I am no longer surprised to find purpose in the people I meet. I am being guided to certain people for a reason. When I complimented Michelle on her Afro at the She Wins Conference last year, I had no idea she had such a rich backstory. When I did a video about the real Great Debaters, I didn’t know Michelle had also attended Wiley College!
Here are some fun facts I learned from her essay: “GROWING UP ON THE ‘COLORED’ SIDE OF THE BORDER:
Meet Michelle Petties, whose grandmother and aunt attended Wiley College, a historically Black college depicted in the 2007 film The Great Debaters, starring Denzel Washington. If you follow me on TikTok, I made a video about the real debaters that you can find under my Must Watch playlist. Michelle also attended Wiley in 1974.
Photo Credit: Michelle Petties | The author’s childhood home at 1208 E. Travis St., formerly known as Border Street.
Michelle was born and raised in Marshall, Texas, on Border Street (now Travis St), which served as a literal line of separation between the Black community situated south of the street and the white one on the north.
Photo Credit: Michelle Petties | The author (third from right, second row) at Sam Houston Elementary School in 1965.
In the fall of 1965, Michelle became one of the first Black students to integrate Sam Houston Elementary School.
A library worker denied her entrance because she was not a “mammal.” “If that sounds strange to you,” said Michelle, “imagine how it sounded to a young Black girl growing up at a time when segregation was still very much a part of the culture.”
Photo Credit: Michelle Petties | George Foreman, perhaps Marshall, Texas’s most famous son, meets President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968. LBJ’s wife, Lady Bird Johnson, was born on a former plantation in Karnack, Texas, which is considered the Greater Marshall area.
Publishing a poetry collection differs from publishing a novel or nonfiction book. One main reason is the editing; poets must pay special attention to this.
When looking for an editor for our poetry collections, we must ensure they know how poems work. Some poems, for example, are not intended to be grammatically correct. They might include lowercase letters where they would not normally be and play with conventions of spelling, layout, and typography.
An editor of poetry must be a critical reader and familiar with current trends in poetry publication. They must work closely with the poet to understand what is deliberate and what is not. A good editor will point out grammatical errors and ask if they are intentional—frequently, they will be, but it is a good editor’s job to ask.
Poetry editors must be willing to respect the intention of the poet. They must exercise restraint in those areas where they think a piece should be corrected when the poet did not intend it to be. It is also helpful to know whether the poem respects the conventions of the form or deviates deliberately. For instance, if there is a misstep in the rhyme scheme, it should be flagged in case the poet wants to adjust it.
In short, authors who self-publish poetry must find editors who are knowledgeable about how poems work. It would be even better if the editor were also a poet.
Today, we are kicking off our spotlight series of the winners of our 2024 poetry contest!
First up is our first place winner, Trevita Johnson!
I have known Trevita for years but did not know she was a poet! Her poem “Her Journey to Joy” inspired and spoke to our hearts. It stayed true to the theme and was easy to understand and digest.
You’ll hear her recite it live this afternoon (1/21/2025, 11:30a) on Instagram Live! You will also read her piece, but details will be provided later. We’ve got something special up our sleeves for that!
About Mrs. Johnson:
Trevita Johnson lives in North Carolina with her husband of almost 24 years, Austaniel Johnson. They have three young men, ages 25, 21, and 19. Johnson graduated from East Carolina University and is a former middle school math and science teacher of fifteen years. She has traveled along her creative path for several years, starting her UrNaturalLocs brand by doing natural hair, locs, and braids. She started creating and selling natural hair clothing, expanding her brand name to UrNaturalLocsGear.
UrNaturalSkinTreatz
Trevita currently sells homemade soaps, sugar scrubs, head-to-toe body wash, and body butter online through her Etsy shop, UrNaturalSkinTreatz. She has been creating skincare under the name KardaYah’s Kreations since 2017 but rebranded in 2020 as UrNaturalSkinTreatz. She uses natural ingredients such as shea butter, coconut, and avocado oil to create healthy skincare.
Trevita enjoys journaling, reading, listening to audiobooks, traveling, and spending time with her grandbaby.
Introducing Our 2024 Poetry Contest Finalists and Prize Package Winners!
I am so incredibly proud of this year’s winners! Please help me congratulate these fantastic poets, who are now winners of Yecheilyah’s Annual Poetry Contest, Season 7!
Her Journey to Joy by Trevita Johnson
Hope Moon, Joyful Skies by Arsenio M. Sorrell, aka Deep Thought the Lyricist
Echoes of Joy by D.A. Springer
Winners, please look out for an email in the next 24-48 hours with details on how to secure your prized package and the next steps for your interviews.
Each of these poets will receive an individual spotlight on the blog and an interview feature. We are eager for you to hear their winning poems and the inspiration behind their pieces.
Please head over to Instagram and show them some love. The post will go live on my page shortly. View and follow @yecheilyah.
Cool Fun Fact: When we announced the semi-finalists, I didn’t know who the three winners would be. At least not consciously. It wasn’t until we went over the poems with a fine-toothed comb and arranged them that I realized I had placed the winning poets in almost the exact order of the poems we loved most!
There was not a single poem I did not personally enjoy.
