Marian Cannon stood on “the big stage.”
Her spelling prowess carried her there as one of two students representing the 13 sections of eighth graders in the Camp Curtin Middle School spelling bee. The principal, acting as moderator, gave the word “catarrh.” The old-fashioned term for flu knocked out a huge percentage of kids.
“People were dropping like flies,” she said.
Then Marian took her turn.
C-A-T-A-R-R-H.
“And there was this long moment of silence,” Marian Cannon Dornell recalls now, decades later. “What happened next, I have never heard of before. The principal called back all the kids who had been knocked out.”
But the principal could try only so many end runs around the black girl who knew how to spell the hardest words.
“I went on to win that spelling bee,” Dornell says, “and I still have that gold medal from Merriam-Webster.”
It took a book of poetry, 10 years in the making, to help erase the legacy of bitterness from constant racist treatment—the segregated soda fountain, the segregated YMCA, getting cast as the laundress in school plays—that Dornell experienced during her Harrisburg childhood. Now, her book, “Unicorn in Captivity,” will be released at a Feb. 11 YWCA event examining poetry and perspectives on race in Harrisburg.
Reaching Out
Dornell was born in Harrisburg Hospital in 1939 to “sheltering, nurturing parents” who were “very conservative and very protective.”
“They made sure I knew the positive impact African Americans made on history,” she says.
Many of Dornell’s poems, to be shared and discussed at the YWCA event, pull back the curtain on the history of slavery in Harrisburg. One poem, “Naomi’s Harvest,” is set at Fort Hunter, the narrative of a woman harvesting fragrant herbs that she can’t smell but that, nonetheless, bring back memories of the mother she was torn from at a Philadelphia slave market.
A Penn State poetry professor introduced Dornell to an Altoona poet who mentored her. Dornell used poetry as a tool to “forgive Harrisburg for treating a nice girl like me in such a callous way.” She and her husband, Edwin, had been away from Harrisburg for much of their careers—his in public health, hers in nursing after their five children “left the nest.” They returned to the area recently, now living in retirement at Bethany Village.
“I reached out to Harrisburg, and Harrisburg reached out to me,” Dornell says.
Through historian George Nagle, she learned of Fort Hunter’s slavery legacy and its nearby African-American cemetery. Fort Hunter officials staged a walk to the peaceful graveyard, where Dornell read “Naomi’s Harvest” to “100 people of all ages and all races. That’s when I knew I had to forgive because people are hungry for these experiences.”
To Better Understand
Dornell says she can see “that things have improved so much” in her hometown, what with Nathaniel Gadsden’s Writers Wordshops and Jump Street “creating energy and stuff for young people to do,” and Midtown Scholar Bookstore providing “another safe place” and the YWCA with its mission of eliminating racism and empowering women.
Dornell’s appearance at the YWCA dovetails with its mission year-round—not just Black History Month, says Racial Justice Program Coordinator Amanda Arbour.
“The struggles that we have today with race and racism are so much built up on the history of our city and nation,” Arbour says. “It’s vital that we explore and learn and understand what that history is in order to better understand.”
Dornell has “always loved words.” She’s nervous about making herself vulnerable by doing readings about race, but, through her poems, she hopes to provide a platform and the language for discussing topics that some consider taboo.
“I like to take words and thoughts down to their lowest common denominator, but I’m interested in how one uses language to rhyme it, to put it in a rhythm, to spell things out with people,” she says.
If people are to shed fear and to stop categorizing others, it’s essential to understand the “living history” of slavery and racism, Dornell says. Perpetuating and handing down the fear of an African-American man walking down the street or of rap artists “speaking their own truth about life as a black” is “still a form of enslavement.”
“I use history as a way of documenting the way it was, and then I use my conversation to say that we may not be enslaving people in such a way as we own other people, but we deny them rights,” she says. “We deny them a place in the community because of our fear.”
Arbour agrees that exploring the history of slavery helps reveal the root causes of racism and ongoing tension around such incidents as the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.
“Racism is always present, even though it’s under the surface,” Arbour says. “When things like that happen, that just brings it out. White people, in particular, don’t talk enough about race. It’s an educational opportunity for everyone to learn about our history.”
Through her poetry, Dornell wants to expose readers and listeners to “the links between the history and the legacy and the choices they make today.”
“It’s a different way of using art and history as a way to encourage people to think about their actions and their thoughts every day regarding race, racism and justice,” she says.
The book launch and lecture, “Unicorn in Captivity: Poetry & Perspectives on Race in Harrisburg,” by Marian Cannon Dornell will be held on Feb. 11 at 5:30 p.m., with light refreshments at 5 p.m., at the YWCA Greater Harrisburg, 1101 Market St., Harrisburg. The snow date is Feb. 24. Visit www.ywcahbg.com.
