Nayo's magical insight

In the spring of 1992, when I was hired as the Community Artists Partnership Project Director, and ROOTS' first African American staff member, Nayo became the on-site project coordinator and was based at the Durham Arts Council. She was awesome in the role, immediately helping to craft a process for attracting and engaging area individual artists and community-based organizations. This was work that our mutual brother/artist/friend Walter Norflett, now deceased, had dreamed would come to Durham. There was now funding to support a range of projects for artists and communities, many Nayo knew personally through her own work in the community. The first year was a tremendous success, and not just for her paid work in Durham, but also for her ongoing dialogue about power and dominance, troubling for me in my role as the token staff member. Nayo had been down this road before and provided excellent navigation for me, as I was completely unfamiliar with the culture of such an organization as ROOTS, which had no peer--then, or now. My previous administrative positions with both the Georgia Council for the Arts and Fulton County Arts Council had not prepared me for the complexity of ROOTS. While I missed a lot of landmines with Nayo's guidance, 15 months of walking the line was enough experimentation and growth for this artist.

We shared a love for the mighty word, the Deep South and a strong belief in working to overcome racism. A particularly big bonus for me was a trip to Brazil, engineered by Nayo, who wrote the grant, and funded through Black Artists South, a loose-knit artist collaborative and the NEA. I returned from Brazil a changed man, empowered, and determined to rise to my higher self, the self that was re-born and redirected toward the Black community when I had a traditional reading by a Yoruba Priestess in Bahia. With a thunderstone in my right pocket, I was forced to move on.

Nayo and I kept our connection through email, and infrequent phone calls, some lasting for hours. She was a thinker (and doer) poised and precise in her conversation; a trait I truly loved and appreciated. And it was only recently, two weeks ago, that I phoned for one of those enlightening and illuminating conversations, and was sadly informed by Hollis Jr. that she was asleep and unable to receive the call. For the time of day, mid-afternoon, this was not good news. I assumed she was preparing to take flight; receiving a greater call, a call to the light she could not in all her brilliance negotiate.

I bid you good-night, Queen/Sista; your jeweled crown awaits you. Strength to the family, and thank-you for sharing her with us.

With love, appreciation and R-E-S-P-E-C-T,

Felton Eaddy, poet, artist, educator
Stone Mountain, GA