(1).png)
_edited.jpg)
.png)
The mission in the Mannish Water anthology project was, in some respects, simple: to have Black, scholarly men in 21st century America to tell their truths.
As the editors, we (Femi and Carlton), provided general guidelines, explicitly inviting the essayists to speak out on childhood, youth, dreams, pain, love, struggle and life, in general, in America. In short, we craved forays into epistemology and ontology. We asked the writers to bring the world into greater knowledge of their existence in America, including the meaning that the essayists perceived as attached to their own lives.
Significantly, we did not know what was going to be returned to us. We remain grateful, however, that we trusted the process. These brave men returned true slices of life in America, veritable glimpses – soil samples, as it were – into the complicated journeys of men who were "raced" and raised as Black״.
~ Carlton Long and Olufemi Vaughan
Carlton Long. Co-editor of the Mannish Water anthology, Carlton Long is a former Rhodes Scholar whose graduate research at Oxford University focused on the reification and social construction of “race” as well as the application of “affirmative action” (US) and “positive action” (UK) principles in the development of supplementary educational programs and schools in the communities of Brixton (South London) and Harlem (New York). Dr. Long received his undergraduate degree from Columbia University, where he later taught political science and was a Chamberlain Fellow and a multi-year nominee for the Mark Van Doren Teaching Award. He received a D.Min. degree from the Morehouse School of Religion, Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC),in Atlanta, Georgia, and was subsequently certified to preach within the Baptist polity. Aside from having taught at Columbia University, at London University (Goldsmiths College), and in a wide variety of college, university, and K-12 enrichment programs, he worked as an international and national staff developer, executive vice-president and CEO in the world of professional staff development. For over a decade, he has focused on enhancing honors programs within a wide range of private and state colleges and universities in the United States, including the brokering of opportunities for students at Yale University and Oxford University. With his wife, Monique, he has also prepared generations of college students to embrace the “Leadership Creation Process,” their unique model for pursuing prestigious scholarships and fellowships (Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright and more) with a view to becoming effective global leaders grounded in community-mindedness, service and grace.
Olufemi Vaughan. Co-editor of the Mannish Water anthology, Olufemi (“Femi”) Vaughan was raised in Ibadan, Nigeria and received his D.Phil. in politics from Oxford University. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Dr. Vaughan is also the Alfred Sargent Lee & Mary Farley Ames Lee Professor and Chair of Black Studies at Amherst College. Vaughan’s scholarship interrogates major themes in African studies, notably, state–society relations in Africa, religion and state formation in Africa, and globalization and migration in Africa. He is the author of four books, including Letters, Kinship, and Social Mobility in Nigeria (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023), Religion and the Making of Nigeria (Duke University Press, 2016; winner of Nigerian Studies Association Book Prize), Nigerian Chiefs: Traditional Power in Modern Politics (University of Rochester Press, 2000; Cecil Currey Book Prize, Association of Global South Studies). Professor Vaughan is the editor or co-editor of twelve volumes, most notably the multi-volume Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History (editor-in-chief, Thomas Spear, Oxford University Press, 2019; Waldo Leland Prize, American Historical Association). Professor Vaughan is also the author of about eighty scholarly articles and reviews. Aside from the current Guggenheim award, his research has been supported by a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and a Ford Foundation Fellowship. Vaughan was Professor of Africana Studies & History at Stony Brook University and the Geoffrey Canada Professor of Africana Studies & History at Bowdoin College.
Chapter One
"... I recall my mother’s praying another time, very much in particular. It was on the occasion of one of South Carolina’s severe hurricanes— Hurricane Jane, I believe.
It all started as a very peaceful day in the tobacco season of the summer. The cotton and corn fields around our old house were in full growth. Mr. L. J.’s tobacco field was the most beautiful crop he claimed he had ever had. Everybody marveled at how even it was, all across the entire field. He prided himself in this year’s crop. Then the storm came. When the storm hit, we five children were all cloistered in our old house with my mother. The wind was so fierce that my mother took a chair and pushed it against the door. Then she said, “Come on, children, let’s pray.” My mother called so hard on God to help us, to save us against the forceful winds! She cried and called on God to protect us from the hurricane. The winds whipped and howled, thunder and lightning and pouring rain menaced all around our old, beat-up house—with us, all the while, pushing against the door. Finally, after an eternity, the storm and winds subsided. When all was over, my mother carefully opened the door to see what damage had been done. To our amazement, no trees around our house had been blown down or limbs broken. The old oak tree which shaded the pump was still there, the huge pecan tree was still there, the old outhouse was still there, my mother’s garden was still there. Crops around our old house were beaten down, and Mr. L. J.’s beautiful tobacco field looked like God had taken His hand and just laid it across the entire field; all of the tobacco lay flat on the ground. When Mr. L.J. saw his tobacco field, he broke down and cried. His beautiful crop of tobacco had been destroyed. Here we were in this beat-up, old house that barely kept us warm in winter, with tattered wooden floors, and yet my mother’s prayer had protected us and kept us. Little did I think about this incident at the time. I was just a boy, 12 or 13 years old, but now in my adult years when I think about this, I am moved to tears—moved to tears when I think of my mother’s prayer. As I reflect on this part of my life, I am even more convinced of, and moved by, the awesome power of prayer."
Psalm 124: “If It Had Not Been for the Lord”
- Oral Moses
Hugh Price
Not voice of author
Hugh Price. Hugh Bernard Price, civil rights activist and past president of the National Urban League, was born in 1941 into a middle-class home in Washington, DC. He began his schooling in a segregated elementary school and graduated from an integrated high school. His parents, Charlotte Schuster and Kline Price, were involved in the early litigation that would lead to the historic and groundbreaking Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954.
In 1994, when Price became president and CEO of the National Urban League, he quickly began to play a crucial role in revitalizing the League, making it, once again, a leading organization in social justice activism. Until Price’s presidency, the National Urban League had focused primarily on preparing rural African Americans for life in the cities. Recognizing that the Great Migration of southern blacks to northern cities was over, Price reoriented the goals of the organization. He focused on three principal initiatives: education and youth development programs; economic empowerment; and inclusionary programs. These initiatives, in turn, promoted the League’s new priority, addressing intergenerational urban poverty and aiding the urban underclass.
Those familiar with the Caribbean in general, and with Jamaica in particular, know or will recognize that “Mannish Water” is the name given to a particular dish known synonymously as “Goat Head Soup”. It is flesh and bone. It is sacrifice. And it is power prepared with care, with great attention to detail, and served up to make men strong.
In this rare collection of new and previously unpublished essays, this nonfiction anthology allows
Black scholarly men as “Black men” to reveal their sacrifices, power and achievements through great attention to detail -- their flesh and their bone revealed through the profound and important telling of their personal journeys.
- Mannish Water the Book
Join the Community
The "Mannish" Podcast
Episode One
Get in Touch
For Media Inquiries or for general questions and comments, please fill out the following form.