‘OVERCOMERS’ – A Story of Survivors

Tajuana Clark fought as much as she could to stop the onslaught of verbal, psychological and physical abuse for nearly half of her 8½ years of marriage. After reaching the breaking point, she bolted with her six children and ended up homeless on the streets of Memphis.

     More than 11 years of marriage also ended for Dione Pruitt, who was subjected to her husband’s cruelty of verbal, psychological and physical abuse. She vamoosed with her five children, risking it all. With nowhere to turn and no one to turn to, sleeping in the car was her only recourse.

     According to The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2010 Summary Report, about 1 in 4 women (24.3 percent) and 1 in 7 men (13.8 percent) have experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner.

Tajuana Clark (seated), Dione Pruitt (left)
and Wanda Taylor. (Photo: Wiley Henry)

     The survey also reported that nearly half of all women and men in the United States have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime (48.4 percent and 48.8 percent, respectively).

     Count Clark and Pruitt among the ranks. They were victimized by men purporting to love them, men with a propensity for violence, the third leading cause of homelessness among families. Their stories are similar and all too familiar. But then they found solace and renewal at LINCS (Ladies In Need Can Survive). 
With intense training, they were able to turn their lives around.

From crisis to rehabilitation…

     LINCS is a non-profit “home away from home” in the Frayser community for women who have been psychologically and physically abused, incarcerated, or struggling with poverty, substance abuse and homelessness.  

     Since LINCS’ opening during the summer of 2013, seven women have completed a structured, intensive training program: Drug and Alcohol Intensive Outpatient Program, Counseling, Anger Management, Domestic Violence Education, Parenting & Life Skills Coaching, Job Readiness, Career and Financial Planning, Educational Guidance, the Health and Wellness Program, First Aid/CPR and SIDS Training, and Housing Assistance.

     “We can house four women at a time, but I won’t leave a lady out because I can’t house them,” said Wanda Taylor, LINCS’ CEO and executive director. If the facility is full, she continues to extend a hand to feed other women or refers them to other facilities.

     “Every woman who comes through the door, I mentor them and provide services to get them back on track,” said Taylor. “Other programs deal with the addiction. I deal with the core issue, the root cause.”

     Women in distress are referred to LINCS by churches and a number of organizations, such as the YWCA, The Salvation Army, Friends For Life, Serenity Recovery Centers, Inc., and Project Homeless Connect Memphis.

Tajuana Clark: 
Failure is not an option

     “Being at the center taught me that dreams do come true,” said Clark, who underwent a rigorous training program to address her myriad problems. “I got into a good program so I wouldn’t be stuck in bondage.”
Clark received counseling, went back to high school to get her diploma, got a job, and then matriculated at National College in Memphis to become a pharmacy technician. Then it was on to Tennessee Academy of Cosmetology after National College closed its doors.

     “My career goal is to be a nurse practitioner,” said Clark, 30, who never thought any of her dreams would come to fruition. “I felt like I had a learning disability, but I was encouraged that it wasn’t too late for me.”
Once in school, Clark made good grades – A’s and B’s. “I knew I had it, but I felt I’d taken too long to get my diploma.”

     “Tajuana has completed the program and has done exceptionally well since she’s been in school,” said Taylor. “Now she has a positive outlook on life, no longer receives public assistance, and was reunited with her children after finishing the program.”

     As Clark recalls, “Ms. Wanda” was trying to get the center open when they met.

     “She stayed friends with me and loved me where I was. She encouraged me when I was going through not to give up. I felt like I’d failed myself and everybody, but she let me know that failure was not an option.”

     Clark fought mightily to turn her life around. “I was empty and had no more fight in me,” she said. “But then I knew I was a winner. I just thank God that I didn’t end up at a dead end.”

Dione Pruitt:
‘There is no turning back’

     “I’m free, I got peace, and I’m going to keep it like that,” said Pruitt, who has her own home now and a vehicle. Her children also were returned after the threat of domestic violence had ceased and after she was no longer homeless. Thanks to LINCS, “I’m just blessed.”

