Time flies
24th May 2016 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
Sunday, May 29, will mark the 20th anniversary of my first day on the job at The Louisiana Weekly. Twenty years, y’all. Two decades on the j-o-b.
My biggest question is where did the time go? How did I wake up one morning, go to work and blink my eyes, only to discover that two decades had passed?
While some of those early memories have gotten blurry with the passage of time and the consumption of Huma Huma drinks and daiquiris, I remember coming on board at the The Louisiana Weekly full time just eight months after the Million Man March, a moment of clarity of Black men as we dedicated ourselves to do whatever we could to protect and uplift Black families and communities of color or die trying. I took that oath seriously and saw writing for The Louisiana Weekly as an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of people of African descent living in New Orleans and elsewhere.
One of the first major stories I took on was that of Shareef Cousin, a Black 16-year-old framed for murder and sentenced to die for killing a white Slidell resident outside the Port of Call restaurant on Esplanade Avenue even though video footage showed Cousin was actually playing in a basketball game at the Tremé Community. It was later reviewed that it was hidden from the teen’s lawyers that a key witness told police that her vision at night made it impossible for her to positively ID the suspect and that several witnesses for the defense were hidden from Cousin’s lawyers in the D.A.’s Office by prosecutors.
Eventually, Cousin’s conviction was overturned but not before Orleans Parish Criminal Court Judge Raymond Bigelow told Shereef Cousin during an appeal hearing, “I order you to die.”
The Shareef Cousin case was one of many that made many question whether Lady Justice was truly blind. Others included the cases of Curtis Kyles, John Thompson and Jerome Morgan, who, like Cousin, appears to have been wrongfully convicted despite overwhelming evidence that proves his innocence.
Mr. Morgan has already spent two decades behind bars for a murder he clearly did not commit and is still running into brick walls in the halls of justice as he struggles to rebuild his life and rallies against a district attorney who clearly is not happy about the prospects of Jerome Morgan fully retaining his freedom.
It’s funny how quickly the memories of past injustices come flooding back especially in a city like New Orleans where the past is always with us and impacts everything we do.
Back to the 20th anniversary.
Even before I was hired as a full-time reporter, I was thrown for a loop by then Publisher Henry Dejoie Sr., who offered me and other freelance writers some king cake and beer at 10:30 a.m. about a week before Mardi Gras day. I was completely caught off guard but later learned that that was just “Mr. D’s” joie de vivre shining through.
Coming to work every day was a life-changing experience. Mr. D, fellow World War II vet and radio pioneer George “Tex” Stephens kept me on my toes and made sure I knew and understood the stories behind the stories of Black New Orleans and the struggle for liberation, justice and equality. So did Mr. John “Uncle John” Roussel and Billy Willis, two wide elders with scintillating stories to spare.
Mr. D. talked all the time about how there was no way Black World War II veterans were going to return to America and accept second- or third-class status after fighting all over the globe to make the world “safe for democracy.”
There was nobody in New Orleans that Mr. Willis didn’t know and I eventually found out that he knew my pops from attending Los Senores parties back in the day. Billy Willis would allow me to accompany him as he ran errands for The Weekly sometimes and always embarrassed me by telling everyone we ran into, “This is a young who writes with understanding.” He would always emphasize every syllable, causing me to cringe but eventually I was able to just laugh and smile.
Over the years, I’ve witnessed a lot of history and events from the production room of The Louisiana Weekly, covering everything from the burning of Black churches, September 11, Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Saints’ first Super Bowl victory and the election and re-election of President Barack Obama and the birth of the Black Lives Matter Movement.
I started out working for The Weekly when it was located in the Plaza Tower building on Howard Avenue and later moved to an office building on Perdido Street before the publication bought its current headquarters in Gentilly.
In addition to winning a Community Builder Award from Xavier University’s African-American Males Collaborative (thanks in large part to the late Herman Piper), an award from Victims & Citizens Against Crime, an award from the Walter L. Cohen Alumni Association and three A. Philip Randolph Messenger Awards from the National Newspaper Publishers Association, I am especially grateful for all of the love, support and encouragement I have received over the years from people in the community. While I am frustrated that I am often unable to do as much as I would like to gain the freedom of every man and woman wrongfully convicted in the slave state of Louisiana, I am grateful to know that these incarcerated brothers and sisters still have a connection to the outside world and am appreciative of the many letters I have received from them.
