The Cult of his Personality: George Clinton - "The Good Dr. Funkenstein"?

The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein (courtesy Wikimedia Commons )

The Good Dr. Funkenstein

April 1978

“You think it’s easy being Dr. Funkenstein”, he says opening our conversation.  He is George Clinton leader of Parliament-Funkadelic, and producer of many offshoot funk groups.  Clinton called me while I was frying bacon in my kitchen.  We discussed his music and the abstract entity known as funk music.

            Clinton believes that everything runs in cycles.  In or about 1957, the cycle began when the nucleus of Parliament was formed when Clinton got together with Fuzzy Haskins, Grady Thomas, Ray Davis, and Calvin Simon.  Known then as the Parliaments, the slick haired doo-wop singers scored several years later with a song called “I Wanna Testify”.  The year was 1967.

            Shortly thereafter, the Parliaments lost control of their name and a legal battle ensued.  In the meantime, these same people formed a group called the Funkadelics.  Unlike their alter ego, the emphasis was not on vocals, but on instrumentation—hard rock guitars dominated their sound.

            George Clinton around this time worked as a songwriter with Motown, where he wrote hit songs for other artists.  The Funkadelics remained black cult figures noted for their weird onstage antics and costumes.  This black rock group went on to record rock classics like “Maggot Brain”, “America Eats Its Young”, and “Cosmic Slop” to name a few.  The rock ego of the Thang never reached commercial success, “We always had 250,000 die-hard funk freaks buying our albums,” Clinton says.

            Parliament, now without the ‘s’, recorded “Osmium” now a rare LP on Invictus.  Up for The Down Stroke and Chocolate City are the first two albums recorded on the new label.

            Then Clinton and Parliament struck gold with the concept for Mothership Connection and the interest in the vocal-oriented ego takes and upsurge.  The now classic track that speaks of extra-terrestrial beings to the tune of funk was chalk full of hits, including, “P-funk”, “Mothership Connection” and “Tear the Roof Off the Sucker”.

            Parliament in ’76 releases Clones of Dr. Funkenstein.  The group with staging my Jules Fisher creates an imaginative three-act funk opera for live presentation.  The show featured the landing of a spacecraft, dancing gigantic figures on poles, a huge apple cap attached to equally large sunglasses, which shot out laser beams of light.

            A live album is recorded in an attempt to capture the sound of the P-funk Earth Tour.  Parliament Live, a compilation of the best songs from Mothership Connection, Clones of Dr. Funkenstein together with a couple Funkadelic songs and some new material.

            The Funkadelics meanwhile changed labels and are now on Warner Bros. Records.  The first release on their new label is Hardcore Jollies.  Their last Westbound album, Tales of Kidd Funkadelic contained somewhat of a hit single in “Undisco Kid”.       

            But in 1977, Parliament returns full force with Funkentelechy vs. The Placebo Syndrome 10 years after “I Wanna Testify”; and 20 years after Clinton joined up with Haskins, Thomas, Davis and Simon formed the nucleus of Parliament-Funkadelic.

            With another 10 years cycle completed, Parliament is enjoying its greatest success.  Besides the albums of both egos, they have spawned other groups like Bootsy’s Rubberband, and The Horny Horns.  There are two female groups ready and waiting in the wings.

             The man many believe is responsible for their success says, “Do you really think I do all that stuff by myself?”  He modestly claims, “We have a think tank that comes up with ides every day.”

            A think tank may exist, but it was Clinton who came up with the concept for Chocolate City while watching CBS’ “60 Minutes” program.  This particular episode dealt with growing urban problems facing many major cities.  Whites were fleeing the cities for the suburbs, while blacks were taking over the city populations.

            Chocolate city and its vanilla suburbs became the concept and rhetoric for Parliaments’ first Casablanca LP and the fir Clinton created concept.  “People heard the line, ‘why use the bullet when you’ve got the ballot’ and thought I was getting political when it was just reality we were talking about.”

            For Mothership Connection Clinton again denies he was responsible for coming up with the idea.  It was not created after seeing what he insists was not a UFO. 

            One night the story goes, he was driving with bassist, Bootsy Collins when a fluid white light descended on the road.  “You know how the light comes up on the road in the film “Close Encounters…” he asks.  “The light appeared and poured over the car in the same way Mercury flows.  I don’t know what happened to the car behind us.  It disappeared.”

           

Journalist, Charlotte Morgan with George Clinton in the
lobby of a Holiday Inn in Columbus Ohio.

The funk mentor cites the Steven Spielberg film, “Close Encounters of The Third Kind” as being the “best film ever made which realistically deals with UFOs.”  As a child, Clinton says, movies like “War of The Worlds”, and “The Day the Earth Stood Still” dealt unrealistically with aliens.  “I always felt if guys from another planet were bad enough to fly here, then I knew they could wipe out our tanks.  The only think wrong with “Close Encounters…” is when the mothership landed, they didn’t have me coming out of it.”

            Well, the Clinton and Parliament created mothership brought aliens in search of pure funk, which they left on this planet centuries ago, or so the rhetoric dictates.  These aliens built the pyramids in Egypt and the monuments on Easter Island.  It was on this LP that the character of Starchild first appears.

