in HER words
To the Women I Love BY TIAN N A SPEARS
M
y grandmother was everything. Almeda Adrienne Clavon was born in 1916 in South Carolina, the ninth of 10 children. She was raised in Detroit and was a well-known athlete. In 1934 she attended Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, on a full academic and athletic scholarship for basketball and tennis. She was a shooting guard on the women’s basketball team, which remained undefeated in the four years she attended. Almeda started her teaching career in Asheville, North Carolina, where she met my grandfather, Arthur Eugene Spears Jr. My Tianna and her grandmother Almeda grandfather in the late ’90s at her grandparents’ house on Red Oak Avenue. returned from
O RI G I N A L LY FR OM LO S A N G E L E S,
T H E AUT H O R WAS
RA I S E D I N D U R HAM. S H E H A S WRI TTEN F O R A M E R ICA N DIPLO M ACY ,
LO S A NGE L E S
T IM E S, M ATA DOR N E T WO RK A ND PO L IT ICO, A N D
WA S F E AT URED O N A B C N E WS,
B US I N E S S I N SI DER , C N N , N P R, P RI ’ S
T H E WO RL D A ND
I N T H E NE W YO R K T IM E S. T I A N NA I S
T H E F O UN D E R OF A STO RY T E L L I NG CO L L E CT I V E
WE B S I T E CA L LED
T I A N N A’ S C RE ATI VE A N D C RE ATO R OF
T H E B LO G “ WHAT’ S UP WI T H T I A N NA.”
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overseas after WWII, and my grandparents had three children – Arthur Eugene Spears III, H. Michael Spears and Judith. My grandmother went on to teach at J.A. Whitted high school and Brogden Junior High School in Durham. One of my favorite stories is about how my grandmother raised money from 1959 to 1962 to take her Black and brown students to see the Harlem Globetrotters at Dorton Arena in Raleigh. My grandfather worked as an accountant for North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company for 48 years. The legacy that the two left behind still lives on in Durham, on Parrish Street (Black Wall Street), near Hayti and on Red Oak Avenue. My grandparents were married for 58 years. The stories passed down are stories that live deep within me, and that is what gives me strength. When I was younger, I wanted to be strong in the way that my grandmother was strong. I was 7 years old when my grandfather left this Earth and 8 when my grandmother passed away. My mother told me I could wear whatever I wanted to the funeral. I chose the yellow dress my grandmother bought me. I still remember my mother explaining that I didn’t have to only wear black to funerals: “What do you think your grandmother would wear?” My little brother, Michael Spears, cousin Arthur Eugene Spears IV and I played in the grass outside of the funeral at B. N. Duke Auditorium on the campus of North
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Carolina Central University. My
father,
H. Michael Spears,
