I love engaging in conversations with senior citizens. I know that may be a strange confession to make, but all of my life, I sought out friendships with people who are quite a bit older than myself. As a child, I was attached at the hip to my grandmother and Grandfather. I spent my summers as a child, with my grandmother and grandfather in Tampa, Florida.

Elders, in my opinion, are the greatest voices of reason in the world. Most of my closest friends now are women in their seasoned years. They provide me with pure, unfiltered wisdom and a voice or clarity that is lost in our current society.

Crystalized Intelligence is referred to as the accumulated knowledge a person can retain. It is the ability to use knowledge previously acquired through education and experience. Fluid Intelligence is defined as the ability to perceive relationships independent of previous specific practice or instruction concerning those relationships. This type of intelligence involves being able to think and reason abstractly as well as solve problems. Together, they form what psychologists call General Knowledge.

There are a few differences between Crystalized and Fluid Intelligence. Fluid Intelligence refers to the current knowledge and involves the openness to learning new things. Crystalized Intelligence refers to prior knowledge and involves recalling specific facts.

I believe that I am squarely in the Fluid Intelligence stage of my life. I love learning new things and can recall current knowledge very accurately. My senior friends lie squarely in the Crystallized Intelligence stage…the stage that I want to arrive at in my life.

The ability of these seasoned saints (as I call them) to recall and share with me their lives as Negros, Black Americans, and now African Americans is astounding. They are voices of clarity regarding American history and how slavery has had a profound impact on black and brown people.

For example, my friend and a seasoned saint, Gloria, one day shared that due to her fair complexion, many white men and women in the South thought that she was white. This was very upsetting for her as she felt proud to be of the black roots. She said that she did not want to abandon her race by “passing” as a white woman. She moved to the north and changed her name to avoid “other people’s” opinions of her. Once she moved to a northern state, she used her voice to help get blacks hired in the airline industry.

My grandfather’s first job as a young man in Chicago was as a Pullman Porter when, at that time, being employed as a Pullman Porter was considered a coveted job for black men. He worked there until he had an opportunity to work for the Post Office as a postman. It was in Chicago where he met and married my grandmother. She was a successful businesswoman in her own right. Margaret was one of very few negro women who owned commercial property. Well-read and full of life, PT and Margaret retired from working, sold their properties, and moved to Florida in 1970.

Settling into a nice retirement life was not PT’s calling. He saw and experienced many racial injustices in his lifetime, and he was not about to settle down to a sedate life in Florida. In his adopted city of Tampa, PT began his new career as a political and civil rights activist and a staunch defender of justice and equality.  

He was as eloquent a speaker as he was a writer. Blacks would often read his opinions in either the “Letters to the Editor” or “My View” columns in the Tampa Bay Times and St. Petersburg Times newspapers. Always wearing his trademark bowtie, PT could be seen everywhere, from the chambers of the city council to the boardroom of the Democratic Party to the office of the NAACP.

PT was a Democratic precinct committeeman for more than 20 years and served as the first vice president of the Democratic Black Caucus of Florida. He attended law school and graduated with a paralegal certificate at the age of 75.

At the age of 80, PT worked as a paralegal at Gulf Coast Legal Services. PT used his voice of clarity to speak on behalf of Blacks and senior citizens’ rights throughout the state of Florida. Until just before his death at the age of 91, he was still writing letters on behalf of the Tampa Bay Commission on Aging.

These voices of clarity cried out in the night when we were being hunted and abused. These voices taught me the value of using my voice as a beacon in the night to bring light to a troubled world.