Everyone contributed something distinct while also teaching us something.
The variety and ingenuity, from visual to audio, were incredible. I appreciate how everyone put their best foot forward. I thank you for participating and sharing your heart with us!
Without further delay, the poets who have made it into the semi-finals and will go on for a chance to win the cash prizes are as follows (in no particular order):
Her Journey to Joy by Trevita Johnson
Hope Moon, Joyful Skies by Arsenio M. Sorrell, aka Deep Thought the Lyricist
Joy in the Morning by Lilanie, aka Kerece Williams
Echoes of Joy by D.A. Springer
Parable of the Daughter by Chérie J. Grant
Only three of these five will advance to the finals! That’s right. You are looking at your winners and don’t know it. And nope, they are not in order of placement for all you smart people, tee hee.
The ultimate announcement will be made on Thursday, January 2, 2025! Which of these dope poets made it to the top 3? Stick around and find out!
We pushed it back a day in case some of you return from travel.
As with each year, you can read the winning poems on this blog. We are also interviewing them live, so you don’t want to miss that!
In the meantime, please show these poets some love when you see the post, which goes live on my page shortly. View and follow @yecheilyah.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the contest this year. We will announce the semi-finalists on Friday, December 20, 2024.
In the meantime, the contest hoodies and t-shirts are now available on the website! Your support helps us keep this contest going year after year and keep it free to enter!
They are comfy, like a warm hug, and come in black and dark chocolate colors, with more to come. Sizes go up to 3XL.
The website also has a donation page if you are not interested in the gear but want to help.
As mentioned, I am reviving the Stella series with a fourth book! For those who have not read the first three books, I’ll share excerpts, nuggets, and tidbits as we prepare for the fourth installment. Today, we are refamiliarizing ourselves with some of the family. Enjoy!
Stella May
Born in 1845, Stella is the daughter of a Black woman named Deborah on Paul Saddler’s Plantation in Shreveport, Louisiana. From a young age, she can remember running through cotton fields and being loved by her family. To young Stella, life is simple and fun. She eats sweet cakes, plays with her friend Carla, and helps the grownups by carrying buckets of water to the field. Stella discovers she is a slave for the first time after Deborah’s unexplained death. Now, she learns the hard way the difference between slavery and freedom.
Solomon Curtis May
Solomon has no speaking roles, but his existence is essential for the family timeline. Solomon Curtis May is Stella’s only son, born in the fall of 1870 after she was sexually assaulted by the husband of her mistress. Solomon falls in love with a white woman and marries her after inheriting land outside Chicago. They have four girls: Deborah, named for his grandmother, Judith, Rebecca, and Sara.
Judith May
Solomon’s daughter Judith married a Black man and gave birth to a baby girl she named Stella after her grandmother. However, after enduring much teasing and discrimination for her mixed features, Judith’s daughter copes with this trauma by denying part of her ancestry. She changes her name from Stella to Sidney McNair and passes for white. After marrying a white man and having his children, Sidney lives her life on the other side of the color line.
Sidney McNair
Her aunt Sara influenced Sidney to pass for white and learn to enjoy her privileges. Sidney marries a wealthy white man named Clarence McNair, and they have four children: Edward, Karen, Joseph, and Glenda, whom they raise as white.
However, when she finally reveals the truth to her adult children in 1979, the shock of their real identity is a betrayal that stretches across generations.
Karen and Noah
Sidney’s daughter Karen McNair falls in love with a young Black man named Noah Daniels. He is a leading member of the Black Panther Party and thinks he’s dating a white girl. At this time, Karen also does not know that she is mixed race, although she has many more African American features than her siblings. The couple endures many trials because of their perceived interracial union. Together, they have a son, Noah Jr, who has a much more significant role as an adult in book four.
Edward McNair
Of all Sidney’s children, her sons are the most conflicted by their mother’s betrayal. Carrying many characteristics of his father, Clarence, Edward has not only lived his life as a white man but has also enjoyed the privileges of doing so and cannot come to grips with his new reality. In brief, Edward does not want to be Black, and his daughter, Cynthia, does not yet know about her true identity because of her father’s secrets.
However, although he appears to reject his heritage, something in Edward’s subconscious won’t allow him to completely forget it. We see this when he names his youngest son after his great-grandfather, Solomon.
Joseph McNair
Joseph is also conflicted about his mother’s decisions, but goes in another direction. Still under the illusion that he is just a white boy, he nevertheless feels sympathy for the plight of Blacks and fights for their freedom with his friends during the 1960s.
Unlike Edward, Joseph wishes he were Black. He grew up to marry a Black woman named Fae, and together, they have two children, a boy named Michael and a girl named Tanya.
Introducing Tanya and Michael…
Born in the early 90s, Tanya and Michael are the children of Joseph and Fae and are young adults in the early 2000s. They face the challenge of defining themselves in a society shaped by their father’s choices and haunted by the truths Stella once fought to conceal.
In book three, they are small children, but in book four, they are young adults. In his part, we weave together the struggles of a new generation to find their voice, identity, and place in a world still wrestling with its past. The echoes of Stella’s decisions resound, reminding us that even as times change, the threads of heritage and truth remain unbroken.
The PBS Blog 