The National Conference of Artist, the Center for Black Literature of Medgar Evers College, Friends & Family of Tom Feelings, will celebrate his life and legacy with a 2-day memorial, Friday, February 27 and 28, 2004. Our dear brother, master illustrator, sculptor and very popular nice guy, made his transition on August 25 after recently learning that he had cancer. Family and friends joined him in his fight of this dreaded disease, and held a 70th birthday party for him on May 18 (the day before his birthday) in his longtime community of Brooklyn, NY. He had never had a birthday party prior to this, and wanted to celebrate with his friends, not knowing how bad the condition was.

Friends started a fundraising drive to send him to a facility in Germany that specialized in cancer patients, but he became too weak to travel and was hospitalized in South Carolina until he got strong enough to travel. Tom traveled to a similar facility in Mexico, but the cancer had spread too far, and time was not on his side.

The first memorial tribute, sponsored by The Center for Black Literature of Medgar Evers College, will take place at Medgar Evers’ Founder’s Auditorium, 1650 Bedford Avenue, followed the next day with a memorial service and salute sponsored by Rev. Johnny Ray Youngblood’s St. Paul’s Baptist Church, 859 Hendrix St., where Tom suggested as his choice of place for celebrating his homegoing.

Both tributes will be held in his beloved Brooklyn. A partial list of invited guests include, Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Jim Barnes, Elombe Brath, Ernie Crichlow, Errol Doris, Cy Edwards, Paul Goodnight, Rev. Marshall Hatch, Eli Kince, Atiba Kwabena, Sylvia Huen, Abbey Lincoln, George Edward Tait, Quincy Troupe, Randy Weston, Louis Reyes Rivera, Camille Yarbrough, Bunch Washington, Askia Muhammad Toure, Chairman Silas H. Rhodes of the School of Visual Art, The Putnam Avenue Group, Imani Dancers, Drummers and Singers and the St. Paul’s Community praise ministries.

Many of Tom’s lifelong friends, and some new ones have pitched in to form a committee and production team headed by Co-chairs, Kwame Brathwaite, NCA president and Dr. Brenda Greene, Director of The Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers.

Committee members and friends, Richard Barclift, Gloria C. Thomas, Gertrude Harvey, Khaliyah Washington-Seely, Gwendolyn Wilson, Lillian Harvey, Lafayette Robinson, Grant Spears, Surya Peterson, Izell Glover, Jimmie Mannas, Emmett Wigglesworth, Kitty Chavis, Betty Thomas, Abdul Aziz, Miriam Francis, Brenda Mattingly, Otto Neals, Pat Cummings, Ruth Edwards, Joan Banks and Matthew Meade, have put together a program that includes friends from all over the U.S. This tribute is endorsed by Kamili Feelings, Tom’s youngest son and executor of his estate.

Copies of many of Tom’s books, The Middle Passage: White Ships, Black Cargo; Jambo Means Hello; Moja Means One; and others will be on sale by Nubian Heritage Bookstore at both venues.
 

• Tom Feelings
  
  His mighty pen connected continents of Africans
  from Ghana to Guyana to Haiti and Gullahland
  griot of the Middle Passage
  the triangular trade of human flesh and souls
  he gave the blueprint of remembrance
  for those suffering amnesia and passivity
  a quiet giant whose brush was razor sharp
  whipping and stirring broken souls into shape
  if they only looked at his canvas
  a mirror for millions in the Diaspora
  a map of the past, present and future
  describing the happy times and mournful moments
  in our daily round
  Tom made us not forget the bigger picture
  called humanity and eternity.
  
  --marvin x
  
   
• Tom Feelings
  Tom Feelings is a legend.  I met Tom when I attended my first NCA Conference.  I was a college student, not too long out of Vietnam.  It was a very confusing time and I needed clarity to develop structure in my life.  I met some incredible people such as Jon Onye Lockard, Samella Lewis, John Biggers – too many to list here.  Tom impressed me by what he said, changing my view completely on art and its contribution to society.  He simply told me to be responsible for being an image-maker.   It was the first time I heard passion used in the same sentence as substance.  Clearly, I was moved and realized that life has an order to it, and for each stage of growth there is rite of passage. Tom quoted “Each rite requires sacrifice blessed with insightful gains, wisdom being one of them.”
  
