book.