Mary Mack Mack Mack by Sheila Rocha

For me, there was a great deal of nostalgia reading Mullen's chapter on childrens' rhymes that echoed memories of the Black power movement of the early 70's. I was part of that movement as a young woman of color--being Tarasco, Mexican, Chicano, Indian whatever one might call me...and mixed with more.  In the eyes of the kids I went to high school with, as we fought for ethnic studies and Black literature classes, all they knew was that I was mixed, I was of color and I belonged with them. The context of the verses resonated first and foremost with us in the assertion of voice, the word and the image it produced.  We rioted-whatever that means.  We walked out.  We got the first Black theater production in Omaha Public School history.  Lorraine Hansberry's "To Be Young Gifted & Black".
           Mary Mack Mack Mack
           All dressed in Black Black Black
           With silver buttons buttons buttons
           All down her back, back, back
And it was all in the context of Hansberry's pledge that in the words of Nina Simone, "There are millions of girls and boys, who are young, gifted & black--And that's a fact!"  That was a source of inspiration for all of us kids of color.  Didn't matter what color--we all shared the same deep desire to be acknowledged as gifted.  Our brown shades of skin, a thing of beauty, and our cultures were embodied in the voices of revolution like James Brown "I'm Black and I'm Proud",  Nina Simone, Curtis Mayfield and Aretha Franklin.  Mullens asks the question, did these children understand the political meaning of the verses?   On some level we did.  But it was the freedom to assert the icons postured in the body of the verses--that and the joke, the play on words.  Consequently, about 12 years ago I founded the longest running African American Theater ensemble in Omaha history and I named it Young, Gifted & Black in honor of Lorraine Hansberry and all the brothers and sisters who accepted me and allowed me to be part of the struggle.  The image in this post is from an Ananzi play (talk about folk tales) we did back in about 2008.  These young people are the product of the struggle we went through in the early seventies.
I have to mention Mullen's  "self-aware escape into fantasy".  It was truly just trickster gaming on many levels.  We tricked, we learned language in multiple ways in order to suggest, prod or simply play (159). All of this arose directly out of the Jim Crow our parents endured as well as the more subtle forms of racism that bit at our heels.

Now for my children in the early 1990's, the rhymes were something different.  I never learned the hand claps--they embraced the hand claps and it became a motor-skill challenge--a neighborhood game of action.  All children of the inner-city of Omaha learned these rhymes.  Icons such as James Brown were sidewalk celebrations of culture and meaning that remained as significant (and to a broader audience now) as it did for those of us two decades before.  Representation...and the forms it takes.

And by the way.  I talked with my daughter this evening and she corrected Mullens (156)...she laughed and said, "we did it our way".  And that's about it--the song is always the same, it's just transposed into the right key for the kids on the corner.

I went downtown
To see James Brown
He game me a nickel,
To buy me a pickel,
The pickel was sour,
So he bought me a flower
The flower was dead
So this is what I said--
               (here's where regionality influences the verse)

Nicky nacky number nine

Going down Chicago line

Now let's get the rhythm of the head

ding dong

(move head)

Now we got the rhythm of the head

(move head)

now let's get the rhythm of the feet

(stomp feet)

now we got the rhythm of the feet

(stomp feet)

now we got the rhythm of the hot dog

(move body)

put it all together and what do you got:

ding dong,

(moved head)

(stomp feet)

Hot dog!!

(move the body)