www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, June 2004SAMANTHA MATTOX / AKILIWe mourn the passing and celebrate the life of Samantha Renee Mattox (1976-2004), who wrote articles and poems for NEWS & LETTERS under the name Akili. Born in Chicago's Altgeld Gardens projects, Samantha was a remarkable young woman with an intense commitment to the freedom and dignity of Black people. She saw this as inseparable from the freedom of all human beings, a vision that encompassed many struggles that were equally aspects of her being: as worker, as woman, as part of the lgbt community. Samantha was also representative of the generations of Black youth who have been hit hard by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In 2001, when Chicago's WINDY CITY TIMES named her as one of the "30 Under 30" up-and-coming activists, she said: "Although I have AIDS, it is not the sum total of who I am. AIDS is not anything to be proud of or ashamed of. It just is. It's a medical condition. I was an activist long before I knew I had the disease." Samantha was active in the Black Student Union and organized a Black feminist discussion group at Roosevelt University, where she graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Journalism. She was a local organizer for the National Young Women's Day of Action. She also published articles in a variety of publications which targeted aspects of racism from Chicago's history of segregation to the persecution of the MOVE organization and Mumia Abu-Jamal. She was well-read in classic works of workers' writing, from THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MOTHER JONES to Charles Denby's INDIGNANT HEART: A BLACK WORKER'S JOURNAL. Samantha was also gifted with a fantastic sense of humor and a deep love for literature from George Eliot to Lorraine Hansberry. Her sharp, original mind could see the connection between two of her favorite authors, Dorothy Parker and Donald Goines. She had a knowledge of popular culture from old Hollywood films to the cinema of French Africa. A gifted high school basketball player, she won a "Cuthroat Award" for her competitive play. She was also a skillful dancer. When her illness began to attack these natural gifts that she so enjoyed, Samantha fought it with a sense of pride and dignity that was inspiring. She spoke at Affinity and at News and Letters on the question of AIDS and Black women, and made an effort to attend demonstrations on other issues that she cared passionately about. She also kept writing as long as she could, on issues such as mass transit accessibility and nursing home abuse. In the nursing home industry Samantha saw a form of warehousing of human beings that was in many ways parallel to the prison system. She would bombard administrators with letters of complaint both for herself and others. For those of us who have to live without her spirit, her humor, her laughter, there will be an inevitable feeling of loss and tragedy. But in her courageous fight to the last, Samantha won a victory for those values of pride and dignity that she cherished for all people. --Gerard Emmett |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