  People like Tom have made great sacrifices because their contributions are enormous.  Tom has used miles of conté crayon and graphite to develop some of the most powerful images about our history that I have ever seen anywhere.  I often ask myself where did he find the time to do all that work and how did he do it so well.  He did not concern himself with this.  His only concern was how much time he had left and that the work had to be done. 
  
  Tom was always reassuring me that what we are doing as artists is a necessary reminder of our humane existence in the world today.  Without Tom’s positive influence and people like him, we can become very vulnerable where greed and jealousy becomes normal conversation.  Lazy stylists are thought of as nobility and mediocre talent is considered genius.
  
  Tom could not afford to be lazy and mediocrity is not a consideration.  Mr. Feelings moved in a direction that lifted our spirits, brought meaning to our lives and showered us with unforgettable messages of hope.  This hope is a train, a train moving with the colorful sounds of Duke Ellington -- a train moving with the powerful pen of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.  When we look from the window of this train the landscape is changed by the magnificent power of Richard Hunt’s and Augusta Savage’s sculpture strewn throughout this earth from coast to coast.  Moreover, the inside of the train is covered with the collage mastery of Romare Bearden.  This train is covered with integrity and truth, which shines like a prism, shooting its light in every direction on all coasts from the incredible image that lies within the pages of the book called the “Middle Passage”.  This book taught us how to mourn and to celebrate ourselves.  A book of no words to show us that truly a picture is worth a thousand words.  It taught me that every race, creed and religion was involved with the slaughter of a trusting and thriving civilization for capital gain.  Tom reminded me the only true victim was the African woman.  She gained an inner spirit, an energy that fortified us beyond our own comprehension. 
  
  This book was more powerful than the man who created it.  Nevertheless, it could only take a person with inner resolve and a strong sense of history to manifest such a visual piece of literature.  This is genius.
  
  Thanks Tom for your sense of humor and I thank the Creator for you.
  Paul T. Goodnight
  
   
• Tom was one of my best teachers, my biggest fan, and my greatest support. I take solace in the fact that his work will live on and in knowing that few other people have ever enriched and educated the world to the extent that Tom did.
  
  Ruth Edwards, book artist
   
   
• The passing of award winning illustrator, painter and visual artist Tom Feelings on August 25, 2003 was a tremendous loss to the African-American art world in particular and, as quite as it is kept, the art world in general. Recognized by most of his peers in the craft of illustration he had achieved and outstanding measure of success in a career, which spanned from at least the late 1950s until his death last month. It was a career where Tom sought to graphically erase the stereotypical depiction of African people who had been far too often made the subject of burlesque and ridicule by non-African artists by replacing their decadent and derogatory images with his depictions of our people in their historic and everyday occurrences. Where others sought to denigrate and defame African people throughout the world Tom would illustrate their humanity and their beauty during common historical experiences and in the contemporary period, which he witnessed with an incomparable insight.
   
  From his early comic strips featuring Tommy Traveler, who traveled through time and space to recapture our history, to his sketches in his beloved BedStuy, Ghana and Guyana and the American south to his masterpiece, "The Middle Passage: White Ships Black Cargo" Tom Feelings painstakingly portrayed Black people all over the world with his exquisite artistic skills guided by an unsurpassed expression of love. In my humble view, his "Middle Passage" helped set a visual background for many to understand and appreciate the growing clamoring demand and movement for reparations. 
   
  A devotee to the creed of "Black is Beautiful", Tom stayed the course in using his splendid talents to advance the liberation struggle of African people all over the world. He was a role model who truly understood that those who have been blessed to have received distinguished skills from our ancestors to make our lives more comfortable should not at the same time opportunistically enrich themselves at the expense of dehumanizing their people. And during a time when far too many pretentiously proclaim their newly founded Afrocentricity, he quietly but steadfastly maintained his dedication to projecting a graphic profile of Black people's deeds and accomplishments with his revolutionary love for Africa and its toiling masses. Indeed, ironically, perhaps the only contradictions that he had during his life with life, was with his name, for he definitely didn't have any Tom feelings.  
   
