Sunday, August 14, 2016

RIP Ernest Russell


[Photo by Legacy Russell]

Longtime East Village resident Ernest Russell, a photographer and artist, died on July 31. He was 72. He is survived by his two daughters Angola Russell, a lawyer, and Legacy Russell, a writer, curator and artist.

Legacy shared the following tribute with us.


Before there was AOL, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat — there was DIGITALMAN. DIGITALMAN to many of us is Uncle Ernest, Ernie, Uncle Junie, Daddy, El D, Big E, ER, F STOP, ZERO, The King of St. Mark’s, or one of my personal favorites — coined by my dad’s late friend John — “Oooyyy-knee”. (Dad hated that one.)

The energy my dad brought into the world was electric.

In a recent telephone conversation with poet Fred Wilson, Fred told me of how he met my dad via his connection with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He encountered dad for the first time in a picket line. Dad turned to him and asked, “Hey man, you wanna get arrested today?” When Fred hesitated, dad repeated the question: “Do you wanna get arrested today, or not?”

Growing up with my dad meant there were lessons constantly being doled out, and constantly questions being asked. In moments where I came home from school frustrated or upset about something that had happened with a classmate or teacher, he often reacted by telling me, “Legacy, you gotta get tough.”

As I grew older, when faced with professional obstacles and looking for advice, dad would hand me packages wrapped in brown paper, usually from a cut up Trader Joe’s shopping bag and marked with an all-caps Sharpie signature: “FOR LR LOVE DAD”. Inside, nine times out of ten, was a copy of Sun-Tzu’s Art of War. Where dad pushed me to have a thicker skin, he also never hesitated to cry with me, fight with me, laugh with me, dance with me, sing with me. His ability to be both brave and vulnerable at the same time was inspiring. I collected copies of Sun-Tzu’s treatise as gifted by dad over the years; they often made appearances at birthdays or Christmas. In college when my phone would ring late at night, I would answer to hear jazz playing in the background; dad and I would talk about the day and at some point inevitably he would ask, “Legacy, are you reading Art of War? Are you sure you’re paying attention?”

I paid attention. As a kid I watched my dad like a hawk trying to figure him out. To some degree, he was always a mystery to me. Fiercely independent, creative, compassionate, silly, loving, outrageous, irreverent, I wanted to know every part of him, I so wanted to crack the case of the first man I fell in love with. No matter how much I knew about him, I never knew it all, there were somehow always things he said or did that surprised me.

In moments where it felt like there was no order, there was always a method in place, and often one with a flair. When I was a kid he would take me on nighttime bike rides around New York City; we’d fly across town and stop off at La Taza del Oro on 8th Avenue where we’d sit on stools and eat heaps of black beans and yellow rice. On the way home, I’d sit on the bike’s crossbar, sweating in my helmet in the summer heat, and when I started to fall asleep dad, worried that I would fall off, would chirp loudly, “Stay alert, Eyes-of-the-Moon!”

When I decided I was finally old enough to walk to school alone I came to dad preparing for a fight, dad shocked me by granting me permission to do so without missing a beat; I later found out that the strange sense that someone was following me for those first months was in fact dad himself running behind me, hiding in shops and behind trees when I would look over my shoulder. In times where I raised an eyebrow, Dad said it best, “Legacy, don’t you know that I’m a fool?”

When I first started rebelling as a teenager, sneaking around and breaking curfew to hang out with friends, dad, a legendary night owl who was often up until three or four in the morning playing on his computer, would be awake and waiting for me when I got home. I’d unlock the door and step into the brightly lit room of our studio apartment and he would turn around in his computer chair with his finger next to his mouth like Dr. Evil, “Legacy — what am I? A frickin’ idiot?” He always told me that he had “spies in the neighborhood” which is inevitably how he somehow knew I was drinking 40s at Union Square with characters dad deemed less than desirable, or was now wearing fishnets and a plunging neckline when I had walked out of the house in a decent turtleneck and pants.

When I announced as a little girl that I wanted to be a writer, it was dad who had me practice reading my poetry and short stories aloud. When I got super into Shakespeare and entered into a competition at school to perform a soliloquy of Lady Macbeth’s, dad videotaped me rehearsing for hours: “What beast was ’t, then, / That made you break this enterprise to me?”