            For someone who doesn’t create anything, he manages to become the focal point of the next album, Clones of Dr. Funkenstein.  The good doctor was chosen to discover the secret formula of “p-funk”.  He uses this funk he has recreated in his laboratory aboard the mothership to create an invasion force that comes to earth.  The task of these clones is to save the planet from funklessness.

            The current studio LP, Funkentelechy vs. The Placebo Syndrome or the adventures of Starchild vs. Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk was thought up by one of Parliament’s fans.  “The battle between Starchild and a bad guy came in a letter, but in that exact form.  We came up with the definition of the characters, giving them names.”

            The only new character being, Sir Nose portrays the bad guy who represents the syndrome.   Starchild sent down to the planet by Dr. Funkenstein represents Funkentelechy.

            “Funkentelechy is funk + entelechy, an actual Greek word meaning self-realization, the rhythm in which you groove.  Placebo Syndrome is the system of false rewards and punishment that exist.  You are encouraged to work for these rewards and when you achieve them, they turn out to be placebos.”

            So according to Dr. Funkenstein, the album is about the life and death battle to stop Sir Nose with the Bop Gun from spreading the syndrome.

            Chocolate City people have always thought of Parliament as making political communications through their music.  Clinton says, “It means whatever you want it to mean.  Some blacks don’t want to hear anything too deep in their music, so for them the lyrics are silly.  Others who are looking for more can read deep political messages in the lyrics.”

            For some, “Funkentelechy” is about Starchild trying to make Sir Nose dance or give up the funk.  While for others, Starchild is trying to prevent Sir Nose from trapping people into working for false rewards.

            Basically, Clinton likes to keep his politics to himself.  However, the concept is so solid he says, “Like Chocolate City it makes too much sense.”  And that’s when he believes politics and reality intertwined.

            The lyrical aspect of their musical trip is one which Clinton and company control.  Where do the ideas for the albums come from?  “There’s no real secret, we get them straight from brains on Madison Avenue.  Those advertisers research the impact of the slogs like ‘How do you spell relief?’ well before using the.  Afterwards I use them.”

            For many Parliament-Funkadelic are trendsetters--through communicating new trends in dress or slang, there is no one like them.  On the P-funk Earth Tour, thousands of fans were inspired to wear sunglasses because Clinton on the Mothership Connection album he said, “You’ve got to have your sunglasses on so you can be cool.”

            On the new album, the single “Flashlight” has spawned another trend in concert going.  Without having to suggest anything, black youths carry flashlights to house parties, clubs and of course, Parliament concerts.  And not just in Cleveland, this phenomenon has hit every city the band has performed in and even those they have not.  The movement is carried across the airwaves of local radio stations.

            “Sure, you know how black kids are, they know what’s hip.  My reward is to go out on that stage and see those flashlights.”

            Parliament-Funkadelic relies heavily on their stage show to keep their fans satisfied.  Their show is one of the most expensive staged by a black act.  “In the past, black have been screwed as far as concerts go.  Since they never go see white shows, they don’t know what they’re missing even though they pay the same ticket prices.”

            The lavishness of the show billed “The Second Landing of The Mothership” forces the band to charge $8 to $9 a ticket to break even.  Clinton knows how expensive it is for young people to go to live concerts.  “Sometimes we only make $1,000 after a show.”

            A grand show is necessary for one to be considered a top act.  He says, “Earth, Wind & Fire has gotten together a bigger show because black concertgoers want more for their money.”  And he warns that The Commodores are going to have to get their act together if they want to be big.

            Even though they’re a big act now, many people think of Parliament-Funkadelic as the ghetto blacks’ Earth, Wind & Fire, to which the head of the Funk Mob says, “That’s just where we want to stay.  If we wanted to, we could really be bigger.  By crossing over on the musical charts we could surpass many groups and be live and EW&F.  Clinton thinks they have left the blacks in the ghetto and are playing white music now.  “Don’t tell anybody he confided, “But my boys EW&F can’t even dance.”

            Remember when Diana Ross was the lead singer with The Supremes, she was the queen of the ghetto, and look at her now.  Well not the white kids look to the Stones and black kids look to Parliament.

            The success of Parliament-Funkadelic is directly responsible for bringing about Bootsy Collins’ fame.  “We had to force Bootsy down the throat of promoters.  We said, ‘no Bootsy, no Parliament.’  We couldn’t even find a record company for the Rubberband.”  Of course, the Clinton-Collins produced band has went on to become headliners in their own right and Clinton doesn’t know whether it’s luck or he’s being guided by some outside force.

            In the near future Clinton will put to test two new groups, Parlet and The Brides of Funkenstein, the latter whose album he was finishing up at the time of our talk.

            The Parliament-Funkadelic has their sights on being a multi-media band.  They have one film finished and being edited presently for release in May or June. However, Clinton’s real gem project is a serious science-fiction film, which they have the script for.  “We need $10 million to do it, and we could get it today.  But the stipulations attached to the money we don’t need.  We have to be cautious of every move we make.”