     Pruitt says she is stronger now than she was before. “I’m still processing and healing on certain things,” she said. “But I’m there. There is no turning back. I’ve come too far. My goal is to get my GED, own my own business, and just live life.”

     LINCS may have been Pruitt’s saving grace. She will graduate this month with her GED. “The only people I can really trust is Ms. Wanda and Ms. JoAnn Lee, my godmom,” said Pruitt, 33.

     “Dione was very timid because of all the abuse that she’s gone through,” Taylor said. “Her self esteem is at an all time high and she’s learned to love herself all over again.”

     Love had been fleeting or nonexistent, Pruitt claims. “When I left my husband, I was homeless and slept in my car. My oldest child was with me; the other children stayed with their fathers,” she said. “I stayed six months at the YWCA and got a referral to LINCS.”

     When Pruitt finally got herself together, her bearings straight, she surprised her daughter. “She was the first to see the house. The others came after a month. They were happy and running everywhere. So I just let them have a good time.”

     Pruitt said she was never told she was beautiful. “Now I know I’m beautiful,” she said confidently. “Nobody can take that away from me.”

Wanda Taylor: 
‘I’m an overcomer’

The women that Taylor has helped to get back on their feet are mirror images of herself. She grew up in a single parent household in public housing and likewise endured verbal, psychological and physical abuse.

     “My mom battled alcohol and my dad was addicted to drugs. So I was raised in the streets and grew up with gangsters, prostitutes and drug dealers,” said Taylor, who once lived with her brother and sister in both the Claiborne Homes and LeMoyne Gardens housing projects.

     The environment that Taylor was accustomed to was dangerous. She’d endeared herself to the underbelly of life and engaged in the type of illicit behavior that could’ve cost her life.

     "At 11, I was introduced to cocaine, alcohol and sex,” she said. “I started experiencing domestic violence at 15, dropped out of school in the 11th-grade, and became a teen mom. I had no morals and values.

     “I was so confused. I was selling drugs, stealing, in and out of the court. I’m the face in incest, homelessness, substance abuse, incarceration – everything. I lived at The Salvation Army twice, in a vacant apartment with my children, and out of my mom’s car.

     “I was shot at, stabbed, almost burned alive, and tied up. Guns were pulled on me countless times. And I also went through an abusive marriage – almost three years,” said Taylor, the mother of two adult children and three grandchildren.  

     In 1992, Taylor made a decision to transform her life. She found Jesus Christ. In 2002, at the age of 28, she received her high school diploma. At 35, she’d received a cosmetology diploma, technical certificate in Substance Abuse Counseling, and an Associate of Science degree in Human Services both from Southwest Tennessee Community College. She also earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management at the University of Phoenix.

     “I’m an overcomer,” she said.

Nathaniel Ray Nolan: ‘I’m the World Famous Dr. of Barbeque’

      Long before the tantalizing aroma of barbecue ever wafted across Nathaniel Ray Nolan’s nostrils, pit masters in Memphis and Shelby County were already making headway in perfecting the art of barbecuing various meat products on the grill.

      It would take Nolan most of his life to master the grill. Now he’s confident that he can whet the appetite and tease the palette of those who relish good barbecue with a slather of his own specially formulated tangy/sweet barbecue sauce.

      Nolan proclaims himself the “Dr. of Barbecue,” a title he assures he can back up. No matter the competition, he says he’s “world famous,” a description he’s added to the name of his newly launched “World Famous Dr. Barbecue Sauce.”

Nathaniel Ray Nolan

      “Barbecue is who I am,” said Nolan, who barbecues and caters all types of events for a living. “Some guys are good at what they do. I’m good at what I do. It’s an art. And I am very serious about my product, my brand.”

      Nolan has been serious about barbecue since he was 6 years old living in the Binghamton community. His mother, he said, would send his father out to purchase barbecue sandwiches for the family every Friday night.

