#anthony patterson

[magpies-in-a-mischief]

Idk if it’s confirmation bias but I do think Sunderland’s been creating more decent goalies per capita than average and I do think it’s because years ago when a Geordie became the league’s top goalscorer of all time the city as a whole swore never again

[brklynlewis]

i'm so fucking proud and happy for patterson, he so deserves this!

[thewellzine]

Finding Light

By Anthony Patterson

The Coronavirus, COVID-19, or as black people have coined as “the Rona”, has dramatically shifted the lives of every American. A pandemic in 2020 seems so unfathomable for most of us, especially millennials. More specifically, young black people, myself included, are scratching our heads while trying to figure out what social distancing really means, what does a quarantine look like, and how long this will last. It sucks. The weather is nice, yet, there’s “Stay At Home” ordinances across the country. North Carolina’s spring is here: 70 degree days, pollen, and the scent of flowering dogwood trees. Fortunately, a “Stay At Home” ordinance does not restrict us from getting some fresh air. So, last week, I went for a walk around the neighborhood.

On my walk, I saw my younger cousins at the basketball court. We spoke, and I asked how long they would be around. They told me not too much longer so I ran back to the house to grab my Polaroid SX-70.

These shots, to me, exemplify yet another way that black people navigate through stormy weather. After listening to John Biewen’s Scene On Radio podcast about the New Deal, I reexamined and recontextualized my photos. Just as Walker Evans, Dorthea Lange, and Gordon Parks documented the Great Depression for the FSA, I documented our current quarantined crisis. How are people coping? What is actually going on?

Those photographers and I share the same documentary impulse, yet a different world view. Unlike their portraits of despair and victimhood, my photos present a sense of faith. Yeah, sure, one of my cousins is wearing a shirt that reads “I can do all things through Christ”, but that ain’t what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the faith that keeps us grounded, that settles our minds and uplifts us, to believe that trouble doesn't last always. I’m talking about the faith that will not be shaken, even with the ‘Rona floating among us; the faith that brings normality on shaky grounds. This is the joy of blackness.

Again, as opposed to exhibiting the strenuous conditions of those living in poverty, or a demographic on the receiving end of racism, I am more aligned with the ethos of Roy DeCarava and his fellows in the Kamoinge Workshop. During the 60’s their aim was to showcase the humanity of blackness through photographs depicting everyday life. Their aim was to not make a spectacle, to not search for pity, to not victimize, but rather to show us BEING.

My cousins are having fun, being themselves, and even contributing to the shots they want. These Polaroids give us a glimpse into what is, rather than “how come?”. Maybe Walker Evans, Dorthea Lange, and Gordon Parks would agree, who knows?

[dr-archeville]

Even in the Grave, Black People Can’t Rest in Durham

"How can we think differently about this moment of rapid development and shifting earth? What if we acknowledge that the displacement of Black people in Durham is not new, nor is it limited to the living."

When it rains, it floods — at least in Beechwood Cemetery.  

Water clouds the names on the once-flat headstones in the section reserved for African American veterans of foreign wars.  The metal rusts.  In some cases, the careful symmetry of those who wore uniforms is interrupted by headstones now crooked with the weight of history, although their stone inscriptions say they were placed not long ago.

We’re coming up on the 100th anniversary of Beechwood Cemetery, founded in 1923 as a public repository for the segregated dead.

What does that mean?  In addition to being a contemporary burial site, Beechwood is where Black people go when they are evicted from what would have been their final homes.  That was the original purpose of Beechwood, and generations of ancestors ended up here when they were uprooted from the historic Wolf Den Cemetery, also known as Violet Park, now a parking lot.  (If you walk around the perimeter of the new, smooth parking lot, you’ll see headstones and markers intertwined with the roots of the trees.)  Beechwood is where you went if you were exhumed from the historic Geer Cemetery because the city deemed it overcrowded, and it was one of the repositories for over a thousand graves moved from the Crest Street neighborhood to make room for Highway 147.

A couple of months ago, I wrote that the cars driving along 147 were driving through ghosts.  I didn’t know they were literally driving over the soil of displaced graves.

How can we think differently about this moment of rapid development and shifting earth?  What if we acknowledge that the displacement of Black people in Durham is not new, nor is it limited to the living.

Even in death, Black people have not been able to rest without a fight.

Durham let the city’s Black dead wait half a century before creating a public cemetery.  First, Maplewood Cemetery was established in 1872 for Durham’s white deceased.  And as Pauli Murray writes in Proud Shoes, the rifle of a Confederate memorial pointed directly out of that cemetery toward the back of her grandfather’s house, where she grew up.  But again, we can’t only look above ground.  More than a hundred years ago, Murray’s grandfather, a Union Civil War veteran, started complaining to the city that drainage pipes flowed directly onto his property, eroding the foundation of his house.  The city ignored him.  The water flowing through the decomposed remains of the Confederate dead threatened Black housing.

So when it rains, it pours.

Over a hundred years later, thanks to the work of the Pauli Murray Project, the drainage flow has finally been shifted.  Can you imagine the current city government making a developer wait a hundred years for infrastructure changes — or even one?  

Documentary artist Anthony Patterson grew up in the Crest Street neighborhood, one of the few communities able to mitigate the impact of 147 on their lives.  Patterson’s research has shown that his community has existed for about as long as Durham has been incorporated.  When he was growing up in the wake of highway construction, people would say that he and the other children were playing on the site of unmarked graves.  

His mother was involved in keeping track of who was where when the highway displaced what Patterson’s grandfather says was the central burial ground for Black people on the west side.  The Crest Street organizers sought to preserve New Bethel Baptist Church (which recently celebrated 140 years) and to continue to attend to those graves as best they could.

New Bethel continues to be a site of progressive community building.  And across the highway in New Bethel Memorial Gardens, you can see generations: headstones put up just this year, worn headstones that are not engraved but are beautifully embedded with small white stones, and those markers engraved without birthdates, signs of those ancestors who society suggests were not born but were instead made in the crucible of slavery.

By contrast, on the other side of the tree line is an abandoned white cemetery where large headstones with some of the city’s most prominent slaveholding names are overgrown with thorns, untended for decades.

In this moment, when progress seems to flood in one direction, and Durham can’t help but be carried away, we should ask the Patterson family, the New Bethel community, the people who insisted on access to each other, to loved ones living and dead, how they held tight to one another’s hands and stayed rooted in shifting ground.  

I, for one, had to pay my respects in that well-tended garden.

Voices is made possible by contributions to the INDY Press Club. Join today at KeepItINDY.com.

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[thewellzine]

Patterson Family trip to The National Museum of African American History and Culture

By Anthony Patterson

Back in December 2019, my grandfather organized a trip for our church to visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. That was my second time visiting the museum. The first time, I went alone, starting on the fourth floor with art and music. I made my way down to each level and took my time. I spent hours in there and still couldn’t view everything. This time, I walked through the museum with my family, talking about what was on display, the history and significance of the artifacts.

Side note—that museum has good soul food. A little overpriced, but it was good though. I was surprised that museum food could taste like ya’ mama ‘nem made it.

My grandfather, mother, aunt, uncles, and cousins enjoyed our time spent walking through the museum. I brought a couple cameras with me too. One of them, my grandfather’s Nikon EM, I used to take these photos with. I had to push Kodak Ultramax 400 to 1600 ISO, and I like the results. There’s a lot of grain but also a lot of color. My younger cousins pulled out the bubble coats, and I couldn’t resist asking them to show off their outfits. I guess we’re all dope in my family.  — Anthony Patterson (@signedbyap)