            The man who started the “Thing” in his barbershop two decades ago senses his group Parliament is on the verge of becoming superstars.  And when asked why the group has received little recognition from peers in the form of Grammy Awards and such he replies, “If I wrote songs with winning a Grammy in mind and then didn’t get one, I’d have a nervous breakdown.  Anyway, that’s part of the syndrome.  I’d love to have, but if I won it, I wouldn’t go there in person to get it.”

            People think of his group as underdogs and never expect anyone save for a Stevie Wonder or Earth Wind & Fire to win awards in the black categories.  He agreed saying, “The music industry only focuses on certain people.  They’re using Stevie Wonder, but he won’t play along with it.  That’s why he gives his awards to other people and makes long speeches.  It’s all politics.”

            For George Clinton, rewards come in different forms.  For him, “The biggest reward or supreme compliment comes when someone imitates you.  A cat like George Duke who I know is bad does “Reach for It”—you can’t tell me that record doesn’t make you want to dance.  Anyway, anyone who sounds like us has to sound good.  But I don’t have time to worry about things like that because it takes too much energy and Dr. Funkenstein needs his energy.”

            The next Parliament album’s concept is already formed, and the head mentor of funk says, “If you sit down and think about it, you’ll see it’s a natural progression from the present album.  But I won’t tell what it is because it’s a secret.”

            With a reminder to watch out for future funk projects from other P-funk musicians like keyboardist Bernie Worrell and the original Parliaments Fuzzy Haskins, Calvin Simon and Grady Thomas.  There is also a new Funkadelics disc on the way.  The good doctor said, “Syndrome, tweedle dee dum, dum dum don’t succumb.”

About the author

Charlotte Morgan is a writer who was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio where she has been fortunate to teach First-Year English at her Alma mater Cleveland State University. She has led Non-Fiction workshops around town in the hopes of helping others find their voice. As a writer, from time to time, her work investigates the black experience in the urban pastoral in the hopes of understanding not only why her ancestors were brought to the States but what was their destiny and purpose here. Her aim is to rob the graveyard of her insights, and ideas so that future generations have access. As a longtime journalist, her use of literary reportage has been influenced by the works of New Journalism writers like Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson and Cameron Crowe.  She seeks to skillfully capture images and dialogue which enlivens her prose.  

Excerpt from None of My Idols Were Worth Worship. Copyright 2020© MorganWorks.  

@morganwriter (Twitter and Instagram) 

Black and Almost Famous

Cover courtesy of Cleveland Public Library Digital Archives. 

CHAPTER XV: Dream Merchant Number 5

(from None of My Idols Were Worth Worship)

Those years spent in the Fine Arts Department of the Cleveland Public Library is where I read biographies and screenplays. In them, I dreamed of the life of a Hollywood screenwriter and novelist. There were moments when I imagined that I could be writer, producer, and director. Books fed dreams.  

Writer and director, Billy Wilder’s biography struck me as fascinating because he like another favorite screenwriter, Joseph Mankiewicz, worked as newspaper reporters. At first, I struggled to make the connection between journalism and Hollywood, but reading countless Hollywood biographies of screenwriters and directors, I discovered that I was on the right track with my journalism interest since for many famous screenwriters it was where they began.

This meant that I valued my time as one because I hoped it would lead to my becoming a screenwriter even when I knew my family or friends could not understand my thirst to see my name in print. Reading one of my articles made me forget about how far I would have to go to become a famous author—it encouraged me. Most valuable to me about being a reporter was the ability to produce words. Deadlines were intoxicating for me—sitting in the newsroom with other reporters allowed me to be myself at a time when I was losing my identity to drugs and activities that detracted from my plans. Walking over a friends’ house to get high when I could stay home and write was a waste of my time, but that was the part of me that had surrendered. Before, I never missed a deadline.

There was a photo column which my editor, Ollie Bell-Bey expected me to produce weekly and I used the paper’s Nikon 35 mm camera to make money on the side shooting photos of a drug dealer who fancied himself a model; or of couples, or girls who wanted to be models. That money went towards buying books, albums, or of course, concert tickets. Since my father had retired, he took up photography which meant there was darkroom equipment at the house. My father taught me how to process black and white Kodak film. He took me up to the bathroom, a makeshift darkroom where he taught me how to print photos—I had a lucrative side business. My photos earned me a Journalism Award at the end of the school year. The newspaper was a home for me, a place where I was happy which might not be all together true, because I at the time knew nothing about that emotion. Driven by the desire to be a writer, I wanted to move beyond getting high and hanging out with people who had no ambition. So, I kept my clippings in a scrapbook ready for opportunity. And when the day came, and I was prepared.

*****

Scene Magazine offices were on Huron Road. After bouncing down the stairs, I was disappointed to see how small the space looked. There was a receptionist or secretary who greeted me. She was nice. But I was stuck on the size of this place—this was the regions’ largest entertainment publication. Mark Kmetzko greeted me and brought into his cramped office where I sat in a chair ready to show someone that I was a real writer, but my feet barely touched the floor.

I became nervous. The space shrank because the walls cluttered with covers from the magazine, album covers, and posters of everyone from Mott the Hoople, Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and told the story of the magazine aesthetic made me doubt for a moment that I was good enough.

