Jacob Holdt - my friends

Merrilyn Jones


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The story of Merrilyn is told here in my book and slideshow. I met her in New York in the fall of 1972, but we didn't live together for long. She often complained "We are not compatible". I felt we fit fine together - tolerant as I am :-) But women often have other ideas and instead of throwing me out she one day came up with a great idea:
"I know whom you would make a perfect couple with; my best friend Leslie up in Hartford." And then Merrilyn hitchhiked me 3 hours north of New York and dumped me at Leslie's feet and said: "Hey, Leslie, you can have this white boy. I can't use him." And she was right. It was love at first sight and in less than half a year Leslie and I wanted to get married.

Our friendship continued and one time Leslie and Merrilyn hitchhiked up to Canada to visit me on the farm I had worked on. And later they hitchhiked to San Francisco where Merrilyn became an actress along with Rhodessa Jones who is also known from American Pictures seen throwing flowers in the ocean after the death of her niece.
In my book I present Merrilyn as a "rose who turned from junkie to actress". But the truth is that she has been everything in life. Once she was the first black woman to break through the glass ceiling and become a construction worker in Connecticut.

In 1987 after one of my many lectures in Yale University one of the white students - guilt ridden after seeing my show - ventured into a bar in New Haven to see if she could make friends with a black. She approached Merrilyn and started telling her about "the fantastic show I have just seen about the oppression of blacks. You really should see it yourself." After listening carefully for a while Merrilyn suddenly looked at the student and said, "I know this crazy Dane, I am in his book," and turned to page 171 and 181 in the student's copy of my book. Needless to say, she almost feel off the chair discovering that this first black she had approached - a hard hat construction worker - was actually part of the book.

Merrilyn has been hard keeping up with over the years - always breaking up roots and relationships with "husbands". Every time she tells me that now she has found the love of her life, next time she has thrown him out - just as she once did with me. But she has always kept up with me and come around to introduce my slide shows in the universities she lived close by. Especially moved I was when she and Leslie saw it together in Wesleyan University. The latest photos here are from my last visit with her and her husband, a retired drama professor, in Maine. She is still acting and maintaining her lifelong interest in drama. So why not marry a drama teacher?
Well, now two years after when she comes to see me in Denmark she has also thrown him out - and again moved to a new state. I am grateful to have known her long enough for her to become part of - and help create - the drama of my life :-)
 

       
1972-11-00003 1972-11-00016-J 1972-11-00166 1972-11-00246
1972-11-00003 1972-11-00016-J 1972-11-00166 1972-11-00246
1972-11-00497 1972-11-01031 1972-11-01032 1972-11-01033
1972-11-00497 1972-11-01031 1972-11-01032 1972-11-01033
1972-11-01460 1972-11-01581 1972-11-01582 1972-11-02323
1972-11-01460 1972-11-01581 1972-11-01582 1972-11-02323
1972-11-10119 1972-11-10120 1972-11-10121 1972-11-10122
1972-11-10119 1972-11-10120 1972-11-10121 1972-11-10122
1972-11-10123 1972-11-10127 2012-05-05_23-01-08
1972-11-10123 1972-11-10127 1985-03 2012-05-05_23-01-08
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