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Vol. 8 Issue 13…Dedicated
to the Dialogue on Race…April 1, 2005
Intuit’s Vibe
The Slave's Complaint
By George Moses Horton
Am I sadly cast aside,
On misfortune's rugged tide?
Will the world my pains deride
Forever?
Must I dwell in Slavery's night,
And all pleasure take its flight,
Far beyond my feeble sight,
Forever?
Worst of all, must Hope grow dim,
And withhold her cheering beam?
Rather let me sleep and dream
Forever!
Something still my heart surveys,
Groping through this dreary maze;
Is it Hope? -- then burn and blaze
Forever!
Leave me not a wretch confined,
Altogether lame and blind --
Unto gross despair consigned,
Forever!
Heaven! in whom can I confide?
Canst thou not for all provide?
Condescend to be my guide
Forever:
And when this transient life shall end,
Oh, may some kind eternal friend
Bid me from servitude ascend,
Forever!
Hood Notes
NAACP Image Awards
Broadcast
on Friday, March 25, 2005, the 36th Annual NAACP Image Awards paid tribute to
films, television programs, literature and music made by and about people of
color. Actor/comedian Chris Tucker hosted the star-studded event. Image Award
winners are chosen by members of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP), the nation's oldest civil rights organization.
As
anticipated, the big winner of the evening was "Ray," the
biographical film about musician Ray Charles. "Ray" took four awards,
including an outstanding-actor trophy for Jamie Foxx. Other honors for their
roles in "Ray" went to Kerry Washington and Regina King for
outstanding actress and outstanding supporting actress in a motion picture,
respectively.
Award
winners and presenters readily mixed entertainment and politics. U.S. Sen.
Barack Obama (D-Ill), Chairman's Award recipient, acknowledged, "There is
an element of show business to politics. But, I think it's important to remind
ourselves that what's at stake in our politics is more than just image. Serious
problems exist, including a lack of health care, children who are unable to
read and a lack of attention to the African continent. In her acceptance
speech, Washington warned that the rights of people of color, women and the
poor are "in danger of being stripped" away.
Talk
show hostess Oprah Winfrey was inducted into the NAACP Hall of Fame. Other
Award winners included, Morgan Freeman for his supporting role in the film
"Million Dollar Baby," Kanye West, outstanding new artist, Usher,
outstanding male artist, Fantasia, outstanding female artist and singer-songwriter
Alicia Keys, outstanding song and music video. The Vanguard Award went to the
multi-talented recording artist Prince. For more, visit www.naacpimageawards.net.
George Moses
Horton (1797? - 1883)
Like
his father, mother and siblings, George Moses was born into slavery. The exact
date of his birth is unknown; it is believed to have been in 1797 on the
tobacco plantation of William Horton in Northampton Country, North Carolina (NC).
As was customary, a slave took his/her
master’s last name, so he became George Moses Horton. As a young man, George
Moses tended his owner's cattle in Chatham County, where the elder Horton moved
around 1800.
Drawn
to singing and preaching at Methodist revivals, he developed a love affair for
the spoken word and painstakingly taught himself to read from old spelling
books, the Bible and his mother's hymnals. Blessed with an innate sense of
rhythm, George Moses began to create poetic verses, which were stored in his
memory, because he had not learned to write.
In
1814, William Horton divided his estate among his heirs. As slaves, George
Moses, his mother and five sisters were distributed among the Horton's heirs
like horses and cattle. Ownership of George Moses passed to James Horton, who
made the seventeen year-old a ploughman. To master the horse-drawn plough, he
developed a rhythm to fit the routine.
Situated
eight miles from Horton's farm, the Chapel Hill campus of the University of
North Carolina drew the young man. He convinced his master to allow him to sell
pears and apples there on the weekends.
Urged
by students to give a speech, George Moses' impromptu entertainment led to a
business. By the 1820's, he was performing his poetry from memory and selling
love poems to UNC students. George Moses recited the poems, which were sold for
about 25 cents each, and students transcribed them, since he could not write. During this time, Caroline Lee Hentz, a
writer and UNC faculty wife, befriended George Moses.
Under
Hentz's tutelage, he improved his reading and writing skills; she also worked
on getting his poetry published. In April 1828, the Lancaster Gazette in
Massachusetts published his poem On Liberty and Slavery, making George
Moses Horton the first black American slave to poetically protest his bondage.
His poetry appeared in other magazines, including the Raleigh Register and New
York Freedom Journal, an anti-slavery weekly published by blacks.
The
publication of his poetry brought efforts to free this genius. While they
failed, J. Gales and Son of Raleigh, NC published The Hope of Liberty (1829),
the first book by a black American published in the South. The only slave to
earn a significant income by selling his poetry, George Moses was writing and
selling about 12 poems a week at UNC (1832) when he "hired out" his
time from James Horton for 25 cents per week, rather than slave behind a
plough. He also worked as handyman for UNC President Joseph Calwell.
