It was a natural birthing too. No pain killers, no short cuts. The attending physicians - Ed Love, Jim Wells, Jeff Donaldson, George Smith, Texiera Nash - kept popping in and checking to make sure things were alright. We worked with our hands and backsand blood, we used pulleys to hoist heavy steel girders three stories above our heads. Clifton Thomas, Alphonzo Scott, Michael Brown, Pop, Rashid. We were all croaching and working and empathizing and sympathizing. Didn't even know we were cut or burned 'til, sometimes two in the morning when, at last, we slipped into sleep.

I've heard it said that the baby gets born whether the mother pushes or not. Subliminally we all retain the symbols and cultural seeds of our Afrikan heritage. The culture, our culture, Afrikan culture is going to be perpetuated; despite the odds, the set backs, the hardships.

After two years gestation the 'Victory Skylight' emerged into the world alive and well, eager to play its part in the shaping of events and the molding of perceptions.

'The Victory Skylight' is intended to depict in brilliant artistic form, the struggles and triumphs of the souls of the Black Peoples of the World. "2 I became involved at about the end of the pregnancy. I say that because it takes nine months for gestation and a few hours for delivery. But as we sisters know, its usually delivery that stands out when we look back on it all.

When Akili said, "I want you to work on this project," I was kind of flattered, but scared!! Glass - such a rigid, fragile, temperamental medium and the only sister (at a birthing!!!). It soon became as wet clay. Afrikan people know that all things are subject to the will, can be molded, shaped. God functioning through the infinitude of things never ceases to be God. And so I learned to cut glass as though it were cloth and arrange it as though it were paint. But it was still glass. Like coal is to diamond, they are both carbon. Reflecting, transparent, translucent glass. When light passes through the skylight its illuminating our culture.

The piece depicts eight angels, eight Black angels. Are there such things as black angels? I would have never thought so based on the images I had seen when growing up. But I guess I would have had to say yes if really pressed for an answer. I mean. Why not! Don't Black people die and have a spiritual existence? Here's to all the Black Angels of the Middle Passage sending their light through the Victory Skylight; looking down upon the congregation of John Wesley African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church at 14th and Corcoran Streets, Northwest. Six years ago the original stained glass had been destroyed by a fire that caused more than $900,000 in damage. As in nature, the fire that breaks up and destroys also prepares the ground for re-birth.

Ron Anderson heads the company Nationworks which has also restored several other pieces that had been damaged in the fire, including two other stained glass pieces and the capitols of two supporting columns. Complete restoration was culminated with the installation of the ' Victory Skylight.' The two other glass pieces are circular, vertical and impressive, but no where near the immensity of the horizontally situated skylight.

Sitting beneath the 'Victory Sklight' you are bathed in light.

"The sweeping line of rhythmn and patterns of harmonious color depict deliberate purpose, ages of cultural encounters and a continuum of sweeping lines that pull together genetic memory that transverses the whole universe, but yet always returns with the same flow and symmetry of purpose back to the source of its origin. "³

Pastor G. Ray Coleman is the grandfather of the piece. He had faith that birth was taking place right in his church. Watching us hoist that steel and glass up in the middle of the newly renovated sanctuary, he never winced. Just stood there looking and occasionally a serene smile, like he was thinking - 'Those my angels, my Black Angels.'

To make sure that it is secure and permanent, it is anchored and supported by heavy-duty chains and aircraft cable designed to maintain 10 times the weight they now support. In order to position the piece, the brothers had to climb along the church roof, up a rickety ladder and down into the tower. Akili said I had to go up once, and I did. I sat on the catwalk plastered to the wall. I managed to take a few pictures so as not to appear totally useless after going all the way up there. It was like looking down into a big gaping hole (Grand Canyon). Tethered to supporting beams sometimes and sometimes not, the brothers crisscrossed this hole like birds, laying the foundation and installing the cable and chains. As I watched from below, nobody seemed even to slip, not one piece of 12,000 individual pieces of glass broke. A tedious and exhausting task, like we were saying push, push, and finally...

Two a.m., we all stood and looked up at the 'Victory Skylight.' It felt as if we should be crying and slapping backs, but everybody was real still. I thought "God said 'Let there be light in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth,' and it was so.

Finally Akili thanked everyone and said how he couldn't have done it without us. But I was thinking, we couldn't have done it without him.