. . . "I wrote this poem in the year 2000 at a 5-day Black Writers Conference in the New York Catskill Mountains where I, along with about 40 other writers from across the USA, were privileged to attend and to be mentored by writers such as Haki Madhubuti, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Susan Taylor, Lerone Bennett and many, many others." . . . .