Homecoming week in Greensboro (GHOE)

I was just on the phone with my sister. She reminded me that it was GHOE in Greensboro and at NC A&T State University. GHOE is “Greatest Homecoming On Earth.” Brought back so many memories.

Growing up, we always had a houseful on Homecoming Weekend. Mama starting the huge pot of chitterlings the night before after enlisting us in the detailed process of cleaning the smelly things. Many hands make light (though still stinky) work. Then the pot would cook all night filling the house with a homecoming “fragrance.”

Early Saturday morning we would all go out to the Homecoming Parade where we could count on seeing the homecoming queen and her court on floats, local cultural entities like dance groups and such, and the ever-present Dudley High School precision drill team which always had some local talent from Pichard Street.

The big game kicked off in the early afternoon. Seems like Morgan State was a regular homecoming opponent. Sometimes the Aggies won, sometimes they lost. Some years it may have been Florida A&M, my eventual alma mater. Then back home for chitterlings and backyard barbeques. A couple of times I spied the older men drinking something out of mason jars. God only knows. In the evenings there were parties and music, sometimes live music performed by local entertainers at places like El Rocco, the Carlotta, the Cosmos Club. By the time we reached adulthood, there were big concerts on campus and at the Greensboro Coliseum with big name national performers.

I would later learn more about homecoming history. It began with black churches, many of which continue to this day in the annual homecoming tradition. The institution of slavery resulted in the break-up of families with family members being sold away periodically to other and new owners. At and immediately following emancipation, folks made an effort to reconnect with distant family members. In many ways, attempts to break up families had the unintended consequence of making family ties even stronger. Check out Help Me to Find My People at your local public library and get them to order it if they don’t have it.

A similar family dispersal rate maintained and increased after the mean and lean post-Reconstruction years when so many people moved North and West to escape the race hatred of the South. Of course it accelerated during the years of the Great Migration. So annually, black churches would hold homecoming weekend when folks would return to their homes of origin.

I don’t remember Homecoming that vividly at the church where we grew up, United Institutional in Greensboro, NC, but I have strong and fond memories of returning to the rural communities where my parents grew up, my father grew at Jackson Methodist Church in Browns Summit, NC, and my mother, Saint Paul Baptist Church in Draper (now Eden), NC. We’d see folks we hadn’t seen for ages, back from cities like New York, Baltimore, Richmond, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

From black churches, the homecoming tradition migrated to black colleges, HBCU’s. Today, A&T proudly proclaims that its homecoming is the Greatest Homecoming On Earth, and though I am not there to see it, I kinda believe it.

Today, white colleges also have a homecoming tradition. It is usually in the fall, and it usually includes a football game and parties. I don’t know if their homecomings include barbeque and chitterlings!

And now you know where it all came from.