Struggles of Childhood Trauma: The Princess Washington Story

Princess Washington (Photo by Wiley Henry)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first installment of a two-part series about childhood trauma that Princess Washington knows all too well.

 

MEMPHIS, TN – The probability of Princess Washington succeeding in life after experiencing childhood trauma — poverty, neglect, bullying, and merely surviving in a tempestuous household with her drug-addicted mother — is statistically unlikely in some cases.

Washington was seven years old and suffering ill effects from ACEs, an acronym for Adverse Childhood Experiences. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), about 64 percent of American adults had experienced one ACE. Women are impacted the most. 

While living in Section 8 housing with her two younger brothers in Clarksdale, MS., Washington’s ACEs were apparent: poverty, neglect, emotional abuse, etc. Despite this fact, even at her tender age, she innately assumed the role of caregiver. 

The choices Washington was compelled to make were predicated upon the harsh conditions that she and her brothers were forced to endure. Her mother, she explained, was battling her demons and often left them unattended.

“That was the norm,” said Washington, 43, whose father was absent from the home. But then her survival instincts kicked in. “I was trying to figure out what we were going to eat. Sometimes we ate. Sometimes we didn’t.”

Hunger pangs constantly gnawed at her. In addition to strangers coming in and out of the home, fear engulfed her as well — because crack cocaine, her mother’s demon, was wreaking havoc all around her.

Washington longed for stability, security, and a safe place to live. Her maternal grandmother, prompted to intervene posthaste, whisked her granddaughter away from potential danger. 

Her grandmother also lived in Section 8 housing with her son, Washington’s uncle, who struggled mightily with an addiction himself, she said. He is one of her grandmother’s 10 children.

“At some point, the state of Mississippi stepped in and wanted to remove my brothers from my mother's care,” she said. “They ended up coming to live with us.”

With her uncle in the home, Washington’s fears resurfaced. “He tried to kill everybody in the house,” she said. “He had poured diesel fuel all the way down the hallway. He had already blown all the pilot lights out and turned the gas on.”

Washington remembered him lighting a match to his bedroom. She said another uncle was on the scene and confronted him. “They were tussling in the hallway. By that time the fire had reached the hallway.”

The family was literally trapped, unable to flee. But Washington’s grandmother managed to hustle her grandchildren into her bedroom to fling them out the window to safety. But a heavy dresser, she recalled, was blocking their escape.

“There was nowhere else in the house we could go,” she said.

Washington’s grandmother was a praying woman — an evangelist in tuned to God. And out of the ether, the family was spared. Because of his dastardly deeds, her uncle was institutionalized, treated, and released.

After that harrowing ordeal, the uncle was allowed to return to the household. Years later, something stirred in him again. Washington’s older brother, who was raised by his grandmother, was there at the apartment when that same uncle went haywire.

“They started tussling,” she said. A cousin, who was there too, “took off running” and jumped out a bedroom window. Washington followed. They ran, screaming, to an aunt’s apartment nearby.

Washington was 14 when her mother, still battling drugs, birthed another child. Her grandmother would take in her baby sister as well. She said it was an added responsibility that her grandmother didn’t need.

Her grandmother, however, knew what to do in this predicament: pray. 

Copyright 2025 TNTRIBUNE. All rights reserved.

Surviving Childhood Trauma: The Princess Washington Story

 

Princess Washington (Photo by Wiley Henry)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the final installment of a two-part series about Princess Washington, who decided that she wasn’t going to succumb to the ill-effects of her traumatic childhood.

 

MEMPHIS, TN – Growing up in Clarksdale, MS., was a harrowing experience for Princess Washington, who was caught up in a vortex of trauma that swirled all around her. But she refused to succumb to it.

The struggle was real, though. After Washington’s grandmother rescued her grandchildren from her crack-addicted daughter and her son’s dangerous impulses, Washington would soon grapple with adolescence.

At 17, she birthed a baby. Insisting that she graduates high school, one of her uncles and his wife offered to raise her daughter during the week. On weekends, Washington would take the reins. 

