Volume 6 Issue 40…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…October 10, 2003

No More Chain Gang

By Boney M

He was black and handsome

And might might brave

Comin' from the backwoods

The grandson of a slave

He was caught for something

They knew he'd never done

And was diggin' ditches

Out in the burnin' sun

Walkin' on a chain gang-No More

Walking on a chain gang-No More

Man he was a giant

And iron he could bend

And he swore he'd fight them

Down to the bitter end

Though he was no talker

His burnin' eyes would say

You may keep on tryin'

You can't hold me no way

Walkin' on a chain gang-No More

Walking on a chain gang-No More

Then one night he lay in waiting

Hit the guard and took the key

And before the others caught him

He jumped out and he was free

He jumped out and he was free

He made for the swamplands

It seemed a hopeless duel

They had dogs and shotguns

And they were mighty cruel

But they couldn't find him

He was too smart and strong

Hiding' in the daytime

He wandered all night long

Walkin' on a chain gang-No More

Walking on a chain gang-No More

About Me: Dozens of artists from Ma Rainey to Sam Cooke sang the chain gang blues. As Ma Rainey explained, women were sentenced to the chain gang too! The practice was so infamous, even the Euro-Disco group Boney M captured it in No More Chain Gang, a song from their 1979 album Oceans of Fantasy. A European phenomenon during the '70s, the original group, which was named after an Australian TV series hero, was composed of Jamaican and West Indian artists. For more about Boney M, see www.groovecave.com.

Secret Detentions

After September 11, 2001, the Justice Department secretly detained more than 1,000 persons. Human Rights Watch (HRW) and others filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for release of their names. When the request was denied, plaintiffs filed suit. The DC Court of Appeals ruled the Justice Department did not have to release the requested information.

Plaintiffs in Center for National Security Studies v. Ashcroft appealed that decision to the Supreme Court. The Court is urged to declare that secret arrests have no place in a democracy and protect the public's basic right to know what actions the government has taken. With secret arrests, the Bush Administration has prevented the public from judging whether or not it abused its powers.

Hundreds of non-citizens were abused in the aftermath of 9-11. The secrecy surrounding their detentions contributed to the abuse. Since 9-11, governments worldwide have enacted laws expanding government powers of detention and surveillance. Some have pointed to the erosion of civil liberties in the US to deflect criticism of their human rights abuses. For more, please see http://www.hrw.org/us/usdom.php

By John Burl Smith

Honoring an agreement made with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. the afternoon he was assassinated (4-4-68), the Invaders joined Rev. Hosea Williams in Marks, Mississippi for the Poor People's Campaign's mule train to Washington, DC. Reflecting on the backdrop and events surrounding the Memphis sanitation strike, Dr. King's arrival in town, the march that became a rebellion, his assassination and the resulting chaos within SCLC, the resulting reality remains ironic and painful. Brought together in Marks, at that point, it all seemed the work of happenstance.

The possibility that returning to Marks with the Poor People's Campaign had a direct spiritual connection to Africa never crossed my mind. However, Martin Scorsese's documentary "Feel Like Going Home," Part 1 of PBS' seven part special "The Blues" provided a different perspective. Scorsese proclaimed Clarksdale, Mississippi, which is about 10 miles from Marks and my birthplace, as the epicenter of the most unique musical development in modern times.

Nurtured in the bowels of slave ships crossing the "Middle Passage," slaves managed to hold on to their spiritual and emotional connection to Africa. Without a shared language, they communicated this bond rhythmically and spiritually through coded chants and work songs. Embryonically, these guttural utterances are the taproot of blues.

Alluded to in the film, but reinforced by personal experience, Mississippi housed the harshest and most inhumane plantation system in the South and the delta was the worst of the worst. Jim Crow segregation, sharecropping, poverty, chain gangs and death threats kept thousands of blacks in cotton fields for generations. Overwhelming oppression rested on their necks, like a foot. Cowed by retribution if one spoke out, the need to express deep pain, as well as, desires for love produced a soulful moan that has been heard around the world. That soulful moan which began on slave ships intensified in cotton fields and gave voice to a story that could not be told. Through the music of oracles, like Robert Johnson, Son House, "Blind" Willie Johnson, Otha Turner and many others, the blues migrated to Memphis.

Escaping Mississippi on the "Midnight Special" like many others, my family fled to Memphis under the cover of night. The spirit and emotions that tied blacks to Africa became civil rights and black power anthems for freedom, justice and equality. The Poor People's Campaign turned that drum beat of "Middle Passage" moans into a "mule train" that drew protesters to Marks and brought me back singing the Mississippi blues.