  Elombe Brath 
   
• I went to visit Tom in Guyana 1971 (or so!) But he wasn't home! When I finally got to meet him stateside we laughed about that for years. He was a wonderful human being and an artist who inspired me to never give up. I remember him showing me his early drawings for the middle passage. He had been working for about five years on it at that point. He told me it would probably take ten or twenty more but he was going to do it anyway, it needed to be done. I told him being possessed by projects like that, you won't have a life for ten or twenty years. S'pose you wanna get married or something. He laughed. "Dindga, I'm already married to my art. "Uh, huh." I said and I knew he was right, I felt the same way about my work. I'll always remember him, his big smile, and his incredible art.
  
  Dindga McCannon, artist, fashion designer
  
   
• Dear   Friends, NCA GHANA CHAPTER sends her sympathies and condolences to NCA USA and the bereaved family on the death of TOM FEELINGS. MAY HIS SOUL REST IN PEACE.
  
  B. OFFEI - NYAKO (BON), Chairman NCA Ghana Chapter
  
   
• Tom Feelings was always one to probe and look beneath the surface for new meanings regarding people and events.  He once told me that my weekly columns in a local NY Black newspaper were much too timid. He was right.  He seemed to love truth, art, and his Africanness.  Cultural historian, teacher, citizen of the world, especially the east and west borders of the Almighty Atlantic, Feelings was in many ways Joyce's portrait of an artist as a young man and beyond. What do you say about a Taurus man named Feelings with whom ladies loved to love?  His name speaks volumes in trying to understand him.  Wise men say that a life is measured by what you do between birth and death. Feelings did a lot to make the world of his family circle of friends and art enthusiasts, a better, prettier place through his art, as one of the architects of a 20th Century African Diaspora aesthetic. The epicenter of his universe, his art flowed from his feelings and perceptions. After talking with him, I always learned something new about people.
  
  At one with Spirit, Feelings lives through his fine art, which dons the walls of so many homes on all sides of the Atlantic.
  
  Victoria Horsford
  New York based writer
   
   
• I loved his parties in the loft space in Manhattan. He was always warm and friendly.
  
  Fikisha Cumbo Photographer/writer
   
   
• Tom Feelings’ art was in the tradition of Charles White and John Biggers. He committed his talents to expressing our truth and beauty, and celebrating the spirit of our Black nation. He was my hero and I’m privileged that he considered me his friend. I love him.
  
  Ted  Ponteflet
  
   
• Matthew Meade, longtime friend, and neighbor on Brooklyn’s Putnam Avenue writes from Brazil. In 1962, I received a scholarship to the Ivory Coast, from Operation Crossroads Africa. Upon my return, I approached Tom and several other young friends about organizing a creative educational response to the distortion of African history being produced by non-Africans. Tom, who until this time was earning a living producing commercial art as well as drawing images of the beauty and creativity of our people, readily agreed. Our cultural and education project would consist of a series of illustrated, well-designed and written, biographies of little known (in the West) African heroes and heroines. The first publication was a brief history of the life and times of Samory Toure (1963). Samory Toure was chosen because of the distorted image given to him by a French author, I had read while coming back from my three months in the Ivory Coast and Ghana. To my mind, Samory Toure was the beginning of Tom's epic, The Middle Passage.
  
  I shall never forget the dedication of the group to the project and that of Tom in particular. On one occasion, I asked Tom to redo an illustration twice. Imbued with his search for excellence the burgeoning master artist did so without rancor.  Such was the character of the man and artist that ego had no place in, as he always said, "getting the work done".
  At times during his struggles with the Middle Passage we discussed the work at his loft in Manhattan. Strangely, the Middle Passage seems not yet complete despite it’s publishing and world-wide acclaim-Tom was the consummate perfectionist.
  
  Tom accompanied me to Brazil in the last days of the previous decade. Everywhere, he gave copies of the Middle Passage to the people.  Tom left us not yet having reached the pinnacle of his potential greatness.  A large void has been left by his passing, but thankfully we have his prolific body of art to mark his passing.
  