Motherhood was now Washington’s new reality. While she didn’t want her daughter to suffer from ACEs, or Adverse Childhood Experiences, she longed to be a doting mother. But anger was welling up in her. 

At school, for example, she was often bullied. But then she yielded to a dare one day and stabbed a girl in the head with a pencil. The assault got her suspended from school and branded a troublemaker.

“I got suspended a few times from school,” she said. “And I’d taken a knife to school.”

Meanwhile, Washington’s uncle and aunt were still raising her daughter. Uneasy with the arrangement, she said, “Here I am following in my mother's footsteps, where somebody else is raising my child.”

After Washington graduated high school, she assumed her daughter would be returned. But that didn’t happen. She said, “My uncle wouldn't give me my baby back. He said, ‘You’re going to college.’”

As her uncle insisted, Washington matriculated at Coahoma Community College, a Historically Black Community College in Mississippi. She finished with an associate degree in Biology. In her pursuit of more degrees, she went on to earn a Bachelor of Science in Law and Legal Studies, a Master of Business Administration, and a Master of Science in Criminal Justice.

Her daughter was returned when she was 5 years old. “But she's constantly fighting to get back to my uncle,” said Washington, who, during this time, had birthed a son. “Now, I'm stuck trying to raise two kids.”

It was a difficult balance for the single mother trying to work and raise children. So, she allowed her daughter to spend more time with her uncle while a neighbor had agreed to babysit her son so she could work.

“Now I'm back in that position again where somebody else is raising my children,” she said.

At some point, Washington opted to leave Clarksdale, MS., to get ahead in life. “I took the kids and left the city,” she said. Destination: Belzoni, a small town in Mississippi. Now she lives in Southaven, MS., and manages one of the largest properties in Memphis. She also held down a job in security as chief of operations for On The Top Security — until recently. 

Despite Washington’s struggles with ACEs, her life is no longer topsy-turvy — thanks in part to a praying grandmother who kept her grandchildren in church. Now, she solely depends on God in all facets of her life.

“I can't complain,” said Washington, who has three children now — ages 25, 21 and 17. “I've come a long way, and I've been blessed.”

Some time ago, Washington had a conversation with her mother and one of her uncles. She walked out fuming, she said, recalling that uncle saying to her: “It seems to me you turned out alright.”

Washington was incensed. “Nobody ever stopped to ask us how we were dealing with the things that we went through,” she said. “Everybody just expected us to just pick up the pieces and move right along.”

Copyright 2025 TNTRIBUNE. All rights reserved.

A.C. Williams Jr.: ‘The Mighty One’

Wiley Henry’s book, “Daddy: A.C. Williams 

Jr. and his Teen Town Singers,” won “Best 

Adult Nonfiction” on March 27 during this year’s 

Richard Wright Literary Awards highlighting 

the work of Memphis authors. The event is 

sponsored annually by Memphis Public Libraries. 

Barbara Winfield was ecstatic when I presented her a copy of my book, “Daddy: A.C. Williams Jr. and his Teen Town Singers.” At the age of 84, she has trouble climbing the stairs in her home, but her aging body hasn’t affected her memory of Mr. Williams and why the book is so important to her.

Andrew Charles Williams Jr. graduated from Tennessee State University in 1938, taught biology at Manassas High School for eight years, and launched his career in broadcasting at WDIA in 1949. 

An affable personality with a penchant for community service and youth development, Mr. Williams was known by his moniker “Moohah,” an Indian name meaning “The Mighty One.” He was the radio station’s first Black fulltime employee who corralled high school students to form The Teen Town Singers. 

“He was like a father to me. After my father died, he would always call my mother to check on me,” said Winfield, who was a student at Booker T. Washington High School when she joined Mr. Williams’s famed choral group. Like some of her choral mates from other Black high schools — Carver, Manassas, Hamilton, Douglass, Melrose — she revered the man for his gentility and doting nature. 

A retired Memphis City Schools teacher, Winfield is one of 19 Teen Towners featured in the 262-page book depicting Mr. Williams’s love for the youth in his charge and his longevity at WDIA — 34 years — as an announcer and director of community relations. 

