Dear Readers,

I know this story has digressed several times, but I am about to do it again as other memories come rushing back to me. 50 years ago, a couple of weeks after I had enrolled at Alcorn State University, an HBCU located near Lorman, Mississippi, Alcorn was set to play Grambling State University, a SWAC rival, in New Orleans’ Super Dome, which had opened just a month before.

My roommate Eddie Young and several other friends were set to perform at half-time during the game as members of the Alcorn Marching Band. And so I set off to New Orleans on my recently purchased motorcycle with a new friend Dwight Thomas — who went by DT — as a passenger.

At Alcorn, the students from the Urban North kind of hung out with each other. We called ourselves Harambees. That’s how I met DT.

\We set off on Friday night and stayed the night in Hazlehurst, MS before setting off for the Super Dome. As foolish college students — I don’t recommend this to anyone — DT and I were smoking weed as we made it to New Orleans and the Super Dome on this not so large motorcycle.

The lighting in the Super Dome seemed unreal in our rather high condition. The football game was dynamic. But what I remember most was the halftime show with the Golden Girls in their dazzling outfits twirling their batons that seemed surreal. And then Alcorn’s marching band took the field and the crowd went wild, whether or not they had partaken of some weed.