      “I thought barbecue was the best sandwich I’d ever had. Then I began craving barbeque. It was sort of like my passion,” said Nolan, recalling the savory experience that triggered an unrelenting search for the ultimate barbecue sandwich.

      “I was about 9 years old when I used to go in my mom’s pantry and get a little ketchup and a little vinegar. My dad was from New Orleans. So when she would go to New Orleans, she’d bring back all these herbs and spices,” said Nolan, the second born of seven children.

      Nolan’s passion, cravings, and insatiable appetite for barbecue never waned. He even worked at barbecue restaurants when he grew older. “I told some of the owners…I said, ‘Look, sir, you guys don’t have to pay me in cash, y’all can pay me in barbecue.’”

      The plan was to learn as much about preparing barbecue and, most certainly, the sauce. “I was trying to learn a lot about everybody’s secret sauce,” he said. “I knew that one ingredient that I would need to use was ketchup.”

      Undaunted by the secrets of other sauces, Nolan set out to make his own barbecue sauce, one that would “blow your taste buds away.” So he started experimenting, and, through trial and error, kept trying to formulate his own special sauce.

World Famous Dr.
Barbecue Sauce

      In 1977, the pit master started his first barbecue restaurant in Memphis. It was a dream come true, he said, one that he’d envisioned in his youth when he first aspired to become an entrepreneur. Even after overcoming a speech impediment, he was on his way to becoming the “Dr. of Barbecue.”

      “Because I’m the ‘World Famous Dr. of Barbeque,’ I wanted to play up to the doctor …to make sure that my barbecue sauce is healthy for the body,” said Nolan, who consulted with a chemist to ascertain the right mixture of herbs and spices for his barbecue sauce. 

      “I wanted to keep the ingredients low in sodium. I wanted to keep it a healthy, conscious barbecue sauce, which would be a great marketing tool because people are very health conscious these days,” he said.

      Taking his role seriously as the ‘World Famous Dr. of Barbecue,’ Nolan says, “If you got a pain that you can’t explain, if you got an ache that won’t wait, if you got a feeling that’s killing, you need to come see Dr. Barbecue for some nutritional healing.”

      Nolan is not shy about promoting his barbecue sauce, which he often refers to as his “Memphis Mojo Barbecue Sauce.” He also has developed a dry rub that he’s calling his M.F.E. (Miracle Flavor Enhancer). And in the very near future, he plans to introduce a wing sauce and salad dressing.

     “It’s like my little goobie dust,” he said.

     In order to prove the appeal of his sauce, Nolan has conducted several taste tests with various brand- name barbecue sauces currently on the market. “99.9 percent of people chose my sauce over the others,” he said. “This is an amazing barbecue sauce that the world needs to know about.”

      Tens of millions worldwide got a chance to see Nolan challenging Eddie Robinson in an underground barbecue cook-off via the Travel Channel. Both teams – Cordova vs. Prospect – grilled pork ribs and presented a menu that represented their neighborhoods.

      Nolan collected a hefty $10,000 grand prize for his efforts. The show aired Aug. 24. The victory, he said, imbued him with an even greater determination to see that his barbecue sauce is distributed nationwide.

     “I’m planning a 10-city tour that will start Oct. 25. Houston (Texas Southern University’s homecoming game) will be my first stop,” he said. “I’m going all across America: St. Louis, Kansas City, Dallas, North Carolina, New Orleans, Montgomery, Ala., Atlanta, Nashville.”

      The pit master also pointed out that he’s purchasing a bus to carry his team on the road. Of course, he will have in tow a big smoker that he built with a catwalk.

      “The girls will dress up in nurse uniforms. And I will dress up in a doctor’s coat and stethoscope,” said Nolan, who plans be in character as the Dr. of Barbecue.

      “I’m at the top of my game. I’m good at what I do. I’m a fulltime barbecue guru. And my blood bleeds barbecue,” he said. “My dad used to say, ‘Son, don’t brag if you can’t back it up.’” But then he added, “Bragging ain’t bragging as long as you can back it up.”

