DEEP WATERS

I've stayed away from controversial topics here recently. Sometimes when you're working through your own personal drama, you just don't have the mental and emotional energy to focus on anyone else's drama. So I've kept it pretty light and fun for the most part. But this week, I had to write about one particular news story. It just struck a nerve. Most of you have heard about the teen girl assaulted by a police deputy in her Columbia, South Carolina classroom . Most of you have seen footage of the attack. All of us have come to our respective conclusions. I've heard several over the last week. "The Columbia Sheriff was right to fire Deputy Ben Fields. This was police brutality at its worst." "The girl deserved the treatment she got. With her horrible attitude and defiance, she needed a beat-down." "The teacher is at fault here. Teachers should have better classroom management and control over their students." "T...

My first introduction to Maya Angelou was her 1969 memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings . I was a young teenage girl in Mrs. Simms English II class at Western High School in Baltimore, Maryland when I entered the world of this incredible woman - a world that began with pain and disadvantage. Many of us know the statuesque she-ro - the acclaimed poet, author, Civil Rights activist, actor, singer, friend and co-laborer with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. That was Maya Angelou. But she was also the little girl whose parents divorced when she was only 3-years-old. The young child who was then uprooted from her native St. Louis, Missouri and planted in small-town Stamp, Arkansas with her grandmother. The tender baby girl of eight who was raped by her mother's boyfriend and stripped of her innocence. She was also the courageous young child who exposed this crime and her assailant, revealing it to her family. The little girl who refused to speak for six whole years , a...