Excerpt
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


With the publication of “This Mother’s Son” in the 1997 November issue of ESSENCE Magazine, I made my national debut as a writer and will always be grateful to NAACP President’s Award recipient Susan L. Taylor (at that time editor-in-chief of the publication) for including both my work and my full-page photo in that very special annual men’s edition. “This Mother’s Son” has never been published in book form before and an expanded version of it is presented here for the first time. Related stories that followed and completed this book were published by: The Redbridge Review (edited by Rotimi Ogunjobi); the editors at TooWrite.Com; and Mike Green at EXPOSE’D.Com.

It would have been impossible for me to write this book had it not been for the cooperation and inspiration so often provided by various friends, acquaintances, and the subjects themselves. I am honored to express my gratitude to them at this time: the Moran Family of Harris Neck, Georgia, who so generously shared their history and time with me; Savannah African-American Monument Founder Dr. Abigail Jordan; my long-time brother in creativity, Luther E. Vann; author Pearl Cleage (for helping keep alive the memory of Bill Bagwell); the talented poets known as Renazance and Toussaint St. Negritude; my writing partner on Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Sandra L. West; the late gifted seer and photographer, Jack Leigh; the creative team of Joseph and Alexandra OneLight, whose gift of vision and poetry could not have arrived at a better time in my life than it did; the extraordinary poet Andre Emmanuel Bendavi ben-YEHU; novelist Jerry Bolton; the AuthorsDen community for its empowering camaraderie and inspiration; and the Creative Thinkers International community for its shared dreams and accomplishments. .

I’m also deeply grateful to the publishers of my first books: Facts On File, Kensington Books, and iUniverse.com. And to anyone whose name I may have inadvertently omitted: nothing is quite so important as the time, love, and strength with which we bless each others’ lives.