Morning rush hour on the 4 line, from the Borough Hall-Court Street station in Brooklyn, New York.
Ajuan Mance
Category Archives: Black Men
1001 Black Men #840
Crossing Adams Street, Brooklyn, New York.
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In the New York metro area of my childhood, I regularly crossed paths with Afro-diasporic folks from throughout the Americas; but I rarely encountered kids who had immigrated from Africa. It’s one of the biggest differences between my experience of NYC in the 1970s and the way New York feels today. Forty years ago, Afro-disaporic New York was populated by people whose families’ migration from Africa to New York involved at least a couple stops on the way–at one of the many places in the Americas where the slave ships made landfall and again at the plantation(s) to which their ancestors were sold. While many Black New Yorkers of the time were immigrants, few such families’ pathway from Africa could truly be called immigration. I was not very different from the other Black kids I knew in that the route my families took from Africa to Long Island, Manhattan, or the Bronx took several centuries, beginning with what can only be called, not the immigration, but the importation of our ancestors.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #839
Duane Reade drugstore, near the Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn, NY.
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As I mentioned in my last post, I was recently in Brooklyn; and it was wonderful to be surrounded by some many different kinds of Black people. I also mentioned that I grew up on Long Island (Nassau County) in the 1970s. During that time, the Black community was growing in diversity, and in my school and in my neighborhood I encountered people of African descent from Aruba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Cuba, and Haiti, as well as from the American South (like me).
Even then, Blackness came in a lot of different languages and accents, and the African American, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-Latino kids debated between and among themselves about how being Spanish speaking or coming from an island outside of the U.S. impacted one’s relationship to Blackness. For example, one question that came up over and over was about whether or not Puerto Rican and Cuban kids of African descent were Black like “us” (African Americans) or Latino like “them” (Puerto Rican and Cuban folks whose skin was light or white and whose hair spoke more of indigenous and European ancestry than of a connection to the so-called Dark Continent).
As a child, I was both confused and offended by these arguments. When immigrants of African descent argued to those of us with roots in the American South that they were (for example) Caribbean, but not Black, it felt like rejection. Today, though, I appreciate that such statements were more about maintaining a sense of nation and culture in the face of the virtual tidal wave of African American history and culture that faced (and faces) all Black immigrants to the U.S., and less about denying the triple legacy of Africa, Middle Passage, and slavery that all of us share.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #837
Waiting in line at Wells Fargo Bank, Emeryville, California.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #835
I first noticed the man in this picture at Zocalo cafe in San Leandro. Part of the reason he caught my attention is because I’d been reading a lot about Black dandies and preppies, and he reminded me of the men in The Black Ivy, that amazing photo gallery at streetetiquette.com. A few days later, I spotted him a second time, in downtown Oakland. I’d never seen this man anywhere before, and all of a sudden we were crossing paths twice in one week. If the universe was telling me to make him one of my 1001 Black Men, then who was I to say no.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #834
I spotted this guy with the amazing locks at Comic-Con 2014. He was leaning against the wall and watching the discussion unfold at the “Black Panel,” a gathering of artists, writers, and celebrities convened by artist and writer Michael Davis. Back when the panel was founded, there weren’t very many Black presenters at the conference. Things have changed a lot in the ensuing years, and you can see African American speakers at any number of official Comic-Con events. Still, the Black panel remains as a marker of the kinds of work that it took to make the conference program as inclusive as it is today.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #833
I waited a while to do this drawing, because I was hoping I’d find the email address of the man in the picture. This guy came to the 1001 Black Men panel discussion at CIIS (in September of 2013). He had really nice things to say about my drawings, and I’ve never forgotten him, mostly for the way his compliments put me at ease prior to the panel discussion event.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #832
Back in January, we spent about nine days in Kauai. It was a lot of fun, but there sure weren’t many Black people. I think there were more Black people in our vacation rental than in the whole rest of the town. (Out of the six people in the vacation rental, three of us were Black.) Most of the Black folks we saw were in the airport. This is one of the brothers we ran into outside of the airport, at a grocery store in the next town over.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #831
Waiting for service at Broadway VW, Oakland, CA.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #827
Spotted in line at the Broadway Volkswagen service desk.
Ajuan Mance