 |
(A Variety Pack)
Here's a short list of homegrown black nerds who weren't fitting in before it was en vogue, before black nerdiness had a name, a look or a culture club to call their own.
Nikki Giovanni: Yeah, she was born in Tennessee but she rhapsodized Hollydale and Wyoming in early poems. All of Cincinnati stakes claim to Mt. Giovanni. She broke ground and repaved it with pohymns to self love ("ego trippin'") and plain old love ("a good omelet"). Waaay before Dan Quayle attacked the fictitious values of Murphy Brown, Giovanni took heat for planning single parenthood. Today she teaches at Virginia Tech University, where she threw a fund-raising poetry slam to help pay a student's fees. A teacher who works for her students.
JoAnn Moore: She was the first Afroed news anchor in Cincinnati to win a local Emmy. Moore has been revolutionary ever since -- working, for example, as publicist for a women's basketball league that pre-dated the WNBA. As a producer for WCIN (1480 AM), she made Lincoln Ware sound smart. No easy feat.
Myron Neal: He's the pin-up boy for black nerdiness. His job? The ultimate nerd gig: librarian. But as the head librarian of the Literature and Languages Department of the Main Public Library, Neal, a well traveled Sandra Bernhard fan with an uncanny knowledge of obscure '70s music, leads his staff in a non-anal style uncharacteristic of most librarians. He once laughed so loud a patron shushed him.
Ernie Waits Sr.: An unsung civil rights pioneer who'd teach the new-fangled, self-made civil disobeyers a thing or three if they'd only ask. At 80-plus, Waits, named one of the 50 Most Influential African Americans in Cincinnati by WCIN, is still fearless and questioning the status quo. He quietly mentored poet/teacher Nikki Giovanni back in the day. We owe him big time.
Ohio Rep. Tyrone Yates: He of small spectacles, TWA (Teenie Weenie Afro) and catchy election sloganeering (remember "Yates in your face?"). Most recall Yates as a party-switching former city councilman who flirted with controversy when he tried handing out condoms to black church congregations. He's in fact a complicated thinker who errs on the side of progressive, doable ideas. Plus, he drives a hooptie.
-- KATHY Y. WILSON
E-mail Kathy Y. Wilson
 Printer-friendly version
Previously in Cover Story
The Breakthrough Season That Isn't Despite big plans to the contrary, the 2003 Reds are struggling to contend
By Bill Peterson
(July 9, 2003)
Out of the Wreckage Adam Maloney works hard to reconnect with his art following a devastating car accident
By Jessica Turner
(July 2, 2003)
One World, One Struggle Cincinnatians get active for international freedom
By Gregory Flannery
(June 25, 2003)
more...
Other articles by Kathy Y. Wilson
Your Negro Tour Guide Greatest Licks (July 9, 2003)
The Art of Noise The poetics of Ursula Rucker's ruckus (July 9, 2003)
Your Negro Tour Guide Dancing with the Devil (July 2, 2003)
more...
personals |
cover |
news |
columns |
music |
movies |
arts |
dining |
listings |
classifieds |
mediakit |
promotions |
home
|
|
The Other 'N' Word
The mainstream rebellion of Cincinnati's black nerds
N.E.R.D.
(Not Easily Read or Dissected) *
|
