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Volume 8
Issue 3…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…January 21, 2004
Venue for an Artist
O Black and Unknown Bards
By James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)
O black and unknown bards of long
ago,
How came your lips to touch the
sacred fire?
How, in your darkness, did you
come to know
The power and beauty of the
minstrels' lyre?
Who first from midst his bonds
lifted his eyes?
Who first from out the still
watch, lone and long,
Feeling the ancient faith of
prophets rise
Within his dark-kept soul, burst
into song?
Heart of what slave poured out
such melody
As "Steal away to
Jesus"? On its strains
His spirit must have nightly
floated free
Though still about his hands he
felt his chains.
Who heard great "Jordan
roll"? Whose starward eye
Saw chariot "swing low"?
And who was he
That breathed that comforting,
melodic sigh,
"Nobody knows de trouble I
see"?
What merely living clod, what
captive thing,
Could up toward God through all
its darkness grope,
And find within its deadened heart
to sing
These songs of sorrow, love and
faith, and hope?
How did it catch that subtle
undertone
That note in music heard not with
the ears?
How sound the elusive reed so
seldom blown,
Which stirs the soul or melts the
heart to tears.
Not that great German master in
his dream
Of harmonies that thundered
amongst the stars
At the creation, ever heard a
theme
Nobler than "Go down,
Moses." Mark its bars
How like a mighty trumpet-call
they stir
The blood. Such are the notes that
men have sung
Going to valorous deeds; such
tones there were
That helped make history when Time
was young.
There is a wide, wide wonder in it
all,
That from degraded rest and
servile toil
The fiery spirit of the seer
should call
These simple children of the sun
and soil.
O black slave singers, gone,
forgot, unfamed,
You--you alone, of all the long,
long line
Of those who've sung untaught,
unknown, unnamed,
Have stretched out upward, seeking
the divine.
You sang not deeds of heroes or of
kings;
No chant of bloody war, no
exulting paean
No arms-won triumphs; but your
humble strings
You touched in chord with music
empyrean.
You sang far better than you knew;
the songs
That for your listeners' hungry
hearts sufficed
Still live--but more than this to you
belongs:
You sang a race from wood and
stone to Christ.
About
Me: Of Harlem Renaissance fame, Johnson co-wrote the black
national anthem “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” Born in Jacksonville, Florida, he was the first black
admitted to the state bar after Reconstruction. He gave up law to work with his brother, J. Rosamond
Johnson, on a series of musical comedies for the New York stage. A diplomat, he held consular
posts in Venezuela and Nicaragua.
The first executive secretary of the NAACP, a Springarn medal recipient
and professor of creative literature at Fisk University, Johnson died in a 1938
automobile accident.
The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro is on another self-imposed hiatus. He
spent his most recent school break, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, enjoying
his favorite activities. When queried for comments, the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro
replied, "Holiday means rest."
Arthur
Alfonso Schomburg (1874-1938)
"The American Negro must rebuild his past in order to make his
future...For him, a group tradition must supply compensation for persecution,
and pride of race the antidote for prejudice. History must restore what slavery
took away, for it is the social damage of slavery that the present generation
must repair and offset."
Arthur A. Schomburg was born on January 24, 1874 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Son
of María Josefa, a freeborn black midwife and washer woman from St. Croix, and
Carlos Féderico Schomburg, a mestizo merchant of German heritage, young
Schomburg was baptized Arturo Alfonso four days after his birth.
According to Schomburg,
a grade school teacher told students that "people of color had no history,
no heroes, no notable accomplishments." Throughout his life, Schomburg
sought to reconstruct black history in order to scientifically refute that
assertion. After attending San Juan's Institute of Instruction, Schomburg
studied at St. Thomas College in the Virgin Island. He read extensively in
Spanish and English.
At age
17, Schomburg immigrated to the USA, arriving in New York on April 17, 1891. He
attended night school at Manhattan Central High and held various jobs from
bellhop to porter. From 1901 to 1906, he worked for and "read law" at
a New York law firm. Denied permission to take the examination to qualify for a
"law certificate," he became messenger for the Latin American
Department of Bankers Trust Company.
In 1911, Schomburg and Edward Bruce founded the Negro Society for Historical
Research; it published several black history papers and greatly influenced
black book collecting. In 1914, he joined the American Negro Academy (ANA),
where he met black scholars such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, Kelly Miller
and Carter G. Woodson. The ANA championed black history and fought 'scientific
racism;" it helped further Schomburg's interest in collecting black
materials. From 1922-1929, he served as the fifth and final president of the
ANA.
At the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Schomburg met and befriended many
artists, including Claude McKay, James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes, that
assisted in locating materials for his collection. Schomburg traveled
extensively and spoke at conferences and before other groups on black history.
In 1926, his collection was presented to the New York Public Library through a
$10,000 grant from the Carnegie Foundation. After working as curator of the
Negro Collection at Fisk University (1929-1932), Schomburg became curator for
the Division of Negro History at the New York Public Library. In 1973, it was
renamed the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Today, it comprises
nearly six million items.