I am also grateful for all the letters I have received from New Orleanians all over the world and the elders who take the time to reach to me and share their observations.
I am still inspired by the everyday people I meet, including some of the young folks whose paths have crossed mine over the last two decades. Among them are the students of the New Orleans Marinne Institute and Bishop Perry Middle School, both of whom had students I would have been proud to call my son, nephew and/or son-in-law. These students and many other people I have met over the years have no idea how profoundly they have impacted my life and work as an editor at The Louisiana Weekly.
I am also grateful to my boss, The Louisiana Weekly Publisher/Editor-in-Chief Renette Dejoie Hall, the brilliant businesswoman who saw something in me that inspired her to hire me and give me a chance to do my thang in my hometown. I am grateful to her for putting up with my quirks, idiosyncrasies and often ill-timed jokes.
My biggest regret is that my mother, Anita M. Lewis, and brother, Eric B. Lewis, avid readers of The Louisiana Weekly and two of my biggest supporters, are no longer among the living.
While neither is still among the living, they are with me always and I carry them in my heart every day. They are still the last people on my mind before I go to sleep and the first people on my mind when I rise in the morning. And try as I might to avoid it, I still find myself reaching for the phone to bounce an idea off them or tell them about something that happened over the course of my day.
Much love to my pops, the late Dr. Lancelot S. Lewis Sr., who installed in me a hunger for knowledge and a love for words almost before I could walk. And a shout out to Mama Betty, her daughter Cynthia and her son Mark, for challenging me to learn to read before I was old enough to go to kindergarten.
And a special thank you to Mrs. Deloris Deemer for bringing her son Troy and I with her whenever she needed to use the Tulane University Library and for a myriad of culturally enriching experiences like spending the weekend in the country with her kinfolks, taking boat rides on the Mississippi River and pre-teen dances at St. Mary of the Angels.
I thank all of the wonderful people who helped to shape my development and apologize for those I was unable to list in this column.
I am grateful to all of my teachers, administrators and classmates at Bienville Elementary School, Francis W. Gregory Jr. High and McDonogh #35 for all that they have taught me. I am the sum total of all the things I experienced as a Bobcat, Gator and Roneagle.
If I’m going to be honest, I must admit that I am a little disappointed that President Barack Obama never saw fit to visit The Louisiana Weekly during one of several visits to the Crescent City. I have said often in my column that I believe that aftermath of Hurricane Katrina played a key role in opening U.S. voters’ eyes about glaring injustice and inequality across the nation and I know that the Black Press here in New Orleans had boots on the ground telling those stories whole many of the city’s residents were still working on a game plan for returning and rebuilding in the wake of the Great Flood of 2005.
Visiting the Black Press to acknowledge that we are here would have sent a strong message to Black people about the importance and ongoing relevance of the Black Press in the 21st century. It was especially insulting that he didn’t visit the publication since he had a former Zulu queen on his staff during his first term and made a speech just up the street from the paper at the University of New Orleans.
It would have been nice for the leader of the free world to acknowledge the sacrifices my boss made as she worked to keep the paper afloat while fighting the good fight for displaced residents in the wake of Katrina. Knowing how hard my boss and The Louisiana Weekly staff fought for displaced and underrepresented residents after Hurricane Katrina and how feverishly the team worked during the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns to address critical issues like voter suppression and election fraud, it was definitely the president’s loss.
We were here doing our thing and we will still be here doing our thing long after President Obama leaves the White House for the last time.
There will be more educational officials trying to build schools for Black children atop toxic landfills, elected officials who see nothing wrong with unconstitutional policing and police officers and prosecutors who never think twice about violating the constitutional rights of people of color and the poor.
As for me, I’m in complete agreement with wordsmith Ishmael Reed’s observation that “writing is fighting” and know all too well that there is much more writing and fighting to be done before I can rest on any laurel or even pause to catch my breath.
This article originally published in the May 23, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
