Tag Archives: fathers

One Hundred Years of Black History

Posted on February 16, 2026 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

My father was born the same month Negro History Week was announced, timed to Lincoln’s February 12 and Douglass’s February 14 birthdays. Nearing his centennial, he embodied Black history: North Carolina segregation, a segregated WWII Army, then migration to New York. He rarely spoke of it, but history and literature helped me understand. Continue reading →

Posted in Family, Memory & Personal Essays, Race, History & American Society | Tagged Abraham Lincoln, Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, Bard College, Bicentennial, Black Arts Movement, Black History Month, Black Patriotism, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Carter G. Woodson, Decisive Decade, Family, fathers, Fourth of July, Frederic, Frederick Douglass, Gerald Ford, Growing Up, Kent State, Martin Luther King Jr., Negro History Week, North Carolina, raising black boys, Samuel Yette, Segregation, The Black Blood of Poetry, The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch | Leave a comment

Daddy Dearest

Posted on February 2, 2026 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

My father, a Native Southern Son, was born in the same month and year Negro History Week was established. Then, we were Negroes. Thirty-four years later, when I was born, we were still Negroes. When my father died at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Family, Memory & Personal Essays, raising black boys | Tagged 1960s, Black Arts Era, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Civil War, Confederacy, Decisive Decade, Emmett Till, Family, fathers, Fourth of July, history, Jim Crow, Michael Easley, politics, raising black boys, Relationships, Richard Wright, Segregated South, Slavery, Southland, The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch, Virginia, War of Northern Aggression, World War II | Leave a comment

Rereading Richard Wright’s Black Boy

Posted on July 12, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

When I first read Richard Wright’s Black Boy more than 40 years ago when I was a teenager, little that I knew about literature, I thought the writing was superb. I was doing a little writing then and thought Wright … Continue reading →

Posted in Literature & Cultural Criticism | Tagged being a teenager, Black Boy, Black Patriotism, Confederacy, Confederate flag, Family, fathers, Growing Up, Nashville TN, New South, North Carolina, raising black boys, Relationships, Richard Wright, Segregation, Slavery, Strange Fruit, Virginia, World War II | 1 Comment

Advancing Alice Walker — and Her Nonfiction

Posted on April 11, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

I have a love-hate relationship with the body of work of Alice Walker. I love Walker’s nonfiction, and even some of her autobiographical sketches, where her prose, even when it is expressing anger, is righteous anger. Her nonfiction is clear, … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction & Short Stories | Tagged Alice Childress, Alice Walker, Anne Petry, Audre Lorde, Bebe Moore Campbell, Brothers and Sisters, Brown Girl Brownstone, Dorothy West, Edwidge Danticat, fathers, Gloria Naylor, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ida B. Wells, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose, Jamaica Kincaid, Jazz, Jubilee, June Jordan, Kindred, Lorraine Hansberry, Margaret Walker, Maya Angelou, Meridian, Nikki Giovanni, Ntozake Shange, Octavia E. Butler, Paule Marshall, protest novel, raising black boys, Relationships, Rita Dove, Sonia Sanchez, Suzan-Lori Parks, The Color Purple, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, The Women of Brewster Place, Toni Morrison, Topdog/Underdog, Wild Seed | Leave a comment

Daddy Dearest

Posted on February 22, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Posted in Family, Memory & Personal Essays | Tagged 1960s, Black Arts Era, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Civil War, Confederacy, Decisive Decade, Emmett Till, Family, fathers, Fourth of July, Jim Crow, Michael Easley, raising black boys, Relationships, Richard Wright, Segregated South, Slavery, Southland, The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch, Virginia, War of Northern Aggression, World War II | 3 Comments

Happy Birthday to Black History Month!

Posted on February 7, 2024 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Black History Month is nearly 100 years old! Granted, it began as Black History Week, on February 7, 1926, and didn’t become Black History Month until February 10, 1976. My father, a Native Southern Son, was born in the same … Continue reading →

Posted in Education & Teaching, Politics & Public Affairs, Race, History & American Society | Tagged Black History Month, Black Patriotism, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Civil War, fathers, Frederick Douglass, Gerald Ford, Growing Up, Lost Cause, Martin Luther King Jr., Negro History Week, patriotism, raising black boys, segregated U.S. Army, The Miseducation of the Negro, W. E. B. Du Bois, What is the Fourth of July to the Negro?, World War II | 2 Comments

Virginia on My Mind

Posted on August 19, 2023 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

There is something that keeps drawing me back to Virginia. Although my father was born in North Carolina, he grew up in Virginia and returned there in 1946 after he was discharged from the segregated U.S. Army. He was drafted … Continue reading →

Posted in Family, Memory & Personal Essays, Genealogy | Tagged 1960s, Bath County, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Decisive Decade, Family, fathers, Growing Up, Native Southern Sons, North Carolina, Red Summer, Segregation, Slavery, Virginia, World War I, World War II | 1 Comment

Remembering My Father as I Remember Maceo Snipes, Black Veteran, Shot to Death After Voting in Georgia Primary — July 18, 1946

Posted on July 19, 2023 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

As a teenager my father, a Native Southern Son (NC and VA), was drafted to serve in the segregated U.S. Army during World War II. Shortly after he was honorably discharged from the Army in 1946, he moved to Brooklyn, … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics & Public Affairs, Race, History & American Society | Tagged Black Patriotism, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Family, fathers, Growing Up, Maceo Snipes, murder, raising black boys, Relationships, Segregation, The Black Vote, World War II | Leave a comment

Aunt Willie

Posted on March 30, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Aunt Willie My Aunt Willie is the cool aunt, the cultured aunt. When my mother passed away when I was seventeen, Aunt Willie became the closest thing to a mother I had. She never forgot my birthday, to this very … Continue reading →

Posted in Family, Memory & Personal Essays | Tagged being a teenager, Family, fathers, raising black boys, Relationships | Leave a comment

A Pearl Comes to Brooklyn

Posted on March 12, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

The past month and nearly two weeks I’ve been writing a blog post every day. When I am in writing mode my overly active imagination goes into overdrive. I have eureka moments, and even an epiphany or two! This morning … Continue reading →

Posted in Justice Chronicles, Reentry & Community | Tagged Carol Faye Burton, Family, Family Services, fathers, Jeweld Legacy Group, Osborne Association, prison, raising black boys, Reentry, Sing Sing Prison, Up the River | 1 Comment

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Tag Archives: fathers

One Hundred Years of Black History

Daddy Dearest

Rereading Richard Wright’s Black Boy

Advancing Alice Walker — and Her Nonfiction

Daddy Dearest

Happy Birthday to Black History Month!

Virginia on My Mind

Remembering My Father as I Remember Maceo Snipes, Black Veteran, Shot to Death After Voting in Georgia Primary — July 18, 1946

Aunt Willie

A Pearl Comes to Brooklyn

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