June 2002

I met Anita in 1983 when she joined the legal document processing staff I was a part of. Four years later I got fired from the management position I had moved into; this blessing motivated me to go back to college. Anita and I worked together again, after I completed my graduate degree, when I recruited her into a human resources position with a large limited partnership. Sadly, I had to lay off Anita one year later. Nonetheless we have overcome obstacles that can separate people who are not friends.

Several years after I had relocated to San Francisco from Sacramento, and started Bonds Limited, Anita moved from Sacramento to Mound Bayou, Mississippi. She moved back to her hometown partly to help her two daughters ease into life with a better high school education, which Mound Bayou's school board assures. But Anita also missed the sprawling, green-lawned, fenceless yards that hem together neatly-bricked homes. Relatives, friends, and especially children, make straight B-lines to neighbors' houses to play basketball, visit, watch TV and eat barbecue. This was the community where Anita's heart belonged, and she needed her children to feel that same sense of belonging.

Children in Mound Bayou learn to place God first because God gives eternal strength through times of both contentment and despair. A population of 2,500 commits itself to its children, who - it knows - must become well educated through the twelfth grade in order to gain a position with a good college outside the area. The Godliness and wisdom of Mound Bayouans is nowhere seen more clearly than in Anita herself. She is now the full-time redevelopment director for children's issues for the surrounding area. She also directs the local and regional Methodist church choirs.

I have just returned from a four-day stay in Cleveland, Mississippi, about nine miles south of Mound Bayou. My objective was to attend the high school graduation of Anita's two daughters, one by birth, the other, by adoption. Anita and her friends and family welcomed me into their homes, rituals and hearts for a few days . . . and I felt the binding sense of purpose that Anita and I share. She and I have both made a choice to come home to our own people bringing love. What I haven't yet mentioned is that Mound Bayou is one of the last 100 percent African-American municipalities in the US, founded by ex-slaves in 1874. Black history speaks more terrors than gay history does. But we each share a special sense of devotion to our own people. And, together, we appreciate the beauty in diversity.

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