Coming: A Tribute to Gerald Hairston (1947-2001)
By Grace Lee Boggs
Michigan Citizen, July 21-27, 2002
Everyone is invited to join the first annual Harvest Celebration to honor Gerald Hairston, the visionary urban ecologist who inspired youngsters, oldsters and midsters with his passion for transforming Detroit from the ground up.
The Celebration will take place Saturday, August 3, from 4-8 p.m. on the grounds of Genesis Lutheran Church at Mack and East Grand Blvd. Genesis, Gerald’s church home, was built on the site of Detroit Eastern High School, his alma mater.
Stories about Gerald will be told in the magical Griot Garden designed by landscape architect Ashley Kyber working with youth from Detroit Summer and Matrix Theatre Company.
The land will be blessed with a Harvest Dance created by community performing artist and choreographer Nobuko Miyamoto. Youth groups are now learning the basic Native American, African American, Asian American steps so that they can start off the Circle.
Come into the Circle, Circle of Life,
Come into the dream of a Paradise,
What was once a ruin can be reborn,
Just like the sun appearing after a storm.
With your hands, with your heart,
With this land, we can make a new start.
Every step is a blessing,
Every song is a prayer,
Every seed is a healing
That the world will share.
Dancing in the Circle, faces I see,
Dancing in the place of possibilities,
Everything we need is beneath our feet.
There’s a new way to live
With our roots - planted so deep.
Music will be provided by the Genesis Choir and some of Detroit’s finest musicians. A delicious harvest dinner will be provided by Detroit Summer.
When Gerald made his transition one year ago, Detroiters from all walks of life knew that we had lost a giant and wondered how we could carry on. In the Michigan Citizen Michelle Brown described how Gerald reclaimed
neighborhoods with gentle actions using gardens as catalysts for change, bringing elders and youth together to share ideas and chasing away drug customers by storing piles of horse manure for fertilizer at the dealer’s front door.
Detroit News columnist Betty deRamus wrote: “Some people fight blight with buckets of paint, burglar-proof window bars and bulldozers. Gerald Hairston fought it with green beans and patches of geraniums.” Free Press writer Marty Hair called Gerald “an activist gardener and visionary” who also “traveled to other cities to work with urban gardeners and to spread the word about what was happening in Detroit.”
For me Gerald was a man who “spun spider webs with everyone. Whatever their age, race ethnicity, gender, class, education or mis-education, ability to learn or disability, they didn’t remain strangers.” “Born in the South, growing up on the east side of Detroit and having worked in the factory, Gerald knew that we were suffering the agonies of a dying industrial society and in transition to a new post-industrial partnership society where caring for each other and for the earth would be a priority. He was a prototype of the new human being needed to create that new world.”
Co-Sponsors of the August 3 Harvest Celebration include Detroit Summer, the Boggs Center, Helen St. Block Club, Great Leap, Genesis Lutheran Church, Matrix Theatre, Michigan Citizen, Detroit Agricultural Network, Gardening Angels, Avalon Bakery.
For information call the Boggs Center 313 923-0797 or Detroit Summer 313 832-2904.
