In time, he will lead one of the first African American brokerage firms to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange; he will be a trustee of the Studio Museum of Harlem. He will help start Essence magazine, and at 76, he will write not the Great American Novel, but the Great African American griot.
Goings' 250-page epic poem, The Children of Children Keep Coming (Pocket Books, 2009), is the true story of a miraculous struggle - the tale of a people kidnapped and stripped, even of their language, who break free from bondage and reclaim their dignity.
Told in words that snap and coil, in phrases familiar from the Bible and the Odyssey, the poem links Harriet Tubman to Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and brings Ethos and Pathos to life, pitted against Cain and Bull Connor.
To the prisoners Goings addresses on this day, the story is both familiar and vague. They know and they don't.
But mostly, they can't figure out how such a dumb black kid will end up anything but incarcerated.
For two hours the man with the worn chocolate skin and the rumpled sportcoat speaks to them, the pace of his words as intoxicating as his unexpected message:
"You don't need money to make money," he says. "The concept of giving back is wrong," and "Don't carry your color. If it's a detriment, let somebody else carry it."
They've never heard his name before, but they know he has something they want.
"I was born at the height of the Depression," Goings begins. He grows up in Stamford, Conn., but his people are from the Carolinas.
His father, an often-unemployed heavy-equipment operator, and his mother, who tends other people's houses, come north in the Great Migration.
Russell will be the first of their six children and one of a handful of blacks in his elementary school.