  Fellow artist and lifelong friend Richard Barclift writes, “Tom Feelings honored us with his awesome talent. In one stroke of his skillful pen the beauty that was submerged as a result of hundreds of years of self-negation and self-hatred could be freed up for our embracing and healing. We thank him for allowing the creator to have used him so masterfully in our psychological spiritual and esthetic liberation. So take your place with those great ancestors, we will continue the work on this plane. To our beloved brother, we love you, we honor you, we celebrate you.”
  
   
• Tom Feelings honored us with his awesome talent. In one stroke of his skillful pen the beauty that was submerged as a result of hundreds of years of self-negation and self-hatred could be freed up for our embracing and healing. We thank him for allowing the creator to have used him so masterfully in our psychological spiritual and esthetic liberation. So take your place with those great ancestors, we will continue the work on this plane. To our beloved brother, we love you, we honor you, we celebrate you.
  
  Richard Barclift
   
• Working with Tom as Art Director for Dial Books for Young Readers -- and sometimes as designer -- was to work with an artist who had his own vision of the total: the result of the art, the design and the reproduction. From TO BE A SLAVE to MOJA MEANS ONE, and throughout the process of creating Tom's books including THE MIDDLE PASSAGE: WHITE SHIPS BLACK CARGO, we aimed to carry out his vision.
  
  Well into work on THE MIDDLE PASSAGE, we listened to Tom's dissatisfaction with the complete set of full-color proofs of the art, and started over with a completely different method of reproduction and printing. The result is unique, beautiful and strong -- as Tom had wanted it. The message of the book is overwhelming and universal.
  
  I am grateful to have worked with Tom on his books, and particularly remember how eloquently he spoke at the opening of his exhibition at the Schomburg, and how he chuckled when he arrived at Dial one day to repair the adhesion of some rice-paper layers of art, with his old handed-down electric iron, handle wrapped in cloth, ready to work.
  
  Atha Tehon
   
• Tom Feelings was truly an extraordinary man, both because of his personal attributes and the depth of his talent and sensibility about the enslavement of his forbears.
  
  I was the publisher and editor of all of Tom's books beginning in 1966 when I asked him to illustrate a book I was going to publish -- To Be A Slave by Julius Lester. I had seen Tom's work in Freedomways, a small publication (not a book or magazine), and immediately recognized his talent. I asked him to do sketches, as has always been customary in book publishing. Tom said he didn't do sketches, but if I didn't like his drawings he would do them over. I decided to take a chance, and his art was perfect for the book. To Be A Slave was named a Newbery Honor Book and is still in print.
  
  The Middle Passage was, of course, Tom's major work and I had it under contract for 20 (!) years, during which time The Dial Press, where I was Publisher and Editor-In-Chief, was bought/owned by three different companies. Each time the parent company changed, I got a call saying, "You don't want us to buy this old contract do you, Phyllis?" I said, "If you want me, you have to buy the contract." Around the time The Middle Passage was published in 1966, I contracted for The Southern Years, which was to show what happened to the Africans as slaves in the South. I told Tom at that time that neither of us had another 20 years. Unfortunately I was right.
  
  I also made sure that the company sponsored/ supported two shows of Tom's artwork at the Schomburg Museum for Black Culture.
  
  Over the years of working with Tom and publishing all his extraordinary books, we became good friends.
  
  In 1999 I was given my own imprint at Penguin Putnam, Phyllis Fogelman Books, and Tom called to congratulate me. Then right after I lost my job in November 2002, I had a family wedding in California and because of a major snowstorm in New York I couldn't get back to the city for several days. By the time I returned home, I had 3 phone messages from Tom saying he was worried about me, and asking how I was doing. When we spoke he kept saying how I was the first one to publish Black authors and illustrators and that I'd always be recognized for that -- obviously trying to build up my spirits. But not once did he say he was ill.
  
  I was and am heartbroken that he is no longer with us. But for those of us whose paths he crossed, Tom will be in our hearts forever.
  
  Thank you.
  Phyllis Fogelman
   
• Benny Andrews, master artist speaks for all of us when he said, “Tom Feelings, a talented and giving person whom I admired and respected will always have a special place in my heart. All of us will truly miss him.” Tom Feelings, a talented and giving person whom I admired and respected will always have a special place in my heart. All of us will truly miss him.
  
  Benny Andrews, artist