Kwame Tyrrell*

As you enter the house with the strange green door, it's hard to know where to step.  The floors and furniture are covered with amazing artifacts.  Fifteen-year-old Kwame Tyrrell and his mother Gloria inhabit what can only be described as a live-in museum.  Between the two of them they have collected virtually every form of African-American and Native-American memorabilia imaginable, from golliwogs, which are grotesque dolls mocking Black people, to actual slave shackles.

It's rare to find someone as young as Kwame with such an incredible collection of Americana.  At four years old, Kwame would be safely tucked into the shopping cart seat while his mother pushed him along the grocery store aisles.  When they got to the cereal section, Kwame immediately motioned to his mother that he wanted a box with a Black face on it.  "He would say, 'That one.  Gimme that one.'" recalls Gloria Tyrrell.  "I would wonder, 'Is he that conscious so early?'  He always wanted somebody brown...

*This is not the complete essay.  The above is excerpted from an essay featured in Our Common Ground by Bruce Caines.

To read the essays in their entirety, order Our Common Ground online or purchase it through your local bookseller.