On our recent visit to the fair city of New Orleans, Melanie and I found this odd posting on a telephone pole “Black Nerd Festival.com.”  It seemed an odd moniker for New Orleans.  Although New Orleans has a rich literary history, think James Kennedy O’Toole, Percy Walker, Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Kate Chopin, Anne Rice, Frances Parkinson Keyes, Truman Capote, even Mark Twain, the more contemporary image of New Orleans is more hedonistic, think Mardi Gras and the Jazz and Heritage Festival where the good times roll.  Even the annual New Orleans Book Festival, labeled as Mardi Gras for the Mind, can’t shake the image of New Orleans as the birthplace of jazz, a never-ending party town where bars never seem to close.  After all, the city is famously known by a potpourri of nicknames: the Crescent City, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot, Gumbo City and Crawfish City.  It’s the city of the Ain’ts until the NFL Saints won the 2009 Super Bowl.  It’s hard then to imagine New Orleans as nerdy.

Curious to know more, I logged into the website. The festival appeared to be a celebration of black culture: music, dance, art, literature. Listed were a potpourri of panel discussions, oddly named as Warlords, Witches, Wizards and WhatNots.  Topics ran the gamut of self-help to activism.

With each visit to my native city, I discover something new.  It is arguably the most unique city in the Untied States with its blend of European, African, Caribbean and Indigenous cultures.  It’s a tropical city with a European flavor, or for some, a European city with a tropical flavor. Either way, tourists and locals alike dance to syncopated jazz rhythms and savor its Creole and Cajun food.  As the locals say “Love New Orleans and she’ll love you right back.”

What is most unique, and intriguing, about New Orleans is its manner of speech.  It doesn’t take me long in the company of my family to slip into a New Orleans vernacular.  Tourists say New Orleens.  We natives say N’Awlins. And when we want to know how someone is feeling, we say,  where you at?  For us, lagniappe is a little something extra; the sidewalk is the banquette, derivative of our French culture. Not only do we love to party, we love to eat. Shrimp and oyster po’boys; crawfish étouffée, tomato farci, trout Amandine, andouille, jambalaya, mirliton, shrimp creole, and gumbo are all standard fare. We be happy and we be fine.  In restaurants, service staff may greet you as Babe, Hon’, Sweetheart, Sugar, or in the regional Creole dialect, Cher, meaning Dear and pronounced Shaay!  Rarely Sir or Madam.  For me, these endearments reconnect me to my Southern Louisiana roots. “Yeah! Yo rite!”  

This most recent visit to New Orleans combined a family trip with attendance at the annual convention of the 100 Black Men of America.  I was one of the founding members in 2008 of a chapter in South Bend focusing primarily on mentoring young black males. “What they see is what they will be” is the slogan of chapters nationwide.

One of our signature programs is the school-based African American History Challenge.  Throughout the academic year, students in the city’s high schools participate in an extracurricular activity studying African American history.  At the end of March, the schools compete in a citywide championship for the privilege of competing at the national level for scholarships.  For four years, our teams advanced to the second round; only this year did the team advance to the semi-final round, competing against sixteen other chapter teams from across the country.  In today’s political climate where there are multiple assaults on intellectual inquiry and integrity, and attempts to whitewash, or alter, the uncomfortable truths in our nation’s treatment of Black Americans, it is imperative that today’s youth learn that the story of the making of America is not complete without knowing the history of Blacks in America. Through a guided study of African American history by a teacher in the high school with assistance from a mentor of the 100 Black Men of Greater South Bend, the students also learn about and take take pride in the extrordinary accomplisments of Blacks in the fabric of American life.

When I retired from Indiana University South Bend, many assumed that I would return to that lovely city on the bayou.  I love my native city; I am seduced by its charms, its easy way of living; its dichotomous connection to sin and saintliness.  Though I have this love affair with the city, I have planted roots elsewhere.  As Louis Armstrong nostalgically sings, “Do you miss New Orleans, and do you miss it each night and day.” Sure I do. For those who know me well, who I am is inextricably tied to New Orleans. But home now is South Bend.  That’s where I want to be. Through my activism and volunteering, I’m helping to shape South Bend’s future.