4/27/23

Please meet me at the Riverside Arts Center, 76 North Huron Street, Ypsilanti this Saturday, April 29 at 9AM! We will pick up trash, rake leaves and turn the flower bed over so it's ready for planting after the frost date. Time permitting, there may be some weeding and pruning as well. Bring your gloves, shovels, rakes and pruners and a water bottle. The building will be open for use of the bathrooms and refilling our water. Trash and yard waste bags will be provided.

Next Monday, May 1 at NOON, will be our Club assembly. This is where we begin to lock down the details on our upcoming events. Who will walk/ride in the Memorial Day Procession? How should we dress? Where and when will we assemble, etc.? Ticket sales for our 3 Museum sampler plus ice cream event go live on Eventbrite today, so we will talk about that. Then there's the 4^th of July Parade and the August Bicentennial event – a lot to discuss! We will also induct our 4^th new member for this year, Juliann Trudell! Don't miss it! As we regain "strength in numbers," we will be able to take on additional projects to help our community.

Important!  On Monday we will also consider and vote on a resolution to return to 1 year terms from two year terms of office for the President.   

At our last meeting, we saw images of Bunce Island. It was founded in 1670 off the coast of Freetown, Sierra Leone. This is where the family tree of the vast majority of African Americans who descended from slaves began. I don't know if my audience was as surprised as I was to learn that Africans captured other Africans and sold them to the slavers. That Africans from the area surrounding Bunce Island came to work there every day to cook and clean for the slavers and British military people on the island, as well as to feed the people about to be enslaved. That once a slaver had chosen which men and women he would buy, they were branded with his mark. That our own Paramount Chief Charles Caulker is a remote descendant of a slaver named Thomas Corker, who took a Sherbro woman as his wife and had 2 sons before he died in 1700. The slave trade was complicated. Thanks again to Marie, who led the meeting after I had to leave for a friend's memorial service. She collected $6 in Lucky Bucks.