06 July 2005 THE OLD AFRICAN by Julius Lester, Illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, 80 pages, PenguinPutnam/Dial, September 2005, ISBN: 0-8037-2564-7

The title page of THE OLD AFRICAN is preceded by the pictorial story of the hunt and capture of the runaway called "Paul."

"The boy's wrists were tied so that his arms hugged the trunk of the large oak tree. His face was pressed against it as if it were the bosom of the mother he had never known. His back glistened with blood.

"Whack!"

"The whip cut into his flesh again, but he did not scream or even whimper.

"Master Riley had ordered his twenty slaves to watch what happened to someone who dared run away, and like a black crescent moon, they stood in a semicircle near the tree. At the center was the Old African. His face was as expressionless as tree bark.

"The slaves did not see the blood on the boy's back nor hear the flies droning around the red gaping wounds. They were staring at a picture in their minds, a picture of water as soft and cool as a lullaby. They did not know how the Old African was able to make them see water as blue as freedom, but he had done it to them often."

"Sometimes I feel

Like a motherless child

Sometimes I feel

Like a motherless child

A long way

From my home, yeah

Yeah

Sing

Freedom

Freedom

Freedom"

--Richie Havens' rewrite of "Motherless Child"

I got to attend a Richie Havens performance thirty-five years ago, in 1970. For many of today's young adults, 1970 is ancient history. For me, 1970 was high school and girls and protesting Vietnam, Workingman's Dead, and the first Earth Day. I learned to drive in 1970. The thirty-five years that have passed since then is the same interval of time that separated women getting the right to vote and me getting born. The Nineteenth Amendment once felt like ancient textbook history to me. Not anymore.

"It happened so quickly. One minute he had been asleep, one arm across Ola's back. The next there were screams and yells and shouts, and then men bursting into his home and grabbing him and Ola, tying their hands behind their backs and pushing them outside.

"Quickly he was separated from Ola. A rope was tied around his waist and then tied to the bound wrists of a man in front of him as his own bound wrists were tied to a rope around the waist of the man behind him."

Textbooks and run-of-the-mill history lessons can so easily make the kidnapping, torture, and enslavement of Africans seem like something two-dimensional that happened in history just this side of Columbus discovering the world was round. In contrast, the raw emotion of Julius Lester's text and of Jerry Pinkney's visual artistry in THE OLD AFRICAN give the slave's journey an immediacy that no textbook could ever match.

In a work of imagination based upon a true story, THE OLD AFRICAN tells the tale of the slave once known as Jaja, God's gift, who is silent but who has The Power. Jaja, now known as the Old African, recalls his capture, his being traded to the "Mwene Puto, the Lord of the Dead, who was the color of bones," and his subsequent journey across the Water-That-Stretched-Forever, to America.

"The bottom of the ship was three tiers of wide wooden bunks, three feet between each one. The captives were made to lie on their right sides, their bodies curled against each other like spoons resting in a drawer. Jaja could feel the head of the man behind lying on his back, the man's knees resting in the crooks of Jaja's knees just as Jaja's head lay on the back of the man in front of him, his knees and thighs tucked in the crook of the other man's legs.

"Jaja lay in the middle tier, which he found out quickly was the worst place to be. Even though there were round windows that brought in air from the water, and open hatches in the ceiling let in more air, it was not enough for the almost 250 men, women, and children who lay as tightly against each other as feathers on a bird's wings.

"Almost immediately Jaja was covered with sweat, as was the man who lay against him, as was the man he lay against, as were the bodies of every man, woman, and child lying there. The smell of perspiration was too thick for the wisps of air coming in from the water to move against. Someone gagged at the odor and vomited. Then another. And another. And another."

Now I have a clear vision of what it was to be captive aboard a slave ship.

"Sitting here in Limbo

Waiting for the tide to flow

Yeah, now, sitting here in Limbo

And I know in my heart that it's time for me to go

Well they're putting up resistance

But I know that my faith will lead me on"

--Jimmy Cliff

While tending to that runaway, captured, and whipped slave known as "Paul," the Old African learns that Paul has seen the ocean and determines that he, the Old African, will deliver his people back to their homeland in Africa.

"Oh the water,

Let it run all over me."

--Van Morrison (1970) "And it Stoned Me"

In-depth notes from the author and illustrator at the conclusion of the book include discussion of Ybo Landing "where, it was believed, a group of Ybo slaves had walked into the water, saying they were going to walk back to Africa."

The thirty-two paintings that Jerry Pinkney created for this book ooze with emotion. The scenes aboard the slave ship have a hellish quality to them, the white people appearing ghostlike and the captives appearing as masses of lost souls. The scenes of the deliverance back to Africa have an overwhelming sense of joy and rebirth.

Like some veteran musical duo who can anticipate exactly where the other is headed, Julius Lester and Jerry Pinkney work together here to create sheer magic. THE OLD AFRICAN is one hell of a performance.

Richie Partington

http://richiespicks.com

BudNotBuddy@aol.com