Across the desk from me was, an editor for Cleveland Scene Magazine. He had a nice hair and a wonderful mustache. Almost more important than the interview or the posters on the wall or the albums on his shelves was the IBM Selectric typewriter he had on his desk. It was my dream machine—I had imagined writing my first novel on one and had never seen one up close.

I was in Mark’s office because he had called me to come down because I had answered an advertisement. As I relaxed, I realized that Mark wanted to hire me.

They were looking for a music reviewer. My friends had no I idea that I had gotten together a few clippings, put them in an envelope along with a letter and mailed them off. I had forgotten about applying for the job when I got the call. This was my first professional newspaper job interview. I had a chance to become a music journalist like Cameron Crowe who worked for Rolling Stone Magazine, or Lester Bangs who worked for CREEM Magazine.  Now I could hang out at Swingo’s with the other rock journalists.

My review of The Wiz soundtrack produced by Quincy Jones. I grew up listening to soundtracks
because my father, a jazz musician, arranger, and composer made a practice of doing so.
As his daughter, I listened to what he had in his collection. And Quincy Jones was one of his
favorite composers. My father went so far as to pose in front of his stereo system a la Quincy.
It was reviewing this soundtrack and others that enabled me to use what I had learned as a kid.

In my folder was a review of the Minnie Riperton concert at Music Hall. I had my review of the electrifying Labelle concert at the Allen Theater. I had also shot photos of singer Patti Labelle flapping her black wings as she descended from the rafters dressed in all silver—a Larry LeGaspi design according to a Village Voice article. During my interview, I planned on talking about my exclusive interview with activist-actress Jane Fonda and her then husband Tom Hayden. While I was a journalism and political science major at the Metro Campus, I was a quick learner who could write music reviews, after all my father was a musician and all I had been commenting

Mark was a long-haired hippie type. He wasn’t tall, but when he shook my hand, I looked up and realized that he appeared long—he had tucked his salmon colored long john shirt into his low-riding blue bell-bottom jeans, which made his legs appear lengthy.  He tucked his brown hair behind his ears. His walrus mustache needed no trimming.

I watched his lips move. I can’t remember what he said. He talked for a time and then took me to a large room down the hall from his office.  Inside the room were stacks and stacks of albums. I knelt down on the floor and began to browse.

Mark gave me some instructions. After our meeting, I took my spoils and walked back up the stairs and out to Euclid Avenue.  I boarded the bus home. The buildings went past in a blur as I looked out the window. When I got home, I went down into the basement and started work. I had my Royal typewriter set up on the coffee table along with a bottle of white out and a stack of typing paper. My stack of music magazines would serve as a guide but also inspiration for the task-at-hand. I worked for Scene Magazine.

Within a few hours, I had missed dinner but produced three record reviews. The next day, when I got out of school, I took my work down to the office. Mark was shocked that I had turned around my work so quickly.  The training I learned as a staff writer had prepared me to write copy quickly. We often got an assignment and had to cover it that afternoon. I’d grab my white and green Reporters’ Notebook, a camera and a couple of rolls of black and white film and head off to an event. Our copy was always due on Tuesdays by noon; film on Wednesdays because our paper came out on Fridays. On deadline days, the office was crowded with reporters banging away on Underwood typewriters. I had grown to love that sound. A few weeks passed, Mark called me and asked me did I want to interview Brook Benton, a singer-songwriter. I said, sure. I had reviewed Brook’s album, which was actually the first piece I had published in the magazine.  

About the author

Charlotte Morgan is a writer who was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio where she has been fortunate to teach First-Year English at her Alma mater Cleveland State University. She has led Non-Fiction workshops around town in the hopes of helping others find their voice. As a writer, from time to time, her work investigates the black experience in the urban pastoral in the hopes of understanding not only why her ancestors were brought to the States but what was their destiny and purpose here. Her aim is to rob the graveyard of her insights, and ideas so that future generations have access. As a longtime journalist, her use of literary reportage has been influenced by the works of New Journalism writers like Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson and Cameron Crowe.  She seeks to skillfully capture images and dialogue which enlivens her prose.  

Excerpt from None of My Idols Were Worth Worship. Copyright 2020© MorganWorks.  

@morganwriter (Twitter and Instagram) 

My Side of Paradise: Plagued

Author Dashiell Hammet at a typewriter where he may have written classics like The Maltese Falcon, and the
Thin Man books which I took from my mother's bookshelf and read in secret in my room. 

CHAPTER X: Plagued

                Our mother, Era Morgan, victim of a loveless marriage and domestic violence, had run away. She left behind a bitter husband, Charles Morgan and three of her children. With no mother, our home died slowly of neglect. Opportunistic mice and roaches and termites moved in and took over.

*****

The night brought terror. The mice wanted food. I wanted sleep. I wrapped myself up in a blanket, making sure to cover my head. I turned my television down low so I could hear the entry of vermin into the room. 

My bed was in the corner. There was a hole in the plaster. The walled were a dingy lemon yellow with a white trim. Momma had painted the room herself. A winter storm captured an entire pane of glass from the back window. Father swore he wouldn't fix anything anymore. 

