Greene Is The New Black

There were voices being heard, new voices that spoke.  They said we should be able to go to the same bathrooms as white people, be served food in the same places as them, ride on the front of the bus next to them.  We began to have our own.  Like, WOL was an AM station; a lot of us could listen to it on our radios.  We were already listening to Nighthawk, Sunny Jim, Mr. C, and then Petey Greene came on the air, letting us call in, answering his calls with the now famous phrase, “Talk to Me….”  And now the world can see him, feel him on PBS.  Wow, another famous black man who made a mark in DC.

February is our history month, no doubt.

Petey Greene sounded like someone that might be in the kitchen, at the party your parents were having,  and you could hear him talking loud, even in your bed when they made you go to sleep, and he would make people laugh sometimes,  and he would make people mad sometimes, but he would always make people quiet, at least long enough to listen to him.  And you could tell by the quiet… it was so quiet you could hear him talking and even though he did talk loud, or maybe they had the radio on and you could here him while you was out riding your bike in the summer,  and then you could see him on TV and he looked like your dad or your uncle, or one of the brothers, cause everyone called each other brother back then and even some folk thought we were all brothers and sisters back then…

Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene Jr. (1931-1984), for twenty years or so, was telling us about his life beside the bush of ghosts in the nation’s capital.  He was the first person I heard call D.C. “Chocolate City.”  And in a time when blackness was being defined by black people every day, Petey Greene spoke about blackness, and what it meant to him to be black.  He spoke for black people, giving them a voice they could relate to, indeed one they could hear… on the radio, then on the TV, and always in the streets, where he would stop and talk to us, the hot and the cold, the young and old.

And you found out that there was a “community” you belonged to, and it wasn’t just Petey and you, but all those folk that looked you in the eye and proudly said hello.  And in the time of the biggest change, Petey convinced you that things could be changed, and it would start with changing your mind if he could.

And Petey changed things, pitching for jobs, like he did all the time as the founder of EFEC, Efforts For Ex Cons, and telling us about America hustling backwards:

And who could doubt Petey? He looked like us, talked like us, and never apologized for who we were, or who he was.

Petey was born and raised in DC. A young truant and lawbreaker, he ended up convicted of armed robbery and sent to Lorton, the Virginia jail where my cousin Billy was doing time for robbing McDonalds, we called him the Hamburglar.

He did indeed manage to affect an earlier release; Petey served a nickel of his dime when he was paroled for talking a fellow inmate down from a flagpole when he threatened to jump.

“They thought I did a good job of talking him down, they should have seen me talk him into climbing up there,” Petey would joke.

“Petey Greene’s Washington” his TV show won two local Emmy Awards and was among the first syndicated TV talk show hosts.  Howard Stern counts him among his inspirations, and was often a guest on his show. 

And you have to see the chair; our history.  Petey is in that chair.  He explains how to eat a watermelon and you have to catch his description of shaking too much salt on a watermelon, like people put salt on chicken, and you have to wonder who put salt ON chicken.

He didn’t even apologize for the Bamas, a valuable lesson. A Bama wouldn’t be a Bama if he/she knew any better.  You have to understand Bamas was folks behind the times who thought they were ahead of the curve; kinda country pace in a city race.  And we all got some Bama in us; maybe then it was symbolized by wearing bright red, which is ok today.  Maybe it was yellow alligator shoes.  It’s a thin line between floss and Bama.  And even today, we may label someone or something Bama, but we don’t apologize for it.

“I’ll tell it to the hot; I’ll tell it to the cold; I’ll tell it to the young; I’ll tell it to the old. I don’t want no laughin’, I don’t want no cryin’, and most of all, no signifyin’--Petey Greene

Amen.

VeTalle Fusilier is a producer living in Washington D.C. It's pronounced VEE-tal FEW-suh-leer.

Watch "Adjust Your Color: The Truth Of Petey Greene" on PBS, Tuesday, February 3.