"We Win in Our Story"
The Mims, Rondo, and Black Joy
When I first meet Vivian Mims, I clock her at about 6’4’’ tall. Turns out, she’s 5’9’’, and my overestimation is a testament to her personality. A tower of joviality, yet powerful as a hurricane.
We’re sitting in the vestibule at Flava Cafe, a community-oriented coffee shop at the corner of University and Dale– once a portal into the heart of Rondo, the once-thriving Black community, bifurcated and all but destroyed by the construction of I-94 starting in 1956. She’s like the mayor, waving to incoming customers as they wave back.
“Hey, baby!” She shouts.
“I feed them,” she explains.
The highway construction was responsible for the closure or demolition of 300 businesses. Seven hundred family homes were demolished. But The Mims’ was not one of them. They have been living in the neighborhood for four generations, and their household– which the family has dubbed “A-Block,” is still presided over by Vivian’s 93-year-old mother, the family matriarch, Miss Juanell (sometimes spelled “Warnell” ) Mims. When she passes, Vivian will step into the role of matriarch, and she seems well-poised for this important role.
As she bangs out a classic soul food meal inspired by her mama’s Sunday dinners– fried chicken using birds she butchers with the precision of, well, a butcher; turkey tail collards; vats of macaroni and cheese the size of a baby pool; pineapple upside down cakes; and sweet potato pies compliments of Miss Juanell herself– she contemplates how she got here.
But you can’t tell Vivian’s story without telling the story of her brother Davvie (also jovial, also towering). The two are the remaining siblings of four. When brothers Keith and then later Medcaw passed away, Davvie turned to Vivian and said: “We have to do something now.”
“Something,” meaning a way to pick up the family tradition of “projects.” Big projects– building kayaks, six foot aquariums, making music.
“And every project got finished,” says Davvie. “My brothers were very intelligent.” So now that it was going to be just Davvie and Vivian, they had to pick up the “doing something” family way.
You see, you can’t tell the story of the Mims without talking about the whole family. That’s the Mims.
“Stick together.”
Juanell, age 93, graduated from Tuskegee Institute in the 1950’s, became the first Black manager of Sears in St. Paul, and as a working mother of four, says this was her mantra: “Stick together.”
And the family, who either live in the same household or talk multiple times daily, have never forgotten it. They stick together in a way that family units don’t tend to do today, in a world with social media and one million distractions. Such straightforward ideas might seem quaint. But when iconic Black actress Cicely Tyson died at the age of 96, she revealed her secret to a long, happy life:
“To thine own self be true.” Quaint, maybe. But effective.
“It started out when we were young,” Vivian explains. “That’s just what our mom did, because she had four, and so our oldest brother Medcaw was responsible for me– he was eight years older so he had to take care of his little sister. There’s strength in numbers. In Rondo community it was based in the church, and mom’s affiliations down at Sears. She’d say, “You’re coming down here. I don’t need you by yourself.’ I did my homework, I was in Winnie the Pooh fashion shows, they had a whole cafeteria back in the day, and a candy and popcorn stand in the middle of the store!”
Davvie chimes in: “The whole store smelled like popcorn!”
This is also the Mims. Their family has experienced as much sorrow as the next, but they choose joy.
Juanell was strict– a working mother, she had breakfast on the table for everyone before leaving, dinner on the table when she got home, and sewed everyone’s clothes. She was an excellent seamstress. But Rondo community buttressed her workload.
“That was the southern Black way,” remembers Davvie. Everyone looked out for each other. “And don’t have them [the neighbors] give you a butt whooping— and then [your parents] get home and give you another one! But they also gave you apple pie and a glass of milk in our Rondo— it was a cohesive landing point.”
Stick together.
Juanell and her husband, “Lil David,” (built like a linebacker– nothing little about him) of 41 years met in Alabama where Juanell was attending college. They traveled north with the Great Migration, landing in Minnesota where some of the few jobs available to Black men during that time in America– as railroad cooks and porters– were abundant, thanks to the Empire Builder Train stop at Union Station in downtown St. Paul. Many of the families settled in Rondo— more than 80 percent of St. Paul’s Black community once lived in Rondo.
Juanell and David’s relationship was tumultuous. Like many of his colleagues, David drank heavily, which made life difficult.
“But she was his sweetie,” remembers Vivian. “They also showed us what Black love is, you know. Every Valentine's Day, no matter where daddy was, mama got a dozen long-stem red roses. No matter where he was, they were delivered to her. He made sure she had Valentine roses. He was young, and she was young, and they started having a family. And, you know, trying to figure it out.”
In the spirit of the family mantra, Davvie remembers his daddy outfitting him in a blazer and disguising him as just another porter so that he could come to work with his dad.
“As long as you had a job nobody noticed. They say all Blacks look alike,” he half-jokes.
It’s a joke that stings. Railroad porter jobs were an extension of slavery and then Jim Crow, beginning as unpaid labor where white passengers would tip, knowing that the porters were limited to working for nothing– it’s the ugly origin story of restaurant tipping culture in the United States.
Davvie uses the experience for characters in Juanell’s Chair, the teleplay he’s authoring with Vivian’s help (the “something” that they've settled on, the big project that they are, yes, finishing).
“I have a scene right now where characters are able to move around like chess pieces, because nobody even knew what you looked like. Just brown bodies.”
Davvie says when he sees the typical Black American story presented in the media, he thinks, “I’ve heard this story a hundred times.” And leaning into the tragedy of the Black American story? That’s not the Mims.
“It’s endemic with America– it’s easy to keep people down when you keep telling them that they are down.”
Vivian concurs.
“It’s just so much easier for people to accept the negative narrative about Black culture. It's like anything bad that happens to you. You know, it resonates with you 50 times more than the positive.”
The script opens with the uprising surrounding George Floyd’s murder– a now-familiar backdrop to the Black American tale. But soon, the scene cuts to a wounded protester— Juanell’s granddaughter— being dragged into A Block. Within moments, the family is cracking up at Juanell’s jokes. She’s not too old to be a cut-up, infusing the heavy moment with humor– a well-exercised muscle and survival technique for any Black woman who has endured 93 years of America, still standing tall and proud.
Everything for the Mims is anchored with her.
In attendance at our BFA Table, and personally responsible for the succulent sweet potato pies we all enjoyed on that glorious evening, the family matriarch says that she’s “just lucky to be here,” and “that’s all I need to say.”
Sho ‘nuf.
But after 93 years on the planet, she undoubtedly has a lot to say, and it’s through the words of Davvie and Vivian that she will live on.
The teleplay is being shopped to the major networks, and interweaves fantasy, fiction, history, and reality. It harkens to the past, and shoots into the future.
“Think of it as Raiders of the Lost Ark for Black folks,” says Davvie.
And here’s the important part:
“We win in our story. This is not about Black people running through the cotton field and finally being liberated. This is a story where Black people are liberated.”
Find out more about Juanell’s Chair at Rice Roots LLC.
ohhh this is so great- Viv is my dear friend and i love Juanell as welll - thanks for a beautiful piece
Nice to get reacquainted with your writing here on Substack - beautiful piece