Roger’s Apartment

Roger maintains an apartment in the Mission District of San Francisco. It is filled with an eclectic mix of gifts and keepsakes: a crucifix of a Black Jesus with an Afro; an early Mansa poster; photos from Vietnam (one featuring him and Marshall together) on the refrigerator; a record player and a collection of LPs; half-smoked cigars and half-empty bottles of rum, expensive and inexpensive; evidence of women Roger’s had over. In a closet off the main room are two altars:

Three tiers, made of a table and closet shelves, are overflowing with bottles of drink and candles in glass, pictures in glass, pictures on cards, and statues and dolls. Fresh cigars and stubs of ones litter small plates and more than one shot glass. Pinned in various spots all over the altars are bills of all kinds of denominations and origins. A few choice pieces of clothing sit perched, ready to wear, on top of all, most noticeable two glorious silk hats, each with a feathered band. The whole mélange of sacred accumulation spills across the tiers. Two poles painted white and red are propped leaning in a corner. Under the table are a few buckets of chalk and salt and glass mason jars with flour and corn meal.

But despite all this crowding across, the setup is still mostly split in two: two altars. There is a grouping to the right in shades of white and cream, with images of St. Peter and a lame black man, crowned with the white silk hat. And then to the left a grouping in black, with pictures of stage magic devils, a woodcut of a Black man coming out of woods, a color portrait of one standing at a crossroads, all under a goat-head skull that supports the black top hat of the two.