Schomburg's writings,
which appeared in Crisis, Opportunity, the Messenger and other black
periodicals, include "The Negro Digs Up His Past," "Racial
Integrity: A Plea for the Establishment of a Chair of Negro History in Our
Schools, Colleges, etc." (1913), "A Bibliographical Checklist of
American Negro Poetry" (1916) and "Economic Contribution by the Negro
to America" (1916). Thrice married and father of eight, Schomburg died on
June 10, 1938. (Sources: www.africawithin.com,
and www.aaregistry.com
)
Books for
Blacks
In 2000, after years of doing free book reviews for the Baltimore Sun's Jubilee
Magazine, the National Newspaper Publishers Association and the Martha's
Vineyard North Star, Dorothy L. Ferebee, who simply wanted to share her
literary finds, created the website www.booksforblacks.net and dedicated it to the
memory of Howard University physician Dr. Dorothy B. Ferebee.
Encouraged to follow in the footsteps of her famous grandaunt, Ferebee
developed a love for books and chose a career in literature and communications.
Her literary agent saw the site and suggested she write a book about building
an African American library. After reviewing Tavis Smiley's "How to Make
America Better,"which challenged each of us to establish a black American
legacy, she found a way to remember and honor her black ancestors that suffered
and fought for the right to read and write in creating her own legacy.
A broadcast journalist at National Public Radio (NPR) since 1990, Ferebee and
her co-workers have collected and distributed hundreds of books to prisons,
senior citizen centers, churches and others. The more than 300 books in her How
to Create Your Own African American Library are part of our black heritage and
tell our story. Beginning with the Destruction of Black Civilization by Dr.
Chancellor Williams and Before the Mayflower by Lerone Bennett, Jr, these books
dispel the myth that black history begins with slavery.
By John
Burl Smith
The New Negro Movement
(NNM), which preceded the Harlem Renaissance, provides a classic example of how
changes in emphasis by those recording history changes the character of a
period. Renowned today as a time of tremendous artistic growth and development,
back then social change was the driving force of the Harlem Renaissance. Even
those who only heard about this epoch, speak of it as though African Americans
reached a cultural zenith. Looking back today and praising what was done then
are far easier for us than for those making decisions back then about the
future and acting on them.
Retrospectively,
jumping on the Harlem Renaissance bandwagon is emblematic of most people today
that celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s holiday. Back when blood flowed in
the streets, most of today's celebrators cowed at home and willingly accepted
injustice and inequality, while castigating Dr. King as a troublemaker. The
same was true when the New Negro Movement (NNM) began.
In his book The New
Negro (1925), Alain Locke offered what became known as the NNM manifesto.
Calling for profound changes by the American Negro, he demanded they free
themselves from the fictions of the past. No more black face mimicking
minstrel, blacks had to redefine themselves. This call echoed a new militancy
of self-assertion and racial pride.
Starting as the NNM,
the shift from social to artistic concerns made it easier for erewhile
"colored folk" to identify with the Harlem Renaissance. The NNM grew
out of the 1905 Niagara Movement. W.E.B. Du Bois rejected Booker T. Washington's
Atlanta Compromise. Fueled by Du Bois' radicalism, progressive blacks like
Countee Cullen, Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, Marcus Garvey, Miguel Covarrubias,
Arthur Alfonso Schomburg and others, challenged timid "colored folk,"
who clung to the old "Steppin' Fletcher" image of the ignorant
enslaved black.
Blacks migrating to the
urban North from the sharecropping South, rising industrial employment and
urban-based communities that included African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants
powered the NNM. This Diaspora built a distinctively pan-African character and
generated its own heroes. Locke declared art and music should reflect
"African heritage, the roots of their own racial milieu." Striking a
defiant note, Locke referred to NNM artists that explored this motif as the
Africanists. Locke felt this group of artists carried "the burden for
establishing 'Negro Art."
The Harlem Renaissance
over time replaced the radical militancy of the NNM, with a bland "happy
blacks cultural" image that was less frightening to "colored
folks." No one remembered why it was necessary to become The New Negro.
The march up from slavery, the endless fight against racism, victims of
lynching, blacking up and a color line like a wall, restricting blacks to
particular neighborhoods were all forgotten. Locke's manifesto to create a new
persona was only a hope. It did not promise the long-desired end of material
progress for blacks but he felt, the achievements through art and letters would
enrich their lives. Moreover, creating a "New Negro" would make
blacks a people rather than a problem.
Disgruntled
says: Caught on camera
in 2002, a white Inglewood, California policeman slammed a handcuffed black
teenager onto the hood of a police cruiser and punched the helpless youth in
the jaw. Indicative of US justice for blacks, a jury deadlocked on an assault
charge filed against officer Jeremy Morse and acquitted his partner, Dijan
Darvish, of filing a false report. Adding insult to injury, Morse, who was
fired by the police department, filed a discrimination lawsuit; the jury
awarded him $1.6 million and another $810,000 for his partner. This kind of
judgement sends the message that white cops that brutalize blacks must not be
punished.