Director Wim Wenders began Part 2 with a recording of "Blind" Willie Johnson's "What is the Soul of a Man" playing aboard the Voyager spacecraft. Like the voyage across the "Middle Passage," "Blind" Willie's words were carried as a message from Earth to alien worlds. From slave ships to space ships, ironically, the blues messenger and his fellow slave descendants are still aliens in this world.

Riding the space age into the new millennium, "The Soul of A Man" raises the same issues as Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech. Similarly, Dr. King and "Blind" Willie heard the "Middle Passage" moans of desperate people crying for relief and both told the world. It was their cry that brought thousands home to Marks for the Poor People's Campaign in 1968. With "times harder than they ever been before," everyone who hears that moan has to "Feel Like Going Home."

Demand Independent Investigator

Since July, those in the spy business have known White House officials outted CIA operative Valerie Plame, the spouse of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. A White House critic, Wilson investigated the claim that Iraq tried to buy enriched uranium from Niger. He and the CIA informed the White House of the bogus claim. Bush still used it in his state of the union address, and administration officials, including Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, continued to use it as part of the justification for war against Iraq.

According to Wilson, his wife's cover was blown for revenge and to warn others that this administration will not tolerate criticism. Although it is a federal offense to reveal the identity of a secret agent, the Justice Department waited months before launching an investigation. On Tuesday, administration officials turned over documents related to the matter. George W. Bush proclaimed the responsible party will probably never be identified. His assertion was rebroadcast on evening news programs across the nation.

Opinion polls show a majority of Americans (70%) want a special prosecutor appointed to investigate this matter. It is time the public informed Congress that we the people demand the truth.

What Could Not Be Said

By John Burl Smith

For most early blues men and women, the blues was coded lyrics disguised to hide what could not be said. The oppressive slave culture created a whole array of unspoken understandings and coded expressions. Southern life was a series of convenient lies by whites, while life for blacks hung on their capricious whims.

Slave masters exercised the power of life and death. After the Civil War, nothing changed, except blacks had to provide for themselves. Moreover, to keep power and land in the hands of whites, black codes were instituted across the South. Courts and the law forced blacks back onto plantations as sharecroppers or into jails as vagrants. Either way, blacks still worked like slaves. Robbed of their pay and freedom, they had to bite their tongues. Those who spoke up and complained were lynched and their families suffered.

Blues songs are metaphors and allegories that represent real life. For example, The Joe Turner Blues reflected the fact that the 13th Amendment defines which individuals can legally be held as slaves. "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crimes whereof the party shall have been convicted, shall exist within the United States."

According to Sonny Boy Williamson, a singer in Memphis whorehouses during the 1920s and 30s, the Joe Turner blues told of the thousands of faceless and nameless black men lured by promises of work or shanghaied out of whorehouses and carried to Mississippi. Once there, they were sentenced to chain gangs all over the delta. The lyrics told their wives, "Joe Turner has come and their men were gone." That would make anyone sing the blues.

Blues allowed blacks to express anguish, pain, sorrow, despair, rage and love in veiled statements. An authentic expression arising out of genuine needs, today's generation sing the blues on its terms. Recognizing the blues paradox, conscious hip hop/spoken artists like Yohannes Sharriff (The Cosmic Possibilities of Father Time) embrace their blues connection to Africa. They see no reason to hold back, bite their tongues or speak in code about such real issues as the 3/5 Compromise, Bush v Gore, one-person-one-vote, institutionalized racism, the death penalty, the number of blacks in prison, poverty, the Patriot Act, injustice, unjust wars and AIDS.

Up-front and in-your-face-with-the-truth, spoken word artists are using technology to tell the world our story. Their goal is to replace hearsay or word-of-mouth with research driven dialogue. Battling for the hearts and minds of black children, conscious artists are clearly articulating the importance of our ties to the Mississippi delta and African ancestry.

Chain Gang: Convict Labor

"Slavery is being practiced by the system under the color of law.... Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today; it's the same thing, but with a new name. They're making millions and millions of dollars enslaving blacks, poor whites, and others--people who don't even know they're being railroaded." --Political Prisoner Ruchell Magee

After the Civil War, large numbers of individuals, especially blacks, were subjected to involuntary servitude. Slave Codes that defined black rights prior to the Civil War were replaced with Black Codes, which made living while black a crime. Blacks were rounded up and imprisoned for simple acts from standing on street corners to being out at night. Prisoners were leased to plantation owners and private enterprise.

