Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 9, 1990 TAG: 9007090031
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Well, maybe that's not fair.
Coleman can prove she's a woman to you and to me. She has nine kids. How much proof do you want?
But proving she's a woman to the U.S. State Department - you can imagine how tough that is, short of hoisting the ol' skirt, which Coleman was not, understandably, terribly eager to do.
Coleman was invited to Togo in April by officials from the small West African nation. She met them through The Africanist Foundation and hosted a delegation from Togo in Roanoke last year.
Coleman, the curator of the Harrison Museum of African American Culture, got involved in raising money to build a health center for the Togo village of Gblogou (pronounced BLOW-glue). Togo officials wanted her to see the village, so they invited her to their country.
None of this matters as far as Jamila Coleman's gender is concerned. Stick with us here.
"My friends got together to help pay for it. They said I'd worked so hard I should be able to put my foot on that soil," she said.
Coleman endured her battery of shots. Cholera. Yellow fever. Tetanus. On Friday, she got her hepatitis treatment. She's been taking malaria pills for weeks.
We are getting closer to the point. Is Jamila Coleman a man or a woman?
"I was born 45 years ago, in a country county by a midwife and a family doctor," she said. Goof-ups happened in such homey settings.
To this day, she just now discovers, she has two birth certificates on file in Henderson, N.C. They agree she is female, though one says she has no father, which is patently untrue.
North Carolina's vital statistics wizards hold yet another birth certificate, which confirms her father's existence but lists her as a he.
Jamila's official, real first name is Marvin.
"My mother wanted a boy the whole time she was pregnant," she said. "She wanted to please my father with a son, so when I was born they named me Marvin anyway."
Kids can be cruel, so she changed her name when she began school.
The passport purveyors stood their ground. They would not document a man who is the mother of nine children.
Letters, calls and overnight shipments flew between Roanoke, Raleigh and Washington, D.C., as Coleman tried to straighten out the mess.
The staff of U.S. Rep. Jim Olin, D-Roanoke, tried to intervene. The pace quickened. Mail got lost.
Coleman thought about driving to Raleigh to straighten it out, but she does not drive.
Dress as a man and go, some advised.
But she did not go to Togo. If she did, she would have arrived today.
"One thing about all this. At least I'm disease-free from all those shots and pills," Coleman joked. "It's one of those things you have to laugh to keep from crying. Things like this only happen to me."
Coleman will try again to visit Togo in January.
Wish him Godspeed. I mean, wish her Godspeed.
by CNB