While I was attending an art opening at the Tilford Art Group a woman with blonde locks came roaring over to me about the Midwest. She was from the Midwest and so were the two young filmmakers she was talking to. And someone had pointed out that I was originally from the Midwest, too. I believe they were having the cliched conversation about the Midwest and its ability to churn out artists: Toni Morrison, Bootsy Collins, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Dorothy Dandridge, Ruby Dee, and Kathleen Battle.

The woman introduced me to her musician-husband, also a Midwesterner, but a fellow Cincinnatian. Of course I excitedly asked him what part of Cincinnati he was from. He said the Laurel Homes. Although, I grew up in the quiet outskirts of Cincinnati [woods, deer and all], when my dad's family originally migrated to Cincinnati from rural Georgia they moved into the West End which included the Laurel Homes and Lincoln Court. And over the years those areas have changed quite a bit, crime encroached and so did poverty, and more recently gentrification. The Laurel Homes are no longer there. But this musician-husband lived there during the crime and poverty. I asked him did he know my dad's cousins, the Usherys. And of course he did. Not only did he know them, but he said they were Cincinnati legends. Jake Ushery Jr., my dad's first cousin, had a reputation for fighting off twenty Cincinnati cops at one point in his life. Twenty. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The musician-husband even said some of Jake's offspring [there were 14 children altogether], had murdered, burned, fought anybody willing to challenge their good nature in the good ole Laurel Homes. [Yes, the Usherys were also known to be a good-hearted, generous clan.]

Now, I did remember hearing about one of Jake's daughters being arrested for murdering her married lover. And an older son being imprisoned for dumping gasoline on someone and watching them go up in flames, but I didn't know Daddy Jake Ushery had a reputation in the City of Cincinnati of one black man you did NOT mess with.

After I left the art opening at Tilford Art Group, I called my dad to confirm and inquire. And he confirmed. My father told me how years ago he and his brother Robert, and Jake's brothers Willie Florence and James Aaron, were driving through the little town of Crawfordville, Georgia [the origin of the Adkins and Ushery clans], and that they were driving at high-speed and then pulled over by the Sheriff. My father said they were all asked to get out of the car and that he was certain something horrible was going to happen. It was Crawfordville, Georgia after all and the KKK was still in effect and my father was a young man from Ohio just out for a joyride with his cousins.

So they got out of the car and the Sheriff decided he was going to take Willie Florence, the high-speed driver, down to the jail. And that's when Jake's little brother James Aaron spoke up. "You ain't taking him nowhere. I dare you. I dare you to touch him. You better not even look at him." My father laughed when retelling this, but couldn't believe it when it was happening. The boldness, the courage. A black man was bravely confronting a white cop in "racist" rural Georgia.

After I hung up with my dad, I couldn't help but to think about my father's cousins, the Usherys. Their unwillingness to be harassed, to be mistaken for less than human. Of course the murdering rampage of Jake's offspring I don't condone. But I wonder if they inherited this unrelenting pride from their father's people, but once placed in the poverty and crime of a marginalized black neighborhood, these warriors morphed from vigilantes of justice into good-hearted felons.

I will say a large part of me is proud to know Jake fought off twenty cops, and that James Aaron DARED a rural Georgia sheriff to jail his brother Willie Florence. I'm very proud to know that some black men in my world refuses to be subhumanized by anybody. I am proud to know the Legend of Jake Ushery [a man from the Midwest] survives even here in southern California.

Until next time,

Keith