Happy Birthday, Robert Allen, May 29th

Happy Birthday, Robert Allen, May 29th.  Thank you for editing The Black Scholar all those years;  for helping to build housing in Cuba, and encouraging me to visit; for writing amazing books about capitalism and the slow growth of our comprehension about societal transformation.  Thank you for beginning to read and comprehend the suppression of women by falling in love with Janie Crawford.  Thank you for loving having a child. For loving to dance and for sharing a birthday with Malcolm X whom you admired and whose fate you witnessed as he was taken from us. Thank you for riding the Greyhound bus, over years, to interview the survivors of the Port Chicago Mutiny.  You would have cheered to know the men were cleared of all charges, shortly after you left us. You were a light. ~aw