tradition and are distinguished by the speech pat-
terns of the narrators. In “The Lesson,” “My Man
Bovanne,” and the title story, she affirms the expe-
riences of the black community and especially the
women in it.
During the period after this publication, she
traveled to Cuba and Vietnam and established
ties to women’s organizations in those countries.
She also moved to Atlanta with her daughter. In
1977, she published her second collection of sto-
ries, The Sea Birds Are Still Alive, which was in-
fluenced by these experiences. The key characters
of several of the stories are community activists
who must come to terms with the complexities of
a black community pulled in different directions
while still suffering the effects of racism. Within
the community, there is conflict over political and
gender issues. The heroic figures are women who
try to engage these concerns while moving the
community forward.
In her first novel, The Salt Eaters (1980), Bam-
bara continues this theme through the story of
Velma Henry, a southern activist who is trying to
hold together the centripetal forces of the social
movements in her community. Because each group
believes its cause is most important, they refuse to
cooperate and thus effectively eliminate the possi-
bility for social change. In despair, Velma attempts
suicide but is resuscitated through the efforts of
the faith healer Minnie Ransom. The message of
the text is that life inherently involves change and
that there is no secure, fixed identity for either self
or community. Life, according to Bambara in this
work, is a constant process of re-creation. The Salt
Eaters won the 1981 America Book Award.
Bambara began working in other genres after
the publication of the novel. In line with her train-
ing in theater, she had been writing screenplays for
several years. Zora had been produced in Boston
in 1971, The Johnson Girls by NET in 1972, and
Transactions by Atlanta University in 1979. In
1981, ABC produced The Long Night. Bambara
also adapted TONI MORRISON’s novel Tar Baby in
- Her most important film project was The
Bombing of Osage in 1986, which tells the story of
MOVE, a radical black organization that was the
target of police action, including a bomb, which
killed several people, including children, and de-
stroyed much of the neighborhood. It won awards
for best documentary from both the Pennsylvania
Association of Broadcasters and the National Black
Programming Consortium.
In 1993, she was diagnosed with colon cancer
and underwent extensive treatment. She contin-
ued to work, however, focusing her attention on
Louis Massiah’s documentary W. E. B. DuBois: A
Biography in Four Voices, which was produced in
early 1995. She died on December 9 of that year.
A collection of her essays and stories, Deep
Sightings and Rescue Missions, was edited by TONI
MORRISON and published by Pantheon in 1996.
Three years later, the same press brought out Those
Bones Are Not My Child, also edited by Morrison.
This novel was the result of 12 years of research
into the Atlanta child murders, which occurred in
the early 1980s, and traces one family’s dealings
with corruption, cover-up, and incompetence in
the investigation.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Schirack, Maureen. “Toni Cade Bambara, 1939–1995.”
Available online. URL: http://www.edwardsly.
com/bambara.htm. Accessed September 28, 2006.
Keith ByermanBanneker, Benjamin (1731–1806)
A social critic, inventor, almanac compiler, as-
tronomer, mathematician, and poet, Benjamin
Banneker was, like PHILLIS WHEATLEY and OL AU-
DAH EQUIANO, living evidence to debunk prevail-
ing 18th-century ethnic notions about the innate
inferiority of Africans and their descendants. Even
the framer of the Declaration of Independence,
Thomas Jefferson, wrote, in Notes on State of Vir-
ginia, that blacks, “in reason [are] much inferior
[to whites] as I think one could scarcely be found
capable of tracing and comprehending the investi-
gations of Euclid; and in imagination they are dull
tasteless, and anomalous” (139). Banneker, the
son and grandson of former slaves and a farmer
by profession, was born free on November 9, 1731,
on a farm near the Patapsco River, a short distanceBanneker, Benjamin 31