Disgruntled
wants to know: Assisted by the USA, Israel has
become the only Middle East nation known to possess nuclear weapons. Under the
protection of US veto power in the UN Security Council, it is the only Middle
East country not subjected to either inspections by the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) or international sanctions. None of its neighbors enjoy
such immunity. In fact, according to a recent Sy Hersh exclusive, which the
Bush administration denies, plans are afoot to attack Iran and destroy its
nuclear installations. Granted, nuclear power, whether for peaceful energy
purposes or warfare, should be avoided. That said, given it possesses the
greatest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world and has so armed its ally,
what gives the US the right to dictate to the rest of the world which countries
can possess nuclear capability?
Disgruntled
feels: Tuskegeed! In a Tuskegee experiment,
black men were guinea pigs in a scientific study on the affects of untreated
syphilis. For decades blacks have been told there exists a genetic link between
being black and chronic elevated blood pressure and diabetes. Millions
currently take high blood pressure medicine. A recently announced medical study
refutes these scurrilous genetic claims. Other researchers have long maintained
that a stressful environment, diet and a lack of exercise are more likely the
blame for the trifecta of chronic high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes.
Recent food pyramid changes, which reduced its hormone-treated red meat content
and recommended increased physical activity, suggest all Americans have been
part of another Tuskegee experiment.
By John
Burl Smith
Hip hop emerged
following the slow desperate demise of the Civil Rights/Black Power Movements
and was heralded as the rebirth of a true black aesthetic. It was as if young
artists like Africa Bamboda, NWA, KRS 1, Queen Latifah, Grand Master Flash, and
Sista Souljah heard the bell toll, as Rev. Hosea Williams stood as the last
centurion. Reminiscent of the New Negro Movement (NNM), which preceded the
Harlem Renaissance, rap/hip hop picked up the angry defiant tone of the 1960s.
Threatening to rekindle
the unfulfilled dream of a people struggling to overcome slavery, voices that
spoke about freedom, justice and equality were forced underground by Richard
Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover and the repressive tactics of Co-InTel-Pro. Out of
public view, urban blacks created a gritty gutsy expression that cut a unique
slice in the American pie. Like the NNM, which made a hard left turn away from
"black face and the Atlanta Compromise," the new face of hip hop
reflected Malcolm X, black power, the black fist of John Smith, John Carlos and
Harry Edwards at the Mexico City Olympics and H. Rap Brown with a big Afro. It
seemed black people had found themselves once again.
Then, like a tsunami,
gangsterism, bling bling, and a "gotta-be-white" mind-set washed over
hip hop and drowned black pride. Washed away by integration, "Good
Times," pimps and disco music, black power receded during the 1980s. As
the new Negro was bought out in the 1930s, the new hip hop slave masters
promised today's rap icons, "you can take my place and be just like
me." Now, drowning in a cesspool of irrelevant gutter trash, hip hop is
sliding backwards, like dirty bath water going down the drain.
Today, once again, a
lost people stand on the precipice of a familiar abyss with a forlorn hope that
spoken word and other artists can transform this reversal of fortunes. Writers,
poets, performers and other artists today face similar fears and opposition
from blacks as those who fought the NNM. Professing to despise "what has
happened to hip hop," they continue to profit from keeping spoken word
artists underground. Blacklisted, barred from reading lists and performance
venues, Africanist artists are not allowed to offer alternatives to degrading
women, obsessive bling bling and gangster rapping.
Nonetheless, spoken
word artists continue to reinvent themselves by embracing Alain Locke's
manifesto. Groundbreaking Emmy Award winning producer Rod Hollimon has released
a new DVD series Word: Poetry on Fire. Featuring artists like Amyr,
Faona, Aqyil Thomas, Nyrobi and Yohannes Sharriff, it represents the best
spoken word has to offer. Those searching for alternatives to the retrograde
slide of hip hop and are looking for positive messages from young blacks should
check out this mind blowing DVD at http://www.wordthedvd.com/. Purchase WORD and the backward
slide of hip hop stops here. Buy positive and buy black!
State of
the Black Union 2005
On Saturday, February
26, 2005, Tavis Smiley, Tom Joyner and thirty-five black educators, public
policymakers, religious leaders, opinion-makers and community organizers will gather
in metro Atlanta, Georgia for a two-part rap session on the state of black
America. This free to the public event will be held at New Birth Missionary
Baptist Church.
"Road to
Health," the morning session, kicks off Smiley's health and wellness expo,
which spotlights black health and the American health care crisis. The
afternoon session, Defining the African American Agenda, is being billed as
setting the stage in establishing a new direction on how the Black community
effects social and political change. This is sure to be entertaining, so mark
your calendars. Doors open at 7:00 AM. Seating is limited!
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