Between
1833-43, he married a slave from the Franklin Snipes' farm and had a daughter
and son. In 1843, James Horton died and George Moses' ownership passed to his
son Hall Horton, who doubled the weekly "hire out" fee. Repeated
campaigns to free him failed. Governor John Owen and others attempted to
purchase George Moses for $100 more than the purchase price, but Hall Horton
refused to sell him. The Poetical Works of George Moses Horton, the Colored
Bard of North Carolina (1845), which sold for 50 cents a copy, failed to
raise sufficient funds to buy his freedom.
By
the end of 1861, George Moses had lost his market for love poems as UNC
students left school for war. He returned to his master's farm. In April 1865
he walked to Raleigh to join the northern army. George Moses traveled with the
troops, writing poems about the war's end and love poems for soldiers'
sweethearts.
In
1865, he published Naked Genius, poems written during the months he
traveled with the army. George Moses moved to Philadelphia (1866), where he
died in 1883. (Sources: www.beaufortccc.edu/
and www.unc.edu/horton/)
Disgruntled says:
In an email,
freelance writer and occasional videographer Meike Jenness of Peaks Island
posed the question, "Why would young black women not be happy with natural
beauty?" Using her experience in South Africa, Jenness cogently discusses
the use of skin-lightening creams and hair straighteners by black men and
women. Bombarded by the media, including the black press, with images of smooth
light skin people, blacks chance convulsions, asthma, leukemia and liver
damage--some of the ill-effects associated with the use of these "beauty
products"-- in vain attempts to achieve Western standards of beauty.
Information on the dangers of these products is readily available. We cannot
simply blame the media for our self-destructive behavior. Visit the local black
church on Sunday, see the unnatural coiffures of our matrons and know our youth
are following their sad example.
Disgruntled feels:
Fudged! Image is everything where there is no substance. Since Election 2000,
there has been a concerted effort by the media to paint rosy scenarios of
domestic conditions and foreign fiascos. Even George W. Bush's poll numbers are
fudged to make him appear more popular with carefully vetted crowds; the media
never show protest. According to US news, unemployment is low, along with
inflation and interest rates and the economy grows at a moderate rate. Yet, the
dollar's value is declining, the labor force participation rate is low and
everything consumers purchase from food and fuel increases in price weekly. On
the ground, there is a disconnect between reality and the data produced by the
government and published by the media. The most plausible explanation - the
information is fudged for public consumption.
Disgruntled wants to know: Established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1957 to
investigate denials of civil rights, the US Commission on Civil Rights is
controlled by conservatives bent on pushing a right-wing agenda. With the
ouster of liberals Mary Frances Berry and Cruz Reynoso in 2004, the Commission
appears posed to rubberstamp George W. Bush's efforts to turn back the clock on
federally funded programs that benefit poor and black Americans. Given the
Commission was originally created to investigate the denials of civil rights,
why bother to continue funding its operations when blacks have no rights that
Bush and his appointed conservatives feel bound by law to respect?
Venue for an
Artist
On Napster and the Music Industry
Commentary and Excerpts from Interview
with Prince
Music
lovers develop a special relationship with the works of the artists they like.
They want to hear everything the artist has ever put out. They also feel that
things like album packaging are artwork and an integral part of the musical
experience and artistic statement. They want to own original copies to examine
them from all angles, searching for clues, or information to enhance their
understanding and appreciation of the music.
On the other hand, some people just consume music. They want a copy of a song
because everyone else has it. They don't really care about the rest of the
album. All they really like is the hit single that every radio and music TV
station is playing. They are not interested in music as an art form, but as a
form of disposable entertainment to displace the previous chart topper in their
social environment. The trouble with these 2 very different approaches is the
current system is primarily designed to meet the needs of music consumers and
not music lovers.
Prince paraphrased Richard Parsons, President Time Warner (TW), to show the
music industry's fundamental hypocrisy in condemning MP3 formats, Napster and
other forms of online exchange. "He would make comments such as these: An
increasing number of young people don't buy albums, so we are not only losing
that immediate revenue. They are also growing up with a notion that music is
free and ought to be free." His statement fails to recognize that by
exchanging music young people might develop a real appreciation of music and
turn out to be perfectly honest citizens who realize that artists should be
compensated for their work and who will help make sure they are.
Napster illustrates the growing frustration music people feel about how record
companies' control of the air waves, record labels and record stores
increasingly dominated musical "products" to the detriment of real
music. Prince referenced Parsons (TW Pres), "I think this is a very
profound moment historically. This isn't just about a bunch of kids stealing
music. It's about an assault on everything that constitutes the cultural
expression of our society. If we fail to protect and preserve our intellectual
property system, the culture will atrophy. Worst-case scenario: The country
will end up in a sort of cultural Dark Ages."
