no matter the cage, the bird will sing

At President Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993 (from Wikimedia Commons)

It was reported today that Maya Angelou, the first African American female poet laureate in our nation’s history, keynoted Detroit Public Schools’ first Back-to-School Teaching and Learning Symposium.

The Free Press published Dr. Angelou’s speaking fee—$40,000—among other details of the school system’s federally funded professional development budget. The reported attendance for this week’s symposium is 1,800 teachers.

I did not attend the conference, nor do I claim any expertise on the expenditure of the professional development budget ($21 million for the year; $1 million spent on this conference).

I just love that this happened.

I remember when Dr. Angelou spoke at Bill Clinton’s first inauguration in 1993. I only saw it on TV. I was a seven-year-old white boy. I wasn’t then, nor am I now, particularly quick on the uptake when it comes to poetry. Even so, I knew immediately that Dr. Angelou personified something important.

I saw her bring to life something immeasurably good and powerful. This thing lives inside us, and when awoken, makes us believe in something we thought impossible. This thing could not be put into words, except perhaps by her. Fifteen years before so many of us got swept up in hope and change, Dr. Angelou was hope. She was change.

Among the beautiful words (seriously, it’s for the best if you just check out the whole thing) she spoke on that day in 1993 were these:

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need

For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,

Cannot be unlived, and if faced

With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon

The day breaking for you.

Give birth again

To the dream.

Yes. Yes. She said that. She exists. There is precedent. We can move forward from here, no matter how bleak the here might seem.

Dr. Angelou recited a different poem today in Detroit. This one was written for and read at an anniversary party for the United Nations. Suffice it to say, it is also a very good poem. Again, this is a masterpiece and deserves to be read in its entirety. Yet I have hacked this portion:

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet

Whose hands can strike with such abandon

That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living

Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness

That the haughty neck is happy to bow

And the proud back is glad to bend

Out of such chaos, of such contradiction

We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it

We, this people, on this wayward, floating body

Created on this earth, of this earth

Have the power to fashion for this earth

A climate where every man and every woman

Can live freely without sanctimonious piety

Without crippling fear

When we come to it

We must confess that we are the possible

We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world

That is when, and only when

We come to it.

The lady can write. And she can read aloud the things she writes. Today, she read about the power that is inside each of us, the power of each human to give “such healing, irresistible tenderness” to another. She read that, by doing so, the seemingly unreachable soul can be reached. She read aloud how to create the miracle that we are all waiting for.

Detroit’s public school teachers will endure countless challenges with very little in the way of resources or thanks for the next nine months. But today, they got something that is the best.

There is a lot that interests me about this educators’ symposium. It takes place at the Renaissance Center, an iconic symbol of Detroit’s accomplishments and failures. It conjures the ongoing debate of who is to blame for the declining educational achievement in this country and how we should address it. I would love to know more about the how and the why of the skills being stressed in its many workshops.

But Maya Angelou spoke. Maya Angelou spoke to 1,800 teachers at a rate of $22.22 per teacher. Awesome.

Born in Detroit, now living here too!

Early on, everything I learned about the City of Detroit was from someone else’s memory. There were two myths of Detroit, both fundamentally incomplete, and I trusted each without hesitation. There was Old Detroit, whitewashed by nostalgia and unmatched in goodness and prosperity. Then there was New Detroit, which was too painful, too raw, too scary, and you got out when you could.

This much became clear to me from hearing the stories: Detroit was no longer home. It was a thing that happened to you, and you bore the scars forever.

And so I lived in exile from the City I never really knew, one of the millions of oblivious suburban princes in this country. My streetlights always came on at dusk. I never witnessed another human being getting shot, stabbed, or viciously assaulted. I never saw a neighbor’s house burn. I never wondered where my next meal would come from.  People made sure I learned things that would benefit me.

So I learned. I learned to believe that these entitlements and many more were forfeit if I crossed back over 8 Mile Road. It was common knowledge at my school that most of the Boogie Men were a few miles south of me and that I should accept that the City belonged to them now. The cost of privilege, mortgaged to injustice. Opportunity was limitless, and it was everywhere; but it didn’t go back to Detroit.

This pill, so easy to swallow in the beginning, doesn’t stay down anymore. I am not unique. My family was not unique. LOTS of people moved out of Detroit. It was and is a thing that people do, and not just in Detroit. People with the means get to choose where they live in this country, and thank God for that.

We should all run (or cycle!) as fast as we can to the things that inspire us, whatever they are. But here’s the thing. It’s the running away that we can’t afford. Fear can’t win out forever.

There are too many positive stories. There is too much hope. There are too many energized people with ideas that are too good to ignore. There are too many good people who stayed and kept some lights on while they waited for the rest of us to wake up. And despite all that’s been lost, the pulse of what’s good in Detroit is loud and getting louder.

It’s irresistible. I had to jump on the wave I could see building from a few hundred miles away. So after a bit more than 26 years away, I moved back to Detroit this summer. So far, I love it even more than I hoped and imagined I would. It’s scary, exciting, welcoming, beautiful and full of love. There are some of us who never get sick of hearing and talking about Detroit, and this is where I will try to add something to the conversation.