I cut cardboard from a yellow legal pad into a square big enough to cover the missing glass. I stapled it in place. Next, I took plastic from my father’s dry cleaning, and stapled it over the entire window. I had no heat in my room because our father had refused to do what Momma asked, “Get that damned heat duct repaired.” Fully clothed and wrapped in three blankets, I peered out from my fabric fortress when I heard a mouse run across the room. I kept a shoe nearby and I threw it in the direction of the sound. Everything was quiet for a moment, and then it started up again. 

                I had the brilliant idea of stuffing clothes in front of my door to keep the mice out. They just pushed their way in and eventually one jumped on me while I slept.

                Then I took a Cleveland Press newspaper, rolled it up and stuffed it under the door. I took Agatha Christie and Dashiell Hammett paperbacks and stacked them up to block the door. I was safe.

                I got under my blanket and turned my radio on, but down softly in case there was a breach in my security. I had forgotten to factor in going to the bathroom. I had to open my door and go pee. The hallway was freezing. A basement window was broken.

                The toilet seat was cold, and the linoleum was missing under my feet. There were holes in the floor around the toilet. The wood was exposed. There was no electricity in the bathroom, so I had to finish fast.

                On the way back to my room I saw that my father’s door was broken off its hinges. I saw the light from his television. Then I remembered what my little brother Chip had said, “We got termites in here. I think that’s where all these holes in the floor are coming from.”

                I went in my room. Set up the security measures and got back in my cold bed. I formed my cocoon and tried to sleep. It was 1:38 am. Something jumped on my head. My father banged on the wall – “Quiet!”

                I needed a new idea. The mice weren’t coming from under the door; they were coming in from beneath that gap between the floor and the wall.

                “I’ve got it! I’m going to fill that space between the floor and the baseboard with plaster,” I thought.

                My brother Craig remembered Momma's bag of plaster in the basement. I went down and got some. I made the gray mixture in one of my mother’s best bowls. She used to mix cake batter in it.

                I got on my hands and knees with a butter knife and filled in the space. The smell of fresh plaster trumped the staleness in the air. The magazines and books my mother had warned me about keeping in my room, were covered in dust. I stopped to read a page from Vincent Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter. A thick splinter stabbed me in the knee. I pulled it out, but some fragments remained.

                I got back on my knees anyway. I moved furniture to get to the baseboard. I found coins, an old journal, more dust bunnies, pens and mice droppings galore.   

No one called me for dinner. After I had completed the perimeter of the room, I got cleaned up and into bed. I turned on the television to watch “The Avengers” on the CBC. I had forgotten to put my other security measures in place. I heard a mouse in my wastebasket.

                I threw a shoe and hollered, “Die bastard, die!!” In response, it screeched. The plastic on my window rippled in the wind, I pulled my blanket tight and tried to go to sleep.

A week later, a calico cat had climbed in the broken basement window and made herself at home. She ate the mice.

*****

                One day I had a plate in my room. Out the corner of my eye, I swore I saw something brown moving up the wall. Momma had told us to never bring food in our rooms.

                The next time I saw a cockroach, I was in the kitchen during the daylight hours when I cooked. It moved across the salmon pink counter top.

                “We got roaches,” Craig said on his way to the bathroom.

                Our father had bought these little gray anti-pest boxes. One was on the floor under the kitchen table. A red light pulsed on and off. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was one plague behind. Or maybe there were mice in his room terrorizing him.

                Chip asked, “Did you see them boxes he bought? Doesn’t he know that shit don’t work?”

                “Do you want to tell him? Hurry up and clean this up. Momma hated a nasty kitchen. She said, ‘If you see roaches, get Boric Acid.’ We need to fill in this crack behind this sink,” I said.

My father kept his Kennedy .50 cent pieces in a can like this. 

                Sure enough the space behind the sink and the wall housed roach carcasses. Craig stole money out of our father’s Muriel cigar can to buy the Boric Acid. He snuck past our father who camped out in his lounge chair watching “The Wide World of Sports”. Chip and I kept him talking while Craig ran down to Ellis’ Drugstore.

                “Black people always got their hand out looking for the white man to give them something. They don’t buy property. They take their money and play the numbers. I tell people I hit every two weeks ― with my paycheck. Look at how y’all destroyed this house. Your mother...”

                I could take it up until he started in on Momma. Luckily, Craig was at the side door with a bag. Chip took the yellow and red bottle and cut the tip off of it with the butcher knife, Momma used to slice her London broiler.

I snatched the bottle from Chip and squeezed it generously and white powder shot out and went up my nostrils and into my eyes. Terror struck! My imaginary asthma attacks were worse than real ones.

                “Charlotte, give me the damned bottle,” Craig said. He snatched it from my hand and went about applying the powder to every surface and in every crack where we thought a roach might crawl. I never saw another roach.

*****

                Not long after we beat the mice and the roaches, Chip said, “Have you noticed Daddy hasn’t been to the grocery store?”

                I replied, “I did”.

