Take Five Magazine: Favorite Profiles

 Throughout the years, Take Five had the opportunity to profile some amazing individuals in our region. What follows are a few of our favorites:

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Judge Clyde S. Cahill: Breaking Rank

March 1994 / by Sylvester Brown Jr. / photos by Skip Rogers

U. S. District Court Judge Clyde S. Cahill did not endear himself to some of his fellow soldiers in the war on drugs when he struck down a law that incarcerates a disproportionate number of Blacks.  But Cahill wasn’t in a popularity contest and he was willing to take the heat.  He shared his views on the death penalty, mandatory sentencing and justice in this very special Q&A issue.

 

Eugene B. Redmond: The Genesis of The Genius

April 1994 / by Melinda Roth

With much love and respect for the giant who walks among us, Eugene B. Redmond, Take Five presents an excerpt from a profile written by Melinda Roth: 

East St. Louis, Illinois -- a 10-minute traffic jam across the bridge from St. Louis and a landfill or refinery or junk yard from the rest of Illinois -- is a place where artistic genius is as carefully tended as the first born who’s fed on the potential only want and poverty can afford. It’s a place where social fires dull apathy, where dulled apathy preens questions, where questioning creates artistry. Where a poet laureate was designated in 1976. It’s a place where from the ashes of broken backs and promises, the local writers’ group meets with a regularity envied by even the most well-attended local churches.

The Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club (whose founding father as a child growing up in East St. Louis thought the housing projects were for the middle class because they had indoor toilets) boasts a Board of Trustees that’s a virtual who’s who of the other American experience: Margaret Walker Alexander, Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Avery Brooks, Raymond Patterson, Barbara A. Teer, Quincy Troupe, Lena Weathers.

 The man himself, Eugene Redmond, just shakes his head and smiles at the list.  It’s his way of bringing the bigger world to one small corner where disillusionment and artlessness tend to collect like dust balls.  He calls the African American struggle for creativity the “paradoxical genesis of Black genius.”

“It is under the severest forms of political, social and racial duress that Black people rise and create their best art,” Redmond said in his office at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. “In situations considered unthinkable for living, you find great genius.”

Redmond, a professor of English and African-American literature at SIUE, talks slowly, rhythmically, as if measuring every word for its purpose. He leans back in his chair and points periodically to taped-up photographs of the people he knows and talks about— Maya Angelou, Avery Brooks, Katherine Dunham, Gwendolyn Brooks — and pulls out books, pamphlets and flyers from over­stuffed shelves, boxes and piles of paper on the floor that are high and wide enough to sit on comfortably. On the walls, surrounding the photographs, are at least 50 yellow post-it notes with names, addresses and phone numbers. 

There are posters of the seven principals of Kwanzaa, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Drumvoices Revue, the literary magazine he publishes quarterly. There are three Rolodex files the size of basketballs in one corner, an old manual typewriter in the other and a phone on his desk which rings to a very consistent and, to an interviewer, annoying beat.But what may appear as physical clutter is only the symptom of a well-ordered mission to bring African-American writers out of their solitary corners and into the rest of the world…

 

Lizz Brown: 

Living My Life As A Liberal and Loving It!

March 1995 / by Victoria Anton-Brown

When Lizz Brown walked into the Take Five office in early 1995, we only knew her from her show on WGNU 920AM.  Within a short amount of time, we were friends -- good friends -- and have been ever since her profile appeared on our cover.  It’s hard to describe Lizz.  Extraordinarily intelligent? Yes.  Wildly passionate about the issues? Yes. Eloquent, in your face, intimidating (especially if you’re misinformed), talented, funny? Yes to all that and so much more.

Lizz is for real and that’s profoundly meaningful in a day and age when the media is largely bought and paid for.  Lizz trumpets her causes, fights for her rights and the rights of those she loves.  She means it.  It’s not a shtick and for that the African American community is all the richer.  We at Take Five thank Lizz for being a dear friend, colleague and someone you could always count on for a gem of a quote.

 

Bertha Gilkey:  “I’ll Never Stop Fighting”

May 1998 / by Sylvester Brown, Jr.

Caught in the crosshairs of a federal investigation, housing activist Bertha Gilkey spoke to Sylvester about conspiracies, corruption and the fight of her life.  “There’s something sinister about all of this,” Gilkey said about the allegations against her at the time. “I’d rather they hang me, just hang me.  Just get a rope and a tree and just hang my Black ass because this kind of s--- I’m going through, it’s the worst kind of death in the world.”

 

The Struggle Continues

February 2000 / by Lori Reed

St. Louis’ Organization for Black Struggle celebrated 20 years of activism on January 29, 2000.  Lori Reed covered the momentous occasion and spoke to key members of the organization, including founding members Jamala Rogers and Kalima Endesha.

 

Last Action Hero

February 2002 / by Sylvester Brown Jr.

As head of the protest group ACTION, Percy Green’s unique brand of agitation shook the White power structure in St. Louis to its core.  When Mayor Francis Slay fired Green from the job he’d held for ten years as overseer of the city’s minority certification program, Green spoke with Take Five.  After nearly 40 years on the frontlines, Green said the names may have changes, but the struggle for respect and equality remains the same.