Published in August 2024 by GrantHouse Publishers in Memphis, the book was the brainchild of Markhum “Mark” L. Stansbury Sr., a Teen Towner himself who finds solace in broadcasting at WDIA for more than 60 years now. A retired university administrator, he wanted Mr. Williams’s legacy in radio, as an educator, and founder of The Teen Town Singers to be preserved for posterity.

Joan E. Patterson, Mr. Williams’s daughter, didn’t want her father’s legacy to go unnoticed either or to be consigned to the dust bin of history. 

Stansbury and other board members of the WDIA Goodwill Fund, the radio station’s charitable arm, gave me the greenlight to write the book. When I spoke to Patterson, she was flabbergasted and offered to help me cobble together the full story of Mr. Williams, who died Dec. 3, 2004, at the age of 87.

“He was a great male figure for me,” said Stansbury, a BTW alum who was raised by his mother in the Foote Homes housing project and at 378 Hernando Street, just south of downtown Memphis. He’d never met his biological father, so he doted on Mr. Williams. 

Carla Thomas, the “Queen of Memphis Soul,” was a Teen Town Singer as well. So was her brother, the late Marvell Thomas. She was 11 years old when she joined the group. 

“I begged Dad to let me join,” said Thomas, whose father, the legendary Rufus Thomas, was a disc jockey at WDIA at that time and held sway with Mr. Williams and other legendary jocks. 

Teen Towners had to be in ninth grade to join the group, but Thomas was different. She could sing and write songs. A song she’d written at Hamilton High School when she was 17, “Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes),” catapulted her to stardom after enrolling at Tennessee State University.

Other Teen Towners were also successful as singers, songwriters, entertainers, entrepreneurs, educators, administrators, athletes and more — just what Mr. Williams had intended when he awarded them scholarships to attend college. Overall, the book is a snapshot of his life and legacy and the love he’d shown inner-city youth looking to belong to something bigger than themselves.

Copyright 2025 TNTRIBUNE. All rights reserved.

(Wiley Henry is an award-winning journalist, author, artist, and photographer who writes for The Tennessee Tribune in Nashville. If you’d like a copy of the book, you can order it from Amazon)

Artist captures three generations of Amos men

Marie Pizano, founder and president of The MVP3 

Foundation, and Kelly Christopher “KC” Amos are 

flanked by supporters who witnessed the unveiling of 

“Three Generations,” a mural honoring KC’s father, the 

late actor John Amos. (Photo by Larry Hubbard)

When Cameron Hill was tapped by Marie Pizano to paint a large-scale mural in honor of the late actor John Amos, who embodied the character of James Evans Sr. in the TV series “Good Times,” he was ecstatic. 

“It was the first mural I’ve done for the city of Memphis,” said Hill, who painted murals for the Memphis Grizzles, Jack Daniels, and Amazon. But there was something special about this mural project.

The mural is titled “Three Generations” and “highlights the significance of legacy and the essential role fathers play in the lives of families and communities,” said Pizano, founder and president of The MVP3 Foundation.

The mural captures in profile reasonable facsimiles of the legendary actor, his father John A. Amos Sr., and Amos’s son, Kelly Christopher “KC” Amos. Hill rendered their likeness with spray paint on the side of a building at 88 South Front St. in downtown Memphis.

Pizano said fathers are vital in reducing trauma and healing communities, which she has championed over the years. Now she’s fighting on a different front, calling it, “Healing Through the Arts.” 

On Sept. 15, Pizano dedicated “Three Generations” to the memory of Amos, a friend, she said, who was often referred to as “America's Dad.” She said Amos supported her mission to inspire hope and healing through the arts.

Amos and his son, KC, came to Memphis in 2023 at Pizano’s request to announce the actor’s role in “Hillbilly Bible,” a faith-based film that Pizano was producing. They’d collaborated on future projects as well, but Amos had taken ill and died on Aug. 21, 2024.

Hill understood the assignment and the significance of visualizing Pizano’s concept. Moreover, he understands the need to have a father in the home and the ramification of not having one altogether.