About the author

Charlotte Morgan is a writer who was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio where she has been fortunate to teach First-Year English at her Alma mater Cleveland State University. She has led Non-Fiction workshops around town in the hopes of helping others find their voice. As a writer, from time to time, her work investigates the black experience in the urban pastoral in the hopes of understanding not only why her ancestors were brought to the States but what was their destiny and purpose here. Her aim is to rob the graveyard of her insights, and ideas so that future generations have access. As a longtime journalist, her use of literary reportage has been influenced by the works of New Journalism writers like Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson and Cameron Crowe.  She seeks to skillfully capture images and dialogue which enlivens her prose.  

Excerpt from Glenville: My Side of Paradise. Copyright 2020© MorganWorks.  

@morganwriter (Twitter and Instagram) 

The Day of the Living Dead

Day of the Living Dead

After the Hough Riots, Glenville Shootout, and ending the Civil Rights Movement, the Viet Nam War and the Disco Era, the post-soul movement begins. Lifeless bodies now roam the streets of Glenville. While politicians in D.C. debate the war on drugs, the number of victims grows. They walk in the street towards the killing field that lies south of my house. I never watched George Romero zombie movies because I feared that shit would happen one day in my neighborhood.

These zombies look at the rest of us as game in the struggle to keep drugs flowing in their blood. Crack cocaine addicts do what they can to recreate feeling that first orgasmic high and as with all tricks; this is impossible. My little brother Chip said, “Big Tony tried crack on a Monday and by that Friday, he had sold all his stuff for drugs.”

                Do you understand their need to stand out on desolate street corners illuminated by the darkness that is drug addiction and with lost shame, stare down cars as they drive past hoping to earn five dollars by giving a blow job? How do you feel about “strawberries," a term given to women who turned tricks for a rock? 

Can you imagine standing outside the Arab store on Parkwood Drive with your head smashed in and a marshmallow ring around your fried lips begging?

“Hey, I know that voice anywhere. Charlotte, you look the same. Hey, uh, you got some spare change. I want to go to Abbott’s to get a couple of wings.” She laughs like we are still friends in Mrs. Clouden’s fifth grade music class. I realize it’s Jackie Hall, well, it used to be. “Oh, I got jumped behind Scotts, that’s what happened to my face.” I am ashamed to be in this store. We both know people on crack don’t eat.

Businesses before owned by blacks became the Arab store. There are usually drug dealers and users perched outside amidst the trash and broken glass. Often, there is a former alcoholic turned crack addict, a black man, who sweeps and does menial tasks for money. The stores are grimy; the produce spoiled, but you can get a cold Pepsi or 40-ounce Old English Malt Liquor; some loose cigarettes or Black & Mild cigars--even an oversize white t-shirt.    

I observe the day of the living dead begins with the migration of crack addicts before sunrise. One day I watched Randy, the middle-aged mechanic turned crack addict from down the street make his pilgrimage. When he comes back, he walks in the street; his gait quickened because he has his buzz, his beer, his cigarettes. For now, he all happy and shit. Instinctively, he turns and sees me.

                Like many of the dead in Glenville, Randy’s clothes are filthy, and tell the story of a lost life. His worn green pants are from days gone by when after getting fired from Ford, he worked as a jack leg mechanic who fixes cars in driveways.

“I ain’t got no money Randy.”  

“Uh, your father’s Chrysler sounds like it needs some back brakes, let me get that for you. Mr. Morgan never buy no Ford.”

“No thanks, Randy, he goes to dealer to get his car repaired.”

He walks away defeated. He will ask me again the next time I see him. 

                A homely white man once approached me early Sunday morning, his body pencil thin. He asked me if I wanted to buy a weed whacker and when I commented that I already had one he asked: “Where do you keep it? I want you to get it and plug it up so I can show you this one’s better.”

                “Not interested.”

                His bug-eyed gaze remained fixed on my garage where he perceived there was a treasure. Was he imagining that glass pipe in his mouth? My ladder and lawn mower were later stolen. Now I watch who walks the street because I realize not only are they walking to score their next hit; they are also casing houses. 

                Ours is no longer a street with beautiful homes and lawns. Many older owners are dead. We have new neighbors. Barbara and her daughter live down the street towards the 105^th end. She dressed modestly. Her hair was always done. One day she asked my next-door neighbor for five dollars to get her bus pass saying she had lots of appointments at Metro. “I got Lupus Miss Jean. Would you please pray for me. Can I go to church with you next week?” Since bus fare was only 75 cents, for her story, she got three dollars. 

                Barbara never paid the money back. For a time, she would walk around the block rather than run into Miss Jean who was in her yard early some spring mornings.

                One day, I see an unkempt Barbara marching up the street with the zeal of a zombie. The weight of the atmosphere seems almost too much for her emaciated body, yet she regularly walks up to Lakeview where she exchanges money or favors for drugs. I was traveling to the bus stop. Everyone knew it was dangerous up there. An elderly cleaning woman who also rode the #40 bus to Cedar Road, openly carried a .357 Magnum to protect us as we waited on the corner of Lakeview and Tuscora Avenue. 

                “Girl get your happy ass out that bus shelter, you easy prey for these gang banging suckers,” she said. “Now on, you wait for me. Don’t come up here by yourself.”

Barbara not only pan handled outside corner stores; she conned money out of senior citizens for drugs and even kidnapped her elderly neighbor.

