Cherie Livett Bombell

Kids Behind Bars, Geneva Illinois

Browsing Posts tagged African Americans

Tweet I recently read Blood Done Sign My Name by Timothy Tyson. It helped me to make sense of an incident that happened at Geneva in the 70s – one that has haunted me since. A man that worked on Wallace Cottage sometimes made bad decisions. I’m going to call him Mr Jay. He played […]

I couldn’t understand the African American accent and expressions like “jive time’, ‘dozens’, ‘your momma’ and ‘square’ (cigarettes), left me bewildered. And I missed the verbs – ‘You ok, Miss Livett’ confounded my grammatically correct ear. Although the roots of rap were already there, the music didn’t exist to educate the masses to the rich and vibrant culture of black Americans. I was middle-class-stupid and was in the classroom of my life.