Parsons is the president of a company which has continually ripped off artists
for their rights to their own music by retaining ownership of the master
recordings and doing whatever they please with them without the consent of the
artist or without compensating him. Does he think that what motivates an artist
to create is record company executives making millions off his back when he
barely manages to scrape by even after selling hundreds of thousands of copies
of his album? The notion of copyright was invented to protect artists from
dishonest and hypocritical individuals and companies that exploit their work
without their consent, not as protection from honest individuals, who want to
share their enthusiasm about their work. (Read this Prince interview in its
entirety online at www.angelfire.com/wv/Royalbadness/napster.html
By
John Burl Smith
On
March 19, 2005, the NAACP honored Oscar and Grammy award-winning musician
"The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" at its 36th Annual Image
Awards. Surprising many, the civil rights organization presented Prince its
Vanguard Award. Presented only twice before to Stanley Kramer and Steven Spielberg,
it honors those "whose groundbreaking work increases understanding and
awareness of racial and social issues." Having won an Oscar for Best
Original Song Score (1984) for "Purple Rain" and four Grammys -- two
for "Purple Rain," one for his recording of "Kiss," and one
for Best R&B Song (1984) for the Chaka Khan hit "I Feel for You,"
this award illuminated Prince's career in a different light.
The
NAACP Vanguard Award does not explain Prince, who is far too creative,
multi-talented, dynamic and enigmatic for a single tribute to make any
definitive statements at this point in his career or private life. The best one
can do is provide a perspective based on the information available. A
remarkable man considering his accomplishments, even more so because he is
black, Prince has reached superstardom while avoiding the usual pitfalls of
promiscuity, debauchery and criminality. A prolific musician, what most people
know about Prince is the persona created by media sound bites designed to sell
records.
Fans and music consumers have long recognized Prince's iconoclastic status,
however most people saw very little value in his music or his sexual antics on
stage. Now most wonder, what makes his "image" worth emulating?
Emblematic of most gems, it is the cutting and polishing process that brings
out the brilliance of a stone. Witnessed by his travails, life's cutting edge
has produced a diamond. For most spectators, artists and rock stars, such as
Prince, have it easy. It is difficult for most of us to see how their struggles
are related or reflected by someone like Prince.
Such an observation ignores our common humanity and the fact each of us makes
decisions daily that have both negative and positive consequences. Given
ownership is intricately bound to freedom and slavery, we choose to exploit
and/or be exploited. Evidenced by those accompanying him during his NAACP Image
Awards performance, Prince has given numerous artists opportunities for careers
in show business. More importantly, stripped bare of superstardom, Prince, the
man and true artist, has survived the depersonalization and brutality of show
business, while casting a giant shadow over the industry.
Fighting Warner Bros. Records to own his name, Prince is reminiscent of the
slave/poet George Moses Horton. Born a slave, Horton taught himself to read and
write in order to sell and preserve his poetry. Forced to remain a slave twenty
years after trying to buy his freedom from a master that refused to acknowledge
Horton's intellect or humanity, even a national movement could not free him. An
old man when the Civil War began, Horton gained freedom only after running off
to meet the advancing Union Army.
Wearing the word "slave" written across his cheek during his fight
with Warner Bros, then producing an album entitled Emancipation after
winning his freedom, Prince identified with the oppression we all feel when our
humanity is denied. Motivated by the same desire as Ray Charles in demanding
ownership of master copies of his recordings, Prince's successful fight to own
his name, emancipated the creative spirit in us all. That is an image everyone
fighting for human rights should definitely emulate. Congratulations to
"the man presently known as Prince!"
Mailbox:
E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls
Email aharlib@earthlink.net Monsanto
Warns Farmers: "Stop Saving Your Seeds." For thousands of years,
farmers collected seeds at harvest for the next year's planting. Concerned that
seed saving reduces their profits, biotech giants like Monsanto have rammed
though controversial "intellectual property laws" in numerous
countries that criminalizes traditional seed saving. Last year, Monsanto
harassed and/or sued more than 500 U.S. farmers who saved their seeds, forcing
them to pay the company over $15 million in fines and prison sentences. See www.organicconsumers.org
Email georgiaforkerry@yahoogroups.com
It is a great mistake to view the Bush regime's ferocious assaults on Black and
poor America as simply a more vicious version of standard Republican behavior.
The Bush crowd is different; they don't just want to defeat Black political
leadership, but to replace it using faith-based initiatives to subvert a
portion of the Black clergy and create a wedge to divide inner city residents.
The synergy of bribed clergy plus a phony voucher "movement" would
give the appearance of an authentic conservative "groundswell" among
African Americans.
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