“Fathers are pretty much missing in the Black community,” said Hill, who lost his father last year on Oct. 3. “My father went to work and passed away. Once I got the news, I vowed I would live my life the way I wanted to.”

At that moment, grief turned to a yearning to succeed at something that he could control — his own destiny. So, he quit his job to pursue art full time. That was nine years ago and he hasn’t looked back — other than to reflect on how far he’s come.

Hill drew inspiration from his father and his older brother, the victim of gun violence. “I had to take care of him,” the 29-year-old artist said. During this time in Hill’s life, he was beset with problems.

A biology major at LeMoyne-Owen College, Hill said an advisor suggested that he take painting classes. “I had never painted before,” he said, and would go on to graduate from the college in 2019. “This was all new to me.”

Considering the deluge of misinformation in the ether today, Pizano said the mural is a tribute to legacy, fatherhood, and the power of storytelling across generations. It has been a pet peeve of hers that misleading information is proliferating various media platforms.

During the unveiling, Pizano and KC — who was in Memphis to witness “Three Generations” — announced the winner of the second MVP3 John Amos Grant. The honoree was Robrecus "Rico" Parker, a student at Southwest Tennessee Community College.

Parker embodies media integrity and purpose, said Pizano, and added that he furthers Amos’s legacy and the mission of The MVP3 Foundation to mentor and uplift future storytellers with heart and truth.

The mural project was sponsored by The MVP3 Foundation with support from City Councilman Edmund H. Ford Sr. and Shelby County Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr. For more information, visit MVP3foundation.org and MVP3network.com.

Copyright 2025 TNTRIBUNE. All rights reserved.

Long cannot forget the day his friends died

Dale H. Long tells the story about the bombing of the
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on Sept. 15, 1963, in
Birmingham, Alabama., at the home of Delores Elder-
Jones in Garland, Texas. (Photo by Wiley Henry)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the final installment of a two-part series about Dale H. Long, who scurried to safety when he was 12 years old to avoid the possibility of death, which his four little friends couldn’t escape.

 

Dale H. Long’s father was working a second job at the A.G. Gaston Motel around the corner from Sixteenth Street Baptist Church when it was being reported that the Klan had succeeded in dynamiting their target — a worship center — on Sept.15, 1963, in Birmingham, Ala.

The 11 a.m. service had not begun when it was discovered after the blast that 11-year-old Carol Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Dionne Wesley and Carole Rosamond Robertson had been killed. 

“He'll be here pretty quick,” Long told his grandmother’s friend who had shepherded a small group of children to safety, including a younger brother, Kenneth. “Meanwhile, I’ll take care of him.” 

It wasn’t long before Long spotted their father running down the sidewalk with fierce urgency. “I've never seen that man run like that,” he says. “A police officer tried to stop him. Maybe the same one who tried to stop me.”

Like Long, their father ignored the officer. He was determined to get to his boys. “He ran right past him and got to us, hugged us like he’d never done before. He had tears in his eyes, because he had experienced the same thing a few months prior.”

Birmingham in the sixties was a dangerous place for Black people. Segregation was the order of the day and bombings were common. The Klan didn’t spare the A.G. Gaston Motel either. It was dynamited on May 11, 1963.

Long learned later via radio reports that 27 people had been taken to the hospital and four little girls were killed. “They were my friends,” he says, remembering them fondly. “It was not a casual acquaintance. We were friends.”

Carole Rosamond Robertson’s funeral was held at St. John A.M.E. Church on Sept. 17, 1963. Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair and Cynthia Dionne Wesley were eulogized the next day at Sixth Avenue Baptist Church. 

Long tried to attend the homegoing services at Sixth Avenue Baptist Church. “It was too many people. They wouldn’t let me in,” he says. “But I could hear Dr. King’s eulogy on the PA system.”

After their funeral, Long witnessed the pallbearers loading the three coffins of his friends into hearses. Dr. King was standing nearby, he remembers, about 10 feet away. “I'd never seen anything like that,” he says. “I was 12 years old.”

