Left Coast Cowboys

One of my measures for a great writer, speaker and human is how well their words stand up to rereading over years and decades. Do you find something new every time you revisit them? Do they stand up in meaning as times change? By this measure, Martin Luther King Jr. keeps becoming greater and greater as the decades pass.

My first encounter with his words was in 1968 in my Southern segregated-in-all-but-name elementary school. And I don’t mean the Deep South. This school was in the leafy suburbs outside Washington, D.C. populated by Pentagon officials, diplomats and professionals. There were no “Colored Only” signs on the restrooms and drinking fountains, but you never saw two races using the same facilities. We had Blacks in our school — five of them — they had a separate classroom, a separate teacher and they ate at a separate table in the lunchroom. I don’t remember seeing them on the playground. They must have had a separate recess. Years later, I realized the School Board had figured out a way to meet the letter of the law of desegregation without giving an inch to the spirit of that law.

Collage portrait of MLK Jr. by 4-year-old Anna, niece of a Flickr friend, Leigh Graves Wolf (who took this picture). For the story on how this remarkable portrait was made, read on.

In this atmosphere, I had a teacher — not my regular teacher, but what they used to call the “Special Projects Teacher” who went from classroom to classroom presenting current events with the one precious AV set-up available in the school. He was a glamorous figure to us because he came to the education system straight from a stint in the Peace Corps. As Special Projects Teacher, he regularly combined all three third-grade classrooms and screened news footage, documentaries and other subject matter not in our regular curriculum. In between the documentaries on Papua New Guinea and the Space program, he liberally sprinkled his programs with footage of Dr. King’s full length speeches and CBS news programs on the Civil Rights Movement. It was a bold move in a school where the majority of kids came to school wearing Wallace for President buttons and stuck Wallace bumper stickers to their book bags. He probably only got away with this because the regular teachers found his sessions a great excuse to take a long smoking break in the Teacher’s Lounge. They had no idea what he was up to.

I’m not sure what my teacher hoped to do by screening those speeches (and, to be fair, he also screened Kennedy’s speeches and one film of an actor reading Abraham Lincoln’s speeches). I’m sure neither I or any of my third grade classmates understood a bit of what we heard. I do remember being impressed by the music of Dr. King’s cadences. It wasn’t until years later that I really listened to the words. I’ve been listening to them ever since and, every time I hear them, I find a new level of meaning.

Even today, I’m finding out more about Dr. King. I’d always thought his beautiful rhetoric came from the music of Gospels and the cadences of traditional Black Baptist Church preaching. Now, I find out from NPR this morning that King received a Doctorate in Philosophy from Boston University and was deeply informed on the words and thoughts of great thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Hobbes, Bentham, Mill, and Locke. His Letter from the Birmingham Jail, NPR pointed out, is impressive, not just for the way it weaves so many references from poetry, philosophy and the Bible, but because King, at the time, had no library and was quoting from a prodigious memory.

While news outlets are playing and replaying King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, I’m going to refer you to to his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. The former speech is a wonderful call to Civil Rights, but his acceptance speech is even more all encompassing. It lays out a roadmap of hope for humanity and an affirmation that we all can shape a better destiny for the world. (It’s also notable how many times he uses the word “audacity”. The President is not quoting Reverend Wright when he co-opts the word, he’s referring back to Dr. King.)

Are King’s words still resonating? Look no further than the collage of him made by the niece of a Flickr Friend. Her aunt explains how the picture came about:

“It is a wonderful story — after Christmas, Anna asked me what the next holiday was. I told her MLK Jr. day, She asked who MLK Jr was and we researched his life and legacy.  She fell in love with him and was not prompted/coached to create the portrait. She did it all on her own. Her mom just helped her cut/paste the bio at the bottom.”

Like me back in 1968, she’s probably just responding to the music of his words. But once she’s older, she’ll have years and years to discover new meaning and new hope in Dr. King’s life, actions and speeches.

Because you probably can’t hear it too many times, here’s the I Have a Dream speech:

So I was planning to resist this whole Michael Jackson sobfest. And here I am putting up my second MJ post in two days. I still have deeply ambivalent feelings about him. Sure, his songs played through my childhood and young adulthood, although I wasn’t a super fan. I even went so far yesterday as to reclaim him from Generation X to his rightful place with those of us sandwiched between the Xers and the Baby Boomers, Generation Jones. But I also firmly believe that he was a pedophile who did some deeply inappropriate things with kids then weaseled out of a conviction using his money, his sycophants and his famous friends. I’m usually willing to overlook celebrity foibles in the face of incredible talent, but child molestation is just one of those lines that shouldn’t be crossed and can’t be forgiven.

But I find I can’t get Michael Jackson out of my head. And looking back, I think he had a much bigger impact on my life than I’ve given him credit for.

The most significant impact Michael Jackson had for me — and a lot of White people my age — was by blurring some color lines we grew up with. Sure he was the Jackie Robinson of MTV, a talent so big he couldn’t be shut out of the venue. But I’m thinking even before that.

