03 Aug Lula Smokie Hudson

Comrades,

Last week I learned our Sister, Smokie Hudson, had died in Albuquerque, NM, in late September. She was 63. I have been in touch with her son, Derek, who has been living in Japan. He just came to the U.S. to try to take care of things–whatever that might mean. Smokie didn’t want a memorial, so he’s gathering her possessions, and going on to D.C. to see some of her friends from law school there. Maybe they’ll have a dinner. He wrote that he was exhausted and overwhelmed with grief, but would get back to me some-time this week.

I thought those of us I could find who knew Smokie would want to send out a lovely thought into the universe for our Sister, who, like all of us, offered her very life to our struggle for the freedom of black and all other oppressed people.
Attached are two photos that include Smokie, taken when some of us got together in Hudson, New York, in 1988. One photo includes Bobby Bowen, also recently gone; and, also, it includes our Comrade Darron Perkins, now locked down forever probably in an Illinois prison. With the hope that all of you are holding on, I send my love.

Elaine Brown

Submitted, courtesy of Melvin Dixon
Commemorator.net

Comrade Lover

For Lula Smokie Hudson
(And All Comrades Who Have Loved…..)

Took me in
with her eyes
Took me into
the basement of the dorm,
and later, into her home…
Took me into her heart, for a while.
Took me away from war, helped me to still smile…
Made me see
by seeing something more
in me, allowing the young poet to know
what a relationship could be…
We talked not of love, or other bourgeois constraints
living only for struggle, without complaint.
We look back now, see photos never shared,
and mourn the departed comrades, realizing
how much we really cared….

Evans Derrell Hopkins
11/22/12