The chain gang was one of the most popular penal practices. Used primarily in the South, inmates that worked outdoors were chained together to prevent escape. Shackled, whipped and routinely subjected to other brutalities, inmate rehabilitation was not a consideration. Much like death penalty advocates today, chain gang proponents paid lip service to the notion that hard labor and harsh treatment deterred crime.

Publication of Robert E. Burns' I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and release of the 1932 film based on his book exposed the harsh realities of the chain gang. With rising unemployment of the Great Depression, an era of reform led to the eventual abolition of the chain gang nationwide by the 1950s. Prisoners continued to work primarily for government and non-profit agencies.

This trend changed during the 1990s with the "war on crime." Even with reductions in crime, Justice Department statistics show the US has the world's highest incarceration rate. Blacks, poor whites and others are overly represented in US prisons. Even the chain gang and the lucrative practice of exploiting convict labor for private enterprise are back. (Sources: www.trouparchives.org and www.prisonactivist.org)

Hip Hopping the Blues

Expanding the parameters of spoken word, Yohannes Sharriff continued his spiritual revival with a performance in Marjé Café's Soul Journey (9-26-03). Presented at the First Congregational Church of Atlanta, Georgia, it brought blues and spirituality together on the same stage. Exploring the tempestuous relationship between intimacy and the soul, Yohannes' emotionally charged performance may have been viewed as "crossing over." To the contrary, the great great grandson of Rev. Burl Lee, a circuit rider in the Mississippi delta during the early 1900s, Yohannes' spiritual roots germinated in Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church of Memphis, TN.

Producer and director of this family friendly production, Leatrice Ellzy's aim was to speak to young and old alike about ancient truths in today's language. Drawing enthusiastic applause from the capacity crowd, "Soul Journey" was a rousing success.

Traveling the usual hip hop circuit, on Sunday, October 26, 2003, Yohannes will feature his new millennium blues genre at The Apache. Riding the cutting edge of conscious hip hop with his concept CD The Cosmic Possibilities of Father Time, Yohannes fuses the slave moan from the "Middle Passage" and southern cotton fields with his asphalt beats. Hosted by Free Form Exchange, a production of the Mighty I Am Project, the venue offers the hottest and best spoken word artists in the ATL vibe. The doors open at 9 PM. So come and enjoy hip hop blues as it is taken to a new level. For more information, call 404-688-3584.

Disgruntled feels: Disconnection! David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), charged with finding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, issued a preliminary report that basically said no banned weapons had been found. Kay wants more time, which was not given UN inspectors, and another $600,000,000 to identify weapons programs. The rush to war was based on weapons of mass destruction that could be deployed in 45-minutes. We could not wait for a smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud. Now, we have gone from an imminent threat with nuclear implications to possible programs. In an obvious disconnection, Bush declared Kay's report is proof that he made the right decision. Rather than inform the emperor that he was naked, mainstream media admired his invisible ensemble.

Disgruntled wants to know: Since George W. Bush, more than two million jobs have disappeared. In the US economy, for the unemployment rate to remain constant, more than 100,000 new jobs must be created every month. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 57,000 jobs were created during the month of September, leaving the unemployment rate unchanged at 6.1%. The report also indicated that more than 25,000 Americans lost jobs over the same period. In response to this good news, stocks rose. When so many jobs have been lost, is a net gain of only 27,000 new jobs really a sign of improvement or irrational exuberance?

Disgruntled says: By now, everyone knows conservative shock jock Rush Limbaugh has put his foot in his mouth with racist comments about the abilities of Philadelphia Eagles' black quarterback Donovan McNabb. Apparently, Rush, who recently recovered from a possible drug-induced hearing loss, puts other things in his mouth, primarily the illegal downer, Oxycontin, also known as hillbilly heroin.

Email CartierX@aol.com My hubby and I taped a black rock band a few weeks ago. We took a visiting producer with us. He said, "Its pitiful how Black artists are throwing away their own heritage trying to mimic white folks trying to mimic us. We've just abandoned the rhythm and blues that created original rock music. But white artists have picked up the ball and ran. Now they're kickin' our azzes with our own music. These boyz have got skillz. They're just making fools of themselves making all that noise. They need to find a good song and work it like Jimi Hendrix reborn as R. Kelly.

Email www.nytimes.com Deep political ties between top White House aides and Attorney General John Ashcroft have put him into a delicate position as the Justice Department begins a full investigation into whether administration officials illegally disclosed the name of an undercover CIA officer. Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser, whose possible role has raised questions, was a paid consultant to three of Ashcroft's campaigns in Missouri, twice as governor and for US senator. These connections led Democrats to assert that Rove's connections to Ashcroft amounted to a clear conflict of interest, undermined the integrity of the investigation and called for an outside counsel.

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