 Miss Williams, like many of the aged in my neighborhood, has been abandoned by her children, themselves crack addicts. She suffers from Alzheimer or bouts of dementia. She lives down the street in a two-family house that begs for attention.

Barbara’s family owned the run-down house next door. She would call Miss Williams and ask her for money. Barbara is pretending to be Michelle Sanders, the neighbor who helped care for the 80-year-old woman. I saw Michelle at McDonald’s. She told me the story.

                “I found out Barbara put Miss Williams in one of her friends’ car and took her to Society Bank.” Michelle leaned on a cane. She looked old enough to be my mother. I wondered if she was a user.

Michelle called the Society branch on St. Clair. Apparently, the teller was suspicious when she saw the old woman was disoriented and nervous about taking $500 out of her account. Miss Williams, alone and afraid, refused to press charges against her neighbor.

                Years into the phenomenon, one random day, the sister of a classmate of mine came walking down the middle of my street. “You want to buy these steaks? I got fresh thick Porterhouse steaks here,” she said to passing cars. As she got closer, I remembered how beautiful she used to be. 

                “Charlotte?” Her voice was the same. “You remember me Charlotte?” As she came closer, my heart raced.

                “Hey Juanita.”

                “You still talk to my little sister? You all used to be so corny,” she laughed. Some blood dripped down her leg.

                I took a step closer. “I haven’t talked to Danielle since we went to the last reunion.”

                She came close enough for me to smell the thawed meat and for me to remember the day that she bullied me into snorting heroin.

Danielle lived in a two-family house up the street on Tuscora. I used to come over to watch “Soul Train” on Saturdays. I heard the “Superfly” soundtrack in her living room. Danielle’s family lived that life. I was Danielle’s friend since elementary school. In high school, we shared a locker. I was short and scrawny with thick glasses, an obvious target.

                Juanita sat on the couch and chopped coke and heroin with a razor blade on a chessboard. When done, she snorted the line. She loved to pick on me as she got high. Then, she would disappear and reappear dressed and ready for the street. Hot pants, halter top, and stacked heels. She dared me to snort a line and so I did. I remember walking home and sleeping for three days. I was desperate to fit in, so I snorted downers, smoked weed, and hashish; dropped mescaline, windowpane, and microdots. Seeing Juanita reminded me of my near brush with death.

                “You want one of these steaks? I’ll let you have one for five dollars,” she said.

                “No thanks, I’m not eating meat these days.”

                “Well, you got a couple of dollars for an old friend?”

                “I ain’t got no money on me Juanita.”

                “I’ll see your old corny ass later,” she said. She turned and walked away. 

                As the dealer by selling, as the addict by using, so the plague spreads. Removed were the landmarks of paradise, and in the field of the fatherless known as Glenville, the dead were found living in run down houses, and apartment buildings. Gang presence and gun violence increased and the soundtrack—that post soul music—normalized street life. We the poor, ignored, unloved and unprotected were imprisoned. 

About the author

Charlotte Morgan is a writer who was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio where she has been fortunate to teach First-Year English at her Alma mater Cleveland State University. She has led Non-Fiction workshops around town in the hopes of helping others find their voice. As a writer, from time to time, her work investigates the black experience in the urban pastoral in the hopes of understanding not only why her ancestors were brought to the States but what was their destiny and purpose here. Her aim is to rob the graveyard of her insights, and ideas so that future generations have access. As a longtime journalist, her use of literary reportage has been influenced by the works of New Journalism writers like Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson and Cameron Crowe.  She seeks to skillfully capture images and dialogue which enlivens her prose.  

Excerpt from Glenville: My Side of Paradise. Copyright 2020© MorganWorks.  

@morganwriter (Twitter and Instagram)

Lowly Is The View for some Black Writers

From: The Bluest Eye  By Toni Morrison, Lorain, Ohio native.

Why Lord did you bring the Negro to these shores?

CHAPTER I: A Brief History of Time

My grandfather Charles Henry Morgan brought his wife Pecola and their children from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to an east side Cleveland neighborhood called Glenville where they lived on Olivet Avenue. The couple had married in Portsmouth, Ohio. This I learned from interviewing my aunt Barbara who also told me that her father drank and was a cheat who beat their mother. It was during their time in Glenville, that my aunts and uncles learned to dread the sound of their father’s arrival home. Of the seven children, only Carlos Morgan would graduate from Glenville High School in the mid-40s. Then, the family left Cleveland in 1947 and moved 30 miles west to Lorain, Ohio where Charles eventually abandoned them only to die a scoundrel’s death in the 1970s somewhere in Pennsylvania.

My maternal grandfather Jessie Chisholm brought his wife Lula Mae to the same small town. The rest of his family made a staggered migration to Lorain from Atlanta, Georgia. He found employment in the shipyard while his wife did domestic work. My mother Era Ann arrived with her sister Molly in the 1940s. Her father was revered in the community given respect by those who knew him as an upstanding citizen, a Lodge member, and a praying man.

Like his father, Charles Henry Morgan Jr. would beat his wife and cheat on her. He verbally abused her until she ran away. His children dreaded when he came home; when he cooked and especially when he lectured.

