Tom Feelings, visionary: a master of the craft of image opened doors in publishing - tribute

Black Issues Book Review, Jan-Feb, 2004 by Bernette Ford, George Ford

Tom Feelings, a celebrated illustrator of children's books, died August 25, 2003, at age 70, in Mexico where he was under-going treatment for cancer according to the Associated Press. Since 1989, he had been an art professor at the University of South Carolina. In his career, Feelings had illustrated 20 books and won numerous awards, including the Coretta Scott King Award of the American Library Association and the Caldecott Honor Books Award. He was born and reared in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York. Feelings had been an artist in the United States Air Force in the 1950s and later studied art in New York at the School of the Visual Arts. Black Issues Book Review asked two of his associates in the world of publishing for children to reflect on his life and his legacy.

IN THE MIDDLE 1970s, Tom Feelings put out "the word" among the handfull of young black authors, illustrators, editors and designers who were then working in the field of children's books. He wanted to form a group to support individuals in the lonely pursuit of their careers--in the nearly all-white world of children's literature.

As with the message of a drumbeat, people began to hear the word, and within a few weeks some 10 or 12 of us gathered to share experiences, works-in-progress, dreams and nightmares. Many of us early members fulfilled their dreams as published authors, illustrators, agents and independent publishers. Joyce Hanson, Pat Cummings, Valerie Flournoy, Rashida Ismaeli, Marie Brown, Wade and Cheryl Hudson--the list goes on.

As the word spread and our numbers grew, we became Black Creators for Children, meeting twice monthly at the Harlem State Office Building, organizing book fairs and art shows for the community, networking, formulating "the criteria" for writing and illustrating children's books by, for, and about African Americans, and eventually publishing three issues of a two-color broadside, Watoto, the magazine for black children.

We were privileged to be led by such a man as Tom Feelings, who would cringe if he heard anyone call him a leader. But lead us he did, with his quiet power, like a griot, constantly reminding us from whence we had come and where we were going.

Back then, he shared with us a dummy book of drawings for what would become more than 20 years' agonizing work for Tom Feelings--The Middle Passage: White Ships, Black Cargo (Dial Books for Young Readers, November 1995). But as Tom so frequently reminded us, the duality of black life--the pleasure inherent in and concurrent with our pain--was what made him who he was; what made us what we are. We believe it is what gave him the courage to continue on in the painful process of creating the work. The portrayal of that duality of black life in America, through the peculiar institution of slavery from the time we left the motherland, is what made The Middle Passage--a book like no other that had gone before it--such an extraordinary achievement. And it is why that book will remain such a precious gift to our people, and especially to our children. As the Jews remind their children about the Holocaust, so Tom Feelings reveals for our children the truth about our struggle for survival--starting with The Middle Passage. It is a painful truth, but it is one we must face nevertheless.

Tom was one of a handful of dedicated Brooklyn artists and writers who came of age in the early '60s-notable among them Ernest Crichlow, Elton Fax, Paule Marshall, and Jacob and Gwen Lawrence [as well as George Ford]. These and other artists and writers drew inspiration for their work from the everyday lives of the people in their own community. Together, with librarians, teachers and activists in the publishing community, they pressed the major publishers to include more images, authentic images, of black life in children's books. The struggle was real, and it is ongoing. The pain and reality of exclusion did not necessarily make for unity among us, but the artists were united by a common interest in black history and culture, and a determination to explore creative means of expressing the uniqueness of African Americans.

The degree to which Tom Feelings absorbed these principles and propagated those ideas, influencing literally hundreds of artists and writers, as well as the dedication and energy he applied in his own work, were awe-inspiring. Those qualities were everlasting throughout his career.

Tom loved the look and lilt of the faces and forms of his neighbors, as they went about their lives in the city. He felt pain over the unknown dangers awaiting children who did so much of their growing up in the streets. He also rejoiced that so much personal beauty could be manifested ha our people, no matter what the circumstances.

From his first drawings of neighborhood children at rest and at play half a century ago to the gripping images of the slave trade conceived in his final years, the work of Tom Feelings has been consistently sensitive and deeply felt, embodying an atmosphere of mystery and wonder.