In the mid-90s, Dad encouraged me to write to black theatre critic Margo Jefferson at The New York Times and ask her to be my mentor. I wrote a pithy letter to Margo, asking simply if, no big deal, we could just meet weekly to critique my new work; eventually Margo responded saying she wouldn’t be able to meet weekly, but that she’d love to keep in touch. Years later, when, in a curiously elegant twist of fate, Margo ended up on the Advisory Board of a journal for which I am now Visual Arts Editor, she wrote me saying, “I still have a letter from you! And imagine my delight when I read about your life and work in the Times a few years ago.”

Dad was a proud member of a diversely eclectic creative and political community. Though always a Harlem boy at heart, he claimed the East Village as his primary stomping ground where, for many years, he hosted friends and family for gatherings at the apartment, or twilight walks and conversations in this very park. In a 1964 New York Times article, dad, a member of the steering committee of East River CORE, was quoted saying, “Emergency repairs are no substitute for a decent school . . . That's why we’re marching.”

Dad spent a lifetime marching, instilling in me the importance of civil rights, vibing deeply with a mantra of equality and justice for all. He also believed in the power of self-love as a politic itself, a key component for collective action. “Love self!” he always reminded me,“You cannot love someone else or stand up for someone else without understanding how to love and defend yourself first.” Both dad and my mom Kamala were the first people in my life to teach me that black lives matter in their demonstrating how to build that self-love and love for others, an enduring lesson that has shaped how I see the world and a key part of my purpose within it.

Dad, you done good. Thanks to you and mom for gifting to me the most wonderful life, you two most wonderful parents. Ernie, we are going to miss you fiercely. And don’t you worry, we’ll keep fighting the good fight in your honor.

9 comments:

  1. Beautiful. Thank you, Legacy. Rest in peace, Ernest.

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  2. A lovely tribute.

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  3. This was a beautiful tribute. Thanks for sharing it. RIP Ernie

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  4. We considered Ernie a 'keeper' While we weren't intimate, Manny and I felt close to him. We joked with him every time we saw him and laughed a lot! I got the digital man emails that always educated me. Ernie, Ernest, Digital Man, has an enduring spirit and we will not only remember him, but feel his presence as long as we're here! I also know how proud he was of his daughters!

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  5. Dear neighbors,

    Ellen and I just got the news of Earnest's passing, and we feel truly saddened. We met Earnest years ago and liked him right away, good sense of humor, big smile, intelligent,thoughtful. Many, many times I'd run into him in Tompkins or a neighborhood street, and we'd stop and have a rich conversation. We knew that he'd had a serious operation for something in his back, and ever since then we cheered him on as he kept walking, kept doing, to keep his strength up, his spirits lively. I admired Earnest, the kind of man I'd like to be myself. We talked a lot about race and found much common ground. I loved to see him pilot his robot cars around the park, and so many little kids gathered around him. God bless and keep Earnest, and let's all do what we can to keep his spirit, the spirit of this blessed neighborhood, alive!

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  6. I liked Ernest and would always have interesting and humorous conversations with him. So sad to read this news.

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  7. Gonna miss laughing about life and politics with Ernest in the park.
    We shared good times and made a difference working together in the East 6th St. block association.
    My condolences to his family and friends.

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  8. Hello Legacy, your Tribute to your Father is a well written thought provoking historical account of the Life of Ernest Russell. I had the rare pleasure of working with your Dad at the NYC Board of Education (now the NYCDOE). We worked in the technology dept, he a field tech and me the office manager. I enjoyed your Dad from the very beginning. He was bright and out spoken. What impressed me the most about him, is his boldness to tell you when you are wrong and acknowledge when you were right, even if he had to admit his wrong. You Father spoke of his daughter proudly. I can remember once you called the office and I answered the phone and you must have asked who was that and he said "don't worry about who that was, are you home, and went on to remind you what you had to do before he got home". But wait, then turned to me and said "Mr. Morrison, what did you say to my daughter? my reply was "nothing", he said you better not..just sharing a memory.

    All of Us at the Field Services Unit were devastated when I learned of his passing and shared it...he left us with fond memories

    May God bless you and your family

    Elder Leonardo Morrison
    Triumphant New Destiny Ministries

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  9. I knew Ernest when I was 17 and he was a 19 year old NYU student. We are together till I was 21. It was a turbulent time and we were so young. Glad to hear he became such a loving father

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