Long’s memory of that fateful day in September hasn’t waned over the years. At 73, he still recalls the fury after the Klan unleashed hell in Birmingham, the aftermath of pain and suffering, and the terrible loss of his friends.

Long graduated from high school in 1970 and matriculated at Texas Southern University on a music scholarship. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1974. He and his wife Ellen have been married for nearly 50 years.

A survivor of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, Long has moved on. His professional career includes the NASA Space Shuttle Program, Texas Instruments, the City of Garland, the City of Dallas, etc.

Honors, awards and citations have been bestowed upon him. Now retired, he finds time to volunteer, mentor young people, and keep the memory of his friends alive by telling the story of that tumultuous day in September.

Copyright 2025 TNTRIBUNE. All rights reserved.

A witness to the church bombing of 4 Black girls

 

Dale H. Long

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first installment of a two-part series about Dale H. Long, who survived the 1963 bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

 

Dale H. Long is known for telling stories — not fibs or lies, but the riveting truth of what happened on September 15, 1963, just before 11 a.m., when a powerful bomb snuffed out the lives of four little Black girls at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

Long was 12 years old then and hanging out in the church’s library when the blast cratered the east side of the church killing 11-year-old Carol Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Dionne Wesley and Carole Rosamond Robertson.

“There were about 10 of us in the library,” says Long, who along with his younger brother Kenneth was dropped off at the church by their mother. “All of us were musicians. We should have been getting ready to go upstairs and play in the church’s orchestra.”

It was Youth Sunday and Long was preparing to play his clarinet.

The library was in the church’s basement with a huge floor-to-ceiling bookcase. Long and his friends were bantering about high school football — “boys’ stuff,” he says — when they felt the room shake and noticed lightbulbs exploding. 

“I really didn’t hear anything [the bomb]. I could feel the percussion,” he says. “I knew something was going on, but I wasn't quite sure what it was.”

But then Long was compelled to run. “I remember running out of the library into the open area,” he says, and fighting through dense smoke — including running into people and folding chairs. 

“It was dark, dusty, smoky. It was hard to see where you were going,” he says, and remembers hearing the wailing of fleeing church members.

Long finally made his way to the light in the stairwell. After ascending the stairs, he encountered a mean-spirited police officer. “The police officer extended his arm to keep me from passing. He told me, ‘Nigger, get back down there.’”

Long ignored the officer. He ducked underneath his arm and sped outside into an overcast day. He could see birds hovering above the church while making his way to the corner of Sixth Avenue and 16th Street. 

The odor was pungent, he says, like the smell of gunpowder. Suddenly it dawned on him: “They're blowing up the church with people in it.”

People were milling around in a frenzy. Many were bleeding from shards of flying glass, he says, and looking for their loved ones. Remembering his brother, he returned to the church and ran into a fireman, who let him through.

Once inside, he searched the classroom, got down on the floor, looked under tables, and called his brother’s name — Kenneth. No one was in the room, he says. So, he returned to the library to retrieve his clarinet.

Long continued searching outside. “I finally saw this big oak tree that was in front of the church,” he says. “It had grown up through the sidewalk. We used to play around that tree.”

A small group of children and a friend of his grandmother’s had gathered there out of harm’s way — including Long’s brother, whom he offered to take care of until their father could get them home.

“I hugged him and made sure he was okay,” he says. “He said he was.”

Copyright 2025 TNTRIBUNE. All rights reserved.

Cohen’s District Director was 'an Extremely Talented Administrator'

Marzie Gates Thomas conducting business in her office 
for Tennessee’s 9^th Congressional District Congressman
Steve Cohen. (Photo by Wiley Henry)

She was well respected in the community. Thanks to her upbringing, the affable Marzie Gates Thomas often paid homage to the grandmother who raised her to be humble, compassionate, and to treat people with dignity and respect.

In addition to her own inherent attributes, Thomas trusted God and never forgot the values that her grandmother, Marzie Simpson, instilled.

On June 12, Thomas died at Methodist University Hospital following a short illness. She was 72 and left behind a legacy of service that can be attributed to her faith in God, her church, her family, and her grandmother’s guidance.  