******

My parents never finished high school. Charles served in the Air Force as a mechanic while stationed at Wright Patterson Airforce Base which was located in Dayton, Ohio, the town where he was born. However, he never shipped out because World War II ended. He was a musician, and composer who wanted to front his own band. Era was a teenage divorcee, who wanted to become a dancer like Kathryn Dunham with a daughter, but life had different plans.

Charles was her way out of Lorain, the small town that sat at the mouth of the Black River and under a dark cloud that hoovered and ruled over it, which, from the window of the bus she rode up from the south, my mother saw. Once under it, Era was raped by a man she met. In 1945, at the age of fifteen she gave birth to his daughter, and married him albeit, under duress. My father’s family would move into a slab house in Sheffield. Charles Morgan Sr. would leave his wife and children to make it on their own.

Eventually, I saw the black fog manifested as a willowy black witch atop a pile of gravel near the desolate railroad tracks where I walked, explored and played with my cousins who lived and suffered in poverty in the small town where there was nothing to do. I thought my  vision is due to an overactive imagination because I made up stories constantly. Later, I realized there was a different explanation—Lorain is an epicenter of evil that I would always hate and for a good reason—nothing decent could ever happen under this sky and the witch’s appearance was an incarnation, a brazen figure of the ungodly authority that would haunt me for nearly a lifetime.

Throughout my life, there is always a witch nearby, a reminder I now believe of a worldwide system—its pervasiveness, and dream killing ability. But was that true? Is that the given nature of things? Who knows? I do know the truth about who you are, why you are here exists independent of the rhetoric of gender, race, religion, place, etc. When you learn this, you are made free and for me, that meant becoming an author, writing a novel, and leaving at least one idea that would outlive me.

My mother had escaped or, so she thought; my father thought he had found the woman of his dream, or did he? Their five children were all born out of wedlock—one died. My parents eventually married in August 1964. After renting on Ashbury, Edmunds and Wade Park, Charles, a laborer at J&L Steel, a Yellow Cab driver, and the leader of Le Magnifique Orchestra, moved his family to a home in Glenville—the paradise where a family could find everything it needed.

*****

Glenville was a destination for Negro families; however, after 1968, everything changed. Our father had warned us, and tried to prepare us, but we thought he was bitter and crazy. 

About the author

Charlotte Morgan is a writer who was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio where she has been fortunate to teach First-Year English at her Alma mater Cleveland State University. She has led Non-Fiction workshops around town in the hopes of helping others find their voice. As a writer, from time to time, her work investigates the black experience in the urban pastoral in the hopes of understanding not only why her ancestors were brought to the States but what was their destiny and purpose here. Her aim is to rob the graveyard of her insights, and ideas so that future generations have access. As a longtime journalist, her use of literary reportage has been influenced by the works of New Journalism writers like Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson and Cameron Crowe.  She seeks to skillfully captures images and dialogue which enlivens her prose. 

Excerpt from Glenville: My Side of Paradise. Copyright ©2020.  MorganWorks. 

@morganwriter (Twitter and Instagram)

Cleveland Stories: An Anthology of Hope

In the 1980s, Charlotte Morgan honed her skills capturing stories for the East Side News on Woodland Avenue. She said she didn't realize at the time how important a black newspaper was to the community.

“We had a mandate: Get alternative news for the residents” she said.

So she did. Morgan is grateful to the publisher, Ulysses Grant, who was her journalism instructor and advisor, and she went on to teach writing, too. She reflects fondly on her time at the newspaper in “Cleveland Stories, Vol. 1,” an anthology of poems, essays and stories about life in Cleveland’s Mt. Pleasant neighborhood and the surrounding east side communities.

“People hold stories, and their stories are just better than fiction,” she said.

Literary Cleveland, an organization that supports writers and readers in Northeast Ohio, offered a place-based writing program this summer, and Morgan was both a participant and instructor. The objective was to reach out specifically to the Mt. Pleasant community through workshops at the Mt. Pleasant branch of Cleveland Public Library and Seeds of Literacy, a non-profit that provides adult education.

“Mt. Pleasant and the African-American community that lives in Mt. Pleasant and the surrounding neighborhoods don’t have the same access to writing programs as other parts of the city,” said Lee Chilcote, director of Literary Cleveland.

In an effort to address that and capture the history of the neighborhood, Literary Cleveland invited the public to storytelling workshops. About 100 people participated, and the anthology features about two dozen of their personal stories. 

A storytelling session at Seeds of Literacy on Kinsman Road. [Photo: Cleveland Stories]

“There were stories about growing up in the neighborhood, about families that had migrated from the South to the North during the great migration, pieces about sort of looking beyond the easy labels or stereotypes of the neighborhood,” Chilcote said. “They also didn’t shy away from the tough issues, so there were pieces about crime and foreclosure and homelessness as well.”

“Cleveland Stories, Vol. 1” launches with a reading at Seeds of Literacy, 13815 Kinsman Rd., Wednesday at 6 p.m. People can pick up a free copy there or read the collection online.

While no official plans are in place, Literary Cleveland is interested in continuing the program.