      (For more information about Nathaniel Ray Nolan or his “World Famous Dr. Barbecue Sauce,”call him at 901-314-5596)               

LEGACY: McCann Leronius Reid

      When the clarion was sounded during the civil rights movement for freedom and justice, a young journalist and photographer answered the call – McCann Leronius Reid. He would capture the movement and its aftermath through the lens of his camera and during his stint as editor of the Tri-State Defender.   

      Reid embedded himself in the movement during some of its most pivotal moments and recalled his experiences long after it had ended. After serving more than a dozen years at the newspaper, he continued sounding off as a contributing writer well into the 1980s on issues germane to African Americans.

      The sound of Reid’s voice, however, would eventually fade, and his film camera, now a relic of the past, would no longer capture the spirit of a people determined to break down barriers and overcome racism and injustices.

McCann Leronius Reid

      Reid died Sept. 20 at the Memphis VA Medical Center. He was 90. Relatives, friends and admirers bid him farewell on Sept. 29th during his funeral at Longview Heights Seventh-Day Adventist Church, where he was a member.

      Reid had been in ill health at a private nursing home receiving special care, his wife, Cora Reid, said. She’d hoped to move him to Nashville with her to live with their daughter, Angela Kim Reid-Thompson, director of rehabilitation at Nashville Community Care and Rehabilitation at Bordeaux.

      Though Reid could not join his wife and daughter, the two hold fond memories of a husband and father who lived life to the fullest and left behind an invaluable legacy and an indelible impression on those he’d encountered.

      “I wasn’t too much aware of what was going on at that time until years later,” said Cora Reid, a retired Memphis City Schools teacher. “Then I realized how important of a person my husband was in the civil rights movement.”

      What she remembers most was that her husband was away from home a lot, somewhere recording history as a journalist and photographer. “It didn’t dawn on me…but he contributed a lot to the civil rights movement,” she said. “[But] I don’t know whether I felt the danger until years later.”

      Reid happened to be in the right places and at the right time as an eyewitness to history, she said. He met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when they were students at Boston University. Dr. King would go on to lead a “movement” and Reid would become an active participant and eventually document it. 

      For example, as a journalist, Reid put pen to paper and created a narrative detailing the African-American struggle. As a photographer, he captured the heart and soul of those in the trenches and others on the front line for justice. Then he transfixed it all for posterity.

      Reid participated in a number of marches and documented his experiences, including the march that drew Dr. King to Memphis to demand better working conditions for the city’s sanitation workers.  

      “My father had a lot of integrity,” Reid-Thompson said. “The way he lived was in support and alignment with nonviolence. His writing was a statement, his voice. He allowed his pen to be the power.”

      Reid-Thompson also remembers her father as a quiet, gentle man with a wit humor. “He was very unassuming, but a renaissance man,” she noted.

      Audrey McGhee, the former publisher of the TSD, also remembers Reid as being “quiet and unassuming.” What she remembers most, however, was that he was dedicated and devoted to his job and “always on top of things.”

      Though Reid had left the newspaper before McGhee’s tenure as publisher, he’d followed a succession of editors, such as Lewis O. Swingler and Alex Wilson, who challenged the status quo by using the press to affect change.

      Reid’s voice was succinct, deliberate, and he used it to get his point across. He also voiced his concerns about segregated conditions. And when restaurants were desegregating, he and William “Bill” Little, TSD’s sports writer, decided they’d test the law by making an entrance.

      Not willing to bend under the weight of racism and discrimination, Reid filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming that the Memphis Press Scimitar and The Commercial Appeal refused to hire him because of his race and religion.

      Reid eventually found employment at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where he served as editor of the E.E.O.C.’s union paper. He continued to ply his skills as a journalist and later spent his golden years with his family.

      Cora Reid said she doesn’t have a lot of her husband’s work, but “I do have some of his most important photos.”

Mary Nelson sets goal for 'Butterlicious Cookies'

      Mary Nelson calls her cookie baking business “Mary’s Homemade Butterlicious Cookies.” Butterlicious is an apt description for the sweet, savory, butter-flavored cookies that she launched from her home 10 years ago with a recipe from her niece.

