Lessons on Coming Home: Knowing Where You’re From
By Kim Harbour
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Although of different generations, Crystal Good and Dr. T. Ford-Ahmed grew up in West Virginia, but couldn’t wait to leave and see the rest of the country. Now, both have returned to work on projects celebrating the state’s diversity and African-American history.
At age 12, Crystal Good travelled between the worlds of modeling for Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein in New York and twirling her baton as a St. Albans majorette. She graduated early and used Atlanta as her base for catalog modeling. When circumstances forced her to come home, her grandfather sat her down and told her: “You don’t even know where you’re from,” she recalled. “He was jabbing me for not appreciating what I had right here in West Virginia.”
To prove him wrong, Good started exploring the state. She learned about the history that had passed through Charleston: the jazz history and all the greats who walked downtown. “By learning about our local history I developed a great sense of pride in where I’m from. I became very passionate that little pieces of information and connections to a community can make you fall in love with it.”
Good talked about the Triangle District in downtown Charleston as a good example of something our community should build upon from its past.
“Right now, you have to go to the Kanawha County Library and sit in the reference section,” she said. “I want to make our history more accessible. I want more historic markers downtown. Even if you don’t participate in the history – you’ll pass that marker and it becomes a part of your consciousness. You’re building up the community of West Virginia.”
Getting Communities to Talk, Listen
Today, Good leads the Create West Virginia’s diversity team. As part of that work she developed a project called The Block to connect students in Rand with their peers in Harlem at The Arts Horizons LeRoy Neiman Center. Using Skype video conferences, Good had the students meet online and develop stories about their lives. Then, they traded stories. The Harlem kids narrated what living in Rand was like and the kids learned from one another.
Good called the project The Block in honor of artist Romare Bearden’s 1970s series of vibrant streetscape collages of the same name. “It’s our block, too,” she said. “There is a real connection between the rural and urban -- Rand and Harlem – and how they meet.”
Good’s project could have jumped off the pages of Ford-Ahmed’s book, “Building Diverse Communities: Applications of Communication Research,” which examines research into bringing communities together. Ford-Ahmed, a professor of communications and media studies at West Virginia State University (WVSU), Institute, uses the classroom to actively engage students with the diverse history of the state.
Recently, Ford-Ahmed’s public relations students promoted an African-American heritage trail by creating a media kit and website. The trail follows Route 60, which was once part of the Underground Railroad. It starts at Booker T. Washington’s home in Malden, goes through Hawks Nest, Anstead, Charleston and ends in Institute, at the university.
Ford-Ahmed said she loves to tell her students how WVSU got its motto.
In 1954, the United States Supreme Court outlawed segregation. As a consequence, West Virginia State College would transition from being a historically black school to serving the whole community. As the deadline for integration arrived, numerous out-of-state reporters descended on campus, expecting trouble. Instead, there were lines of new students wrapping around the block. In awe, a reporter proclaimed the campus a “living laboratory of human relations!” The motto stuck.
Sometimes expectations are wrong and history surprises you, according to Ford-Ahmed.
“I, too, am a coal miner’s daughter,” she said.
Good agreed with her mentor, adding, “Black, White, Italian – you went in the coal mines you didn’t care what color the person beside you was. You were responsible for each other’s lives. The wives were mutually dependent on one another.
“We forget that about our shared history, sometimes. The walls between the races did exist here, too, but in many other ways the people of Appalachia were so interdependent, economically and through community.”
Coming Home, Giving Back
Ford-Ahmed grew up in the 1940’s in a coal town called Ward, near Cedar Grove. She tried to revisit it recently with classmates from Dupont High School, but nature had reclaimed the small town and its company store. She couldn’t make out the road for the overgrowth.
She recalled life in the company town where Black and White lived like a community and the women kept check on things. Her dad was a union organizer and their house got stoned a few times for that.
“Even though a few scary things happened – the next day you’re still part of a community. The neighbor borrows sugar or helps you when you’re sick.
“My mom was well-known in town as a wine maker -- dandelion wine. I picked them for her,” she remembered.
Ford-Ahmed left West Virginia during the early 1960s and pursued her degrees from the Chicago Art Institute and New York University. In New York, she coached Wall Street professions on improving interpersonal communication skills.
In 1990, she returned home to visit her mother and got a talking-to, similar to Good’s. Ford-Ahmed’s mother sat her down and said, “’I raised thirteen children here in West Virginia and all of you left. West Virginia was good to you. Why don’t you come home and give back?’”
To appease her, Ford-Ahmed sent out a couple of resumes, including one to WVSU; then, she was in a hurry to get back to New York. The following summer, her mother died. And as fate would have it, that same week Ford-Ahmed got a call from WVSU about that resume she’d sent the year before.
“They wanted to fly me in for an interview. I was afraid NOT to come home, because it was like Mom reached out of the grave, pulled me back to the state and gave me an opportunity to teach here. WVSU would help me obtain my doctorate from Ohio University in Athens, too!”
Ford-Ahmed laughed and recalled saying to herself, "'OK, mom, I hear you! I’ll stay a few years.'"
And that was 19 years ago.
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