“She was indispensable to our office and to the work we do in the community,” said Tennessee’s 9^th Congressional District Congressman Steve Cohen, who first appointed Thomas in 2007 to serve as his special assistant for veterans’ affairs and community outreach.

In 2009, the congressman tapped Thomas to be his deputy district director. In 2013, she took on the role of district director. “She was so well liked by the constituents who came into the office and handled them as though she had on white patent gloves,” Cohen said.

Thomas was still on the job when her illness took a turn for the worst.

“An extremely talented administrator, she understood the district and did an outstanding job meeting my constituents’ needs because of a deep familiarity with them as a 16-year newspaper editor and publisher for The Tri-State Defender,” Cohen said.

The weekly African-American newspaper is where Robert Lipscomb first befriended Thomas decades ago when he was formerly Memphis mayor Dr. Willie W. Herenton’s director of both Memphis Housing Authority and Housing & Community Development.

“I knew Marzie for a long time,” Lipscomb said. “She was a good, kind, and decent person who never met a stranger. She was true to her roots and was just a great person. She was willing to help anybody at any time.”

Lipscomb said there was “none better” than Thomas. “I choose to remember her like she was,” he said. “She was just a wonderful person; she was uncommonly kind to everybody. She never had a bad day that I saw.”

Thomas was the youngest of two children born to Thelma and Myrial Gates on July 11, 1952. She and her brother, the late Reverend Richard D. Gates, were raised by their grandmother. Another sister, Aimee Gates, was born later.

“One of the most cherished memories is from when I was just four or five years old,” Gates remembered. “I was so eager to introduce my best friend to my big sister — as if she were my most treasured possession that I wanted to share with everyone. That’s how special she was to me.”

Thomas and her husband, the late Alonzo Thomas Jr., were special to Michael Hooks Sr. as well. What Hooks remembered most about the couple was their ability to touch the lives of people.

“She had been a real public servant. She had real talent and surrounded herself with great people,” said Hooks, a former Shelby County Commissioner and member of the famed Corner Club, where he would leisure and ham it up with Thomas’s husband and other members.

But death would befall Thomas’s husband the first month in 2024. He was the love of her life and her “best friend” throughout their 47 years of marriage. They were inseparable and raised two daughters, Marthel Ellison and Richara Thomas. They also doted on their granddaughter, Madison Ellison. 

“While my mother was widely known as a devoted servant and a respected pillar in the community, to us, she was so much more,” said Ellison, the eldest daughter. “She was the heart of our family, our beacon of hope, and the deepest source of love and strength.”

Richara Thomas said her mother was her best friend and one of her greatest teachers. “She was a true foundation of what our family was built upon. I am saddened but take joy in knowing that she is no longer suffering and peacefully in the arms of God.”

Cohen also regarded Thomas as family. “She was like a mother,” he said. “She cared for me greatly — always reaching out to see how I was and offering any help.”

While Thomas’s administrative skills were par excellent to those who knew her, she was widely known as a gospel soloist whose voice was captivating. Cohen was delighted when she sang at the opening and dedication of the Odell Horton Federal Building in 2022.

Thomas was a life-long member of the historic East Trigg Avenue Baptist Church, where she sang in the choir. She grew up under the tutelage of the famed gospel songwriter Dr. William H. Brewster and continued to serve under the leadership of Pastor Julius Beasley. 

“Although our hearts are heavy with grief, we find peace in submitting to God’s will, knowing that her true healing awaited her on the other side,” said Ellison. “She taught us never to doubt God’s plan, and above all, she was a woman of unwavering faith.”

The visitation will be held on Thursday, July 3, from 6-8 p.m., at R.S. Lewis & Sons Funeral Home, 374 Vance Ave., Memphis, TN. 38126. The homegoing celebration is Saturday, July 5 at 11 a.m. at East Trigg Avenue Baptist Church, 1315 S. Bellevue Blvd., Memphis, TN. 38106. The interment will be in Elmwood Cemetery, 824 S. Dudley Street, Memphis, TN. 38104, immediately following the service.

Copyright 2025 TNTRIBUNE. All rights reserved.