      “If it hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t be called ‘The Cookie Lady.’ The butter cookies started with her,” said Nelson, who tweaked the recipe to enhance the flavor of the cookie to make it her own delectable treat.

      Then she tested the market by allowing potential customers to sample her growing product line: strawberry, chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, German chocolate, red velvet, lemon, lemon butter, lemon berry, Snickerdoodles, and peanut butter rice crispy treats with a dribble of chocolate.

Mary Nelson baking 'butterlicious cookies.' (Photo: Wiley Henry)

      “Butter cookies are my specialty, my No. 1 seller,” she said.

      Nelson started getting repeat orders for her cookies about five years ago. “I get teary-eyed when they want to order again,” she said. “I’m amazed. I’m in awe of what God is doing.”

      She makes repeated deliveries to Antonia’s Full Glamour Salon in the Hickory Hill community, where several loyal customers can’t seem to get enough of her cookies. Many of them, she said, convince others to purchase a batch or more.

      “They say, ‘Man, you got to get these cookies.’”

      Like a politician stumping for votes, Nelson canvases the community for customers. She also uses social media. “Before I go into a place of business, I talk to the owner to make sure it’s OK,” she said. “Reno, my son’s barber, says it’s OK and encourages people to try my cookies.”

      Nelson loves baking cookies. However, the love of baking isn’t enough. “What got me into it was my way of getting out of debt. I have to provide for my son,” said Nelson, who was married to Robert Nelson Jr.’s father when she first started baking cookies.

      Divorced for two years, Nelson uses the money from her cookie sales to supplement her income as a dental lab technician. Her son, now 10 years old, gives her a helping hand sometimes when he gets home from STAR Academy, a charter school at Golden Gate Cathedral.

      “He has a lot of wisdom for his age,” she said. “He keeps me going.”

      Nelson works fulltime at her day job and fills cookie orders when she returns home in the afternoon. “I cut the oven off at midnight depending on what I have to accomplish,” she said. “One time I stayed up all night.”

      The cookie business is not yet self-sustaining. But the goal, she said, is to come off the job and bake cookies fulltime. “It is my desire to do this on my own…to own my own business. That’s what I want to do. It’s an avenue to bless people – and my cookies will do that.”

      Baking cookies was not Nelson’s first career choice, however. After graduating from Hillcrest High School in 1986, she studied cosmetology, but failed the state board twice. Then she got a job at Big Lots on Winchester to pay her bills.

      Still searching for a career, Nelson enrolled at Tennessee Technology Center of Memphis and completed six months of an 18-month course, which enabled her to obtain her current job. Later on she took a course from financial author, radio host and motivational speaker Dave Ramsey, “so I can get out of debt.”

      Nelson is farther along in business than when she first started baking cookies. A large hanging calendar is filled with orders for various days of the month, and she continues to write in others. Although baking is her forte, she gives her mother kudos for her culinary skills.

      “I always wanted to cook like my mom,” said Nelson, who has three sisters and a brother. “I tried to get her to open up a restaurant; she wouldn’t.”

      Right now Nelson is focused on establishing her own business, “Mary’s Homemade Butterlicious Cookies.”

      (For more information, contact Mary Nelson at 901-288-9694.)

Authors – and their works – speak to ASALH mission

Toussaint Louverture, Nathaniel Turner, Sengbe Pieh, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman are familiar iconic symbols of heroism whose struggle in the United States, Africa and the Caribbean helped to change the status quo of their day: racism and slavery.

     Celeste-Marie Bernier, the Dorothy K. Hohenberg Chair of Excellence in Art History at the University of Memphis, traces the lives and histories of these six men and women in her book, “Characters of Blood: Black Heroism in the Transatlantic Imagination.”

Dr. Earnest Jenkins (seated left), associate professor of art history
at the University of Memphis, and Celeste-Marie Bernier, the Dorothy
K. Hohenberg Chair of Excellence in Art History at the university.

