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A heart longs for Africa

Eddie Taylor wants to sell his shop in College Hill and go to Africa, the land of his ancestors. He wants to walk among tribes, even carry a jug of water on his head. Ask him. He'll tell you why.

By By JUSTIN GEORGE
Published June 4, 2006

[Times photo: Melissa Lyttle]

Eddie Taylor points to places on a map of Ghana that hangs in his office at his African-themed store in College Hill, Taylor's Unique Imports, Etc. He's considering relocating to Africa, like his black heroes Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Dubois. "I just want to see how we were in our own land," he says.

Eddie B. Taylor owns Taylor's Unique Imports, Etc., a store as distinctive as himself, located in the depressed College Hill neighborhood. It sits between a Pentecostal church and a gas station called "HOPE," which has a sign featuring a pair of dice, as if hope is a risky proposition.

Taylor keeps a 9mm handgun underneath a small entertainment center in a makeshift office in his store. That's the reality of owning a business where drug dealers and prostitutes used to pervade.

It's a feet-on-the-ground, head-in-the-clouds kind of life. The gun is by his feet; an African map and his passport float above his head, tacked to a wall of beads.

The country of Ghana has already stamped his pass and awaits his arrival. He can travel there until 2016. But he's planning on going this year - after he sells his store, he hopes - fulfilling a dream to return to the land where slave ships kidnapped his ancestors.

For nine years, his yellow and red import store has stuck out along 22nd Street near Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard like a loud carnival fun house, speakers incessantly blaring talk radio, gospel or eerie Asian music, a few blocks away from the Belmont Heights Estates housing complex.

"They call my store the African store," Taylor, 64, says on a promotional video. "They name the store the African store. The place on 22nd where they sell that black stuff at."

Now, this married father of six grown children who wears colorful daishikis, pool-hall hats, fake alligator-skin loafers and an array of wraparound sunglasses that Isaac Hayes might don wants to retire. He wants to travel about in Africa, join a tribe, even carry a jug of water on his head. He's considering relocating there, returning for good like black heroes Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Dubois.

What he'd leave behind is a store that has become a neighborhood cultural center, a place where framed pictures of black Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr. and Tupac Shakur are for sale along with African jewelry, dolls, masks and busts of African queens. What Taylor has to say about these things comes at no cost to customers. He is like a curator of a museum looking to teach his people about their past.

n n n

"I tell the ladies when they come in that they're queens, princesses and goddesses, and they don't know it.

"Yes, we try to be unique here. Not another store in the country like this here, I have to say so myself. I just tell it like it is. ... I proclaim down here to be 25 years ahead of my time. Yup. Twenty-five years ahead of time."

"People think I'm from Africa, Jamaica, somewhere. But I'm just plain old American."

- Excerpts from Taylor's video about his store.

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Outside, the store's painted walls feature an array of words and a picture of "Queen Mary," a white woman, and "Queen Cleopatra," a black woman.

GOOD PREACHING * AFRO CLOTHING * HATS * JAZZ * MIX * AFRO MUSIC * REGGA * CALYPSO * GOSPEL.

A chained, snarling gorilla, two elephants, a zebra and a camel, greet customers inside the doorway, side by side, as if they're waiting for Noah.

On the back counter, near a television, a black Santa Claus mannequin guards a display case featuring CDs from Chuck Berry, Dionne Warwick, Bob Marley and the rapper Buckshot.

Nearby a muscular nude black man in chains with a key placed atop his head flexes from a portrait $69.95.

Four black women in white robes enjoy pedicures from kneeling, shirtless black men in another ($69.95).

There are African sticks with carved giraffe handles, dolls that look like pin cushions, and a spear. "Don't nobody have that spear," Taylor says, "real African spear that they kill lions with at 12 years old."

Taylor's flea market-like store isn't exclusively about Africa. Chinese lamps float from the ceiling like hot air balloons. Pamela Anderson's busty figure protrudes from a poster. Tony Montana, the main character from Scarface, snarls from a portrait.

Taylor grew up in Alabama. He moved to Chicago in the early 1960s, following a black migration from the south to the Windy City. He became a television and radio repairman, driving cabs part-time. But a slower life beckoned, and he moved to Tuscaloosa, Ala., where he opened a television shop, which grew into a variety store.

Inspiration to turn what Taylor dubbed "Taylor's Big City Store" into one specializing in black art and African imports came from an unlikely source: white students at the University of Alabama. Many had been to Africa with the Peace Corps, and Taylor saw a market. White people wanted the "safari look."

"So I got to thinking," Taylor says, "if these white people want to go to Africa, why not me? So right then and there, I said, 'Africa, here I come.' "

He checked out books about Africa. He stocked his store with African goods. He sent off for African maps. He subscribed to African newspapers. He talked with African immigrants he met who were drawn to his Tampa store, which featured orange, yellow and green - colors synonymous with African flags.

He has studied enough to tell you how many slaves came from West Africa. He knows when Ghana gained its independence from the British, and who the country's first president was. He knows W.E.B. Dubois died there.

"His grave is a tourist site in Accra," he says.

He has highlighted points of interest on his Ghana map including where celebrities own vacation homes.

He has written "slave castle" around one area he's marked.

He leaned back in his chair and broke into an old slave song:

There's a good ole man in the big house. Oh yes. Oh yes. That old man good to us. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. What we gonna do when he die? Oh Yeah ...

A sadness came over his face.

"What a hard time they had," he says. "I just want to see how we were in our own land."

He talks about how families in Africa who died of heartbreak from being split. How slave mothers had their babies stolen. How slave masters gave out sacks of potatoes and other prizes to women who gave birth.

He thinks these actions set black people so far back they still contribute to the rate of black children born to single mothers.

While he spoke, Gomez Payne, a local black storyteller, came in looking for African clothing.

She held up a necklace she bought from Africa featuring the continent and a symbol that means "God is everywhere." She told Taylor she's been to Ghana before.

"I think it's important for us to know where we came from," she said.

"Yes ma'am," Taylor responded.

"And I think it's important for us to understand we're not weak," she said, "because we came from very strong people who endured what they endured and we're still standing on their shoulders today."

When she left, Taylor said, God brought her to his store to teach him even more about where he's headed.

Taylor wants $322,500 for his store, which would help fund his journeys.

He's found no buyer yet, and some will loathe the day the store is sold.

"It's very unique," says Angie Grimsley, 44, who stopped by one day. She lives in New Tampa but grew up in College Hill. "It's wonderful they have something in the neighborhood that keeps the culture going. It's nice that people remember their inheritance."

Taylor says he chose College Hill to open his store because he saw an underserved area that needed a gift store. He stays open all night on most holidays - including Christmas when he hired a security guard and a black Santa Claus - because that's when business is best.

He says many black entrepreneurs make the mistake of leaving "the ghetto" for suburban areas. They buy large houses and fancy cars, when a truck like his 1993 Chevy S-10 will do.

"Black people make gods out of (cars)," he says, "but they're just transportation."

He still has a lot to say before he retires. When he tells customers he's heading to Africa, they say the Africans will kill him, thinking everyone there lives in the jungle. "Saying they're going to get me and all that," Taylor says.

He cringes.

A picture in his office portrays modern bustling cities of Africa such as Monrovia, Liberia; Freetown, Sierra Leone; Nairobi, Kenya; Harare, Zimbabwe, and Cairo, Egypt.

There's more knowledge to share before he leaves, he says.

Justin George can be reached at (813) 226-3368 or jgeorge@sptimes.com.

[Last modified June 4, 2006, 07:46:09]