Ask Your Mama

Line 5 - 5th and Mound in Cinci - Cincinnati- corner with several schools and universities

Line 5 - 63rd in Chi - Chi=Chicago - known for holding the World Columbian Expedition.

Line 6 - 23rd and Central - home of Wall Street. In the early 1900's, Wall Street experienced a small financial depression. The German Jews moved in and mortgaged the property, making it into a congregation and college.

Line 6 - 18th Street and Vine K.C. - Home of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and American Jazz Museum.

Line 18/19 - High balls, low balls, the 8 ball - In the game of pool, the black 8 ball is to go in last in order to win the game.

Line 20 - 7-11 Come 7 - This is the Song of Solomon.
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field. Let us lodge in the villages.
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; Let us lodge in the villages.
Come, my loved one, let us go out into the field; let us take rest among the cypress-trees.
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the fields; Let us lodge in the villages.
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.
Come, my beloved, we go forth to the field

Line 21 - Porgy and Bess - A famous folk opera written by George Gershwin. This uses several spirituals as well as blues, etc.

Line 29 - Fillmore out in Frisco - San Francisco - music theater - area is famous for the Digger Movement and Artist Liberation started in the '60's by the Beats and Hippies.

Line 29 - 7th across the bay - Brooklyn, NY. home of Stonewall Jackson and Tony Mauero. All of the mansions were torn down in the '40's. There is also a Revolutionary War Cemetery in this area.

Line 34 - Leola - ALso known as Leola and the HoneyBears - African-American re-telling of Goldilocks.

Line 37 - Lumimba Louis Armstong - Louis Armstrong was the legendary jazz singer. He went to the Congo during his travels, where he was greeted to his "home in the Congo" by Patricia Lumumba, a political leader in the Congo during the Civil War. She helped to chaperone him out of the airport.

Line 38 - Patricia and Patti Page - Patti Page was a well known singer in the early 1900's.

Line 40 - King Cole - pop/jazz singer in the 50's and 60's. Known for songs such as Mona Lisa, Route 66, Unforgettable, and one of the first black TV shows on NBC.

Line 44 - Fort de France - Northern Coast of the Carribean - This was built by the French Colonials in the 1600's. It was taken over by the Dutch in the 1700's, then by the English in the 1800's. The French reoccupied the territory in the 1850's. It was destroyed by natural disasters in 1902.

Line 45 - Place Picalle - Albania, by the Mediterranean Sea.

Line 47 - Bahia - place in South America

Line 47 - Lagos - place in Nigeria

Line 47 - Dakar - Senegal

Line 47 - Lenex - Massachussetts

LIne 48 - Kingston - New York, Also a 60's trio that took a large stand during the Civil Rights Movement.

Line 49 - Dome Vingt - ?

Line 49 - Rotonde - Fountain in Aix, France. Symbolic of entrance into the modern day.

Line 53 - Sorbonne - School in Paris.

Line 55, 58, 59 - Unicorn - Symbolic of man's hopes, fears, dreams, nightmares, inner consciousness. Also stands for purity, hope, love, and majesty. Most are waiting for the unicorn's return. In the Bible, it is said that the Unicorn died when it would not get on Noah's Ark, because it believed it could survive the flood on it's own.

Line 55,58,59 - Mules and Donkeys - The donkey is known for being half wild and half domesticated. It is known as a social misfit, has insatiable lust, and also stands for strong, blue-collar workers.
Mules, however, are easily managed, docile, sure-footed, and strong.

Line 60 - Sekou Toure Cap - Dictator of Guinea. Lived from 1958-1984. Caused a major collapse in the society of Guinea.

Line 64 - Azikiwe's son, Ameka - Nigeria, Biafra. Azikiwe was the President of Nigeria. Ameka took his place after his death. He formed a temporary government and helped Nigeria become a republic. He was also part of the military government with Nigeria's civil war in 1967. He founded the Nigerian People's Party.

Line 65 - Emmett Till - A teenager who was lynched in Mississippi right after Brown vs. Board of Education. He was first kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot in the head, then a metal fan used for ginning cotton was tied to his neck. Hew as thrown in the river and found 3 days later. The two killers were founded not guilty after one year of investigation. The blacks boycotted their business, eventually making them go bankrupt. Emmett Till was buried in Chicago, where thousands of spectators came to view his body. 100 days later, Rosa Parks refused to take her seat on the bus. Emmett Till is known as one event that led to the civil rights movement.

Line 74 - Quarter of the Negroes - In the 1864 Civil War, a massacre occurred, where the shouting began with "No Quarter! No Quarter! Kill the negroes". Also a cross-section of another Langston Hughes poem.
Cultural Exchange

In the Quarter of the Negroes
Where the doors are doors of paper
Dust of dingy atoms
Blows a scratchy sound.
Amorphous jack-o'-Lanterns caper
And the wind won't wait for midnight
For fun to blow doors down.

By the river and the railroad
With fluid far-off goind
Boundaries bind unbinding
A whirl of whisteles blowing.
No trains or steamboats going--
Yet Leontyne's unpacking.

In the Quarter of the Negroes
Where the doorknob lets in Lieder
More than German ever bore,
Her yesterday past grandpa--
Not of her own doing--
In a pot of collard greens
Is gently stewing.

Pushcarts fold and unfold
In a supermarket sea.
And we better find out, mama,
Where is the colored laundromat
Since we move dup to Mount Vernon.

In the pot begind the paper doors
on the old iron stove what's cooking?
What's smelling, Leontyne?
Lieder, lovely Lieder
And a leaf of collard green.
Lovely Lieder, Leontyne.

You know, right at Christmas
They asked me if my blackness,
Would it rub off?
I said, Ask your mama.

Dreams and nightmares!
Nightmares, dreams, oh!
Dreaming that the Negroes
Of the South have taken over--
Voted all the Dixiecrats
Right out of power--

Comes the COLORED HOUR:

Martin Luther King is Governor of Georgia,
Dr. Rufus Clement his Chief Adviser,
A. Philip Randolph the High Grand Worthy.
In white pillared mansions
Sitting on their wide verandas,
Wealthy Negroes have white servants,
White sharecroppers work the black plantations,
And colored children have white mammies:
Mammy Faubus
Mammy Eastland
Mammy Wallace
Dear, dear darling old white mammies--
Sometimes even buried with our family.
Dear old
Mammy Faubus!

Culture, they say, is a two-way street:
Hand me my mint julep, mammny.
Hurry up!
Make haste!