Currently on leave as professor of African American Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK, Bernier was among dozens of authors showcasing their literary works at the 99th Annual Association for the Study of African American Life and History Convention (ASALH).

     The four-day convention at the Peabody Hotel, Sept. 24-28, drew a smorgasbord of authors locally and nationally, including Circuit Court Judge D’Army Bailey, who autographed copies of his books, “The Education of a Black Radical: A Southern Civil Rights Activist’s Journey, 1959-1964” and “Mine Eyes Have Seen: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Journey.”

     Although the theme of ASALH was “Civil Rights in America,” the number of authors and their scholarly works were particularly broad-based, noteworthy, and coincided with the bevy of academics, government officials, community leaders and activists in attendance.

     The struggle for civil rights and the residual effects of slavery were duly noted in many of the authors’ works and also among the vendors who stocked their booths with artifacts, art, African clothing, and educational material that was reflective of ASALH’s mission.

     The mission is “to promote, research, preserve, interpret and disseminate information about Black life, history and culture to the global community.”

People aren’t telling the story…

Bernier’s work is representative of ASALH’s mission. She researches and writes extensively about racism, inequalities and slavery from the vantage point of a white Briton. There is very little difference between racism, inequalities and slavery in the United States, she said, and racism, inequalities and slavery in Great Britain.


“The big issue in Britain is empire and maniacal, aristocratic inequalities,” Bernier explained. “Growing up there as a kid I learned about slavery through people trading…and slavery was a word that was never used. So we have forces of amnesia that are still very powerful.

     “Currently, governmental practices are to remove references to black British history in favor of mythologizing a white Briton,” she said, “because, it suits current ideas around immigration and conservative policies and racists practices.

     “One of the most powerful experiences has been understanding black British histories and how fascinated black British performers and musicians are with African American histories. So many of them will ask me questions about what I know about African American life and culture.”

     Bernier’s assorted transatlantic experiences and scholarship drew her to Memphis and, of course, the ASALH convention.

     “One of the most powerful things about being in Memphis is teaching courses and research that I do about slavery… (The) city very much has a long history, and a powerful history, not only in terms of social, political, legal issues about slavery, but also music, art, photography.

     “I grew up in a French, Canadian, Irish community. When my mom was dying, she wanted to read Harry Jacob. She didn’t want to read the great white British classics,” Bernier said. “So that notion of understanding poverty and class and nationhood, I was very careful to let people know how I came to this story, why I’m interested, and what it is that I’m trying to do.” 


People aren’t telling the story, she said.

‘Repositories of ongoing history…’

During a mid-day luncheon at the convention, Bailey – lawyer, judge, civil rights activist, actor and author – relayed his experiences growing up in Memphis, participating in the sit-in movement in Louisiana, becoming a black radical and birthing the National Civil Rights Museum

     While “The Education of a Black Radical” encapsulates Bailey’s collective experiences in the civil rights movement in the ‘60s, the book “Mine Eyes Have Seen” is mostly pictorial. Both books, however, trace the author’s journey during that turbulent era.

     An avid reader, Bailey also has a penchant for writing. The world he grew up in and the struggle to overcome the vestiges of Jim Crow laws and the racist practices of its perpetrators is now fodder for his books and lectures.  

     Bailey is telling his own story, which made him the man he is today. And he is not willing to yield that narrative to someone else. The ASALH convention was important to him for that reason, he said, and also because it served as a disseminator of “information about black life, history and culture.”

     “These things are about connections and getting to know people and people getting to know you,” said Bailey. “It’s a chance to talk to people who’re interested in works of history and stories about struggles.”

     The written word is important and books can be “repositories of ongoing history,” Bailey said. For this reason, the authors book signing and the various panel discussions was the underpinning for the ASALH convention.

     “There’s a different breed of people who buy books…hold them…and read the pages,” Bailey said. “It’s more than what the information is in it. It’s an experience when you make the commitment to read a book. The important thing is understanding how the written word can be used to communicate.”