After Jack, a talented trio of ladies from Ferrum, appeared at the Hotel Floyd Concert Series at The Country Store in 2012 and their spirited rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Black or White”” inspired me to create the this video of their performance.
The ladies had a roster of thoughtful and inspiring songs. I’ve lost touch with them after meeting them 14 years ago but they still have a website but it does not list any schedule of concerts this year. I’ve sent them an email asking about their status.
As readers should know, living in Prince Edward County, Virginia, where a racist school board and supervisors closed their public schools to avoid integration, I was an 11-year-old who crawled through a forest one dark night and shot photos of a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan in the county. One of those photos was published in The Richmond News Leader. I decided then, 67 years ago, that I wanted to be a newspaperman and photojournalist.
Our family left Prince Edward County and moved to my stepfather’s family farm near Willis. My mother was a native of Meadows of Dan but was first married to my dad, who died in an industrial accident in Tampa, Florida, where I was born, when I was nine months old. I began my newspaper career at The Floyd Press as a reporter and photographer for the Floyd Press at age 15, while in high school, then The Roanoke Times after graduation for five years. Then came 12 years as a reporter, photographer, columnist and editor of The Telegraph in Alton, Illinois in the St. Louis metro area. I met Amy Seiber, an actress who appeared as the resident heroine on the historic Goldenrod Showboat on the St. Louis riverfront and we married in 1979.
In 1981, we relocated to the National Capital Region of Washington, DC, where I worked briefly for three Congressmen before returning to news organization as a contract photojournalist for The Washington Post, The New York Times, AFP News Service and other organizations before retiring to move to Floyd County to help care for my ailing mother in 2004. I returned to work for The Floyd Press and as a writer and photographer and a contractor for Media General Newspapers, BH Media and Lee Enterprises until health issues sidelined met two years ago.
As I look back over six decades, much of my work focused on racism and its impact on Blacks, Latinos and other minorities. I photographed and reported on those issues in Farmville, Roanoke, Memphis, St. Louis, Chicago, Washington, DC and other locations.
I thank and admire the ladies of After Jack for their handling of “Black or White.”