One of my elementary schools was segregated in all but name. Now before you think I was in school before Brown versus the Board of Education, let me enlighten some of my younger readers. Segregation lasted long after Martin Luther King and not just in the Deep South. There were still riots in Boston in the Seventies over the bussing of inner city (read Black) kids into Southie (a bastion of White working class Irish).  In my leafy Maryland suburban elementary school in the Sixties, the possibility that the school board would have to go beyond saying they were desegregated and, you know, actually let Black kids in, was the trigger for foam-flecked rantings and ravings at the PTA meetings.

I remember finding out that my best friend’s mother was running around the neighborhood trying to get a newly relocated Black family’s kids banned from our school. Her reasoning was that, according to my friend (who didn’t understand the words any more than I did) “Black boys rape White girls”. Now this Black family wasn’t headed by Stokely Carmichael or Willie Horton. The father was a college graduate, a military officer and serving in the Pentagon as my father was.

Yet when my friends and I discussed the pending desegregation (which I don’t think we did all that much), I think we were mostly excited. Even if we didn’t articulate it, I think we were expecting a busload of Michael Jacksons to show up. You know, cool kids with sunny smiles who could teach us great dance moves to Rockin’ Robin (Remember we were White. We couldn’t dance.)

I’m not saying that radical intergenerational perception shift made much of an immediate difference. And I don’t want to take anything way from Dr. King and the untold many who fought and even died for Civil Rights. But I think every major point of cultural evolution must also need such a moment. That point when the oppressors suddenly find out their kids are identifying — or at least think favorably of — the people they’ve been trying to keep down. Nothing can ever be the same after that.

I’m giving Michael Jackson much of the credit. To my contemporaries, Diana Ross, the Shirelles and the Ronettes were too exotic and too grown up. But Michael was just our age. And he looked like someone who would be the Coolest Kid in School. I’m not even sure we thought of him as Black (although he was back when he burst onto the scene with Motown in the late Sixties.) His music and dance moves spoke to us White kids, maybe even more than the scrubbed-clean Osmonds. (Although I will admit to being one of the few who says Donny Osmond’s talents are underestimated.)

Nope, I’m giving Michael Jackson credit where credit is due. I’m busy downloading his songs to my iPod and I’m reassessing his place in my life. So Rest in Peace Michael Jackson. I was appalled by what you became, but I’m learning to love you again for what you once were.

ADDENDUM: Here’s one way I want to remember Michael Jackson. As a great little kid who had all the talent and all the dance moves, even way back in 1972 when we were both barely in our teens.

Here’s another revealing moment, this time from the 1988 Grammy Awards. Michael, with few pyrotechnics, costumes or special effects, shows that he didn’t need any of it. His talent could stand on its own. It’s also nice that he’s included a full Gospel choir as a shout-out to his musical and cultural heritage. And in that great old Gospel tradition, he’s calling for us, and himself, to do something bigger than we think we’re capable of.

Photo is copyright Terry Cryer. See more of his photos here: http://terrycryer.com

Like millions of other viewers, I was charmed by that old Civil Rights lion Reverend Joseph Lowery and his benediction at the Inauguration. Starting with a reference to a spiritual, he ended with this rhyme:

“We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right.”

I completely missed the reference here, but Nordette, a New Orleans blogger and poet who writes at Whose Shoes Are These Anyway, set me straight. Rev. Lowery was riffing on the chorus to an old Big Bill Broonzy song, Black, Brown and White Blues.

Apparently, I’m one of the last to know as Michelle Malkin has already been screaming that it’s racist. Guess she’s a yellow who doesn’t want to be mellow.

Me, I’m not taking offense. Yes, there are many whites who embraced and continue to embrace what is right. Many of us certainly did that when we voted for Barack Obama based on the content of his character, not the color of his skin. I also think of  Schwerner and Goodman, murdered with Chaney, for Civil Rights work. And, in the remembrances of Martin Luther King, I wish someone had given a shout out to old Lyndon Johnson who signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, even though, as he rightly predicted, “this will lose the South for the Democratic Party for the next hundred years.”

Still, with what Rev. Lowery has been through and seen, and on the day he saw Martin Luther King’s dream come to fruition, I’m going to give him a pass to say whatever he wants. I don’t think he was condemning, so much as saying “we’re making progress, but let’s keep striving for this as an ideal.” And as evidenced by the last eight years, white doesn’t always embrace what is right.

Well, thank God for YouTube. Here is an audio only recording of Broonzy doing the song:

I hope Bill is up in Heaven doing fist-bumps with Martin Luther King and Odetta.

Here is one set of lyrics to Black, Brown and White Blues although the recorded version differs a little.

This little song that i’m singin’ about,
People you know it’s true
If you’re black and gotta work for a living,
This is what they will say to you,
They says, “if you was white, should be all right,
If you was brown, stick around,
But as you’s black, hmm brother, get back, get back, get back”
I was in a place one night
They was all having fun
They was all buyin’ beer and wine,
But they would not sell me none
They said, “if you was white, should be all right,
If you was brown, stick around,
But if you black, hmm brother, get back, get back, get back”
Me and a man was workin’ side by side
This is what it meant
They was paying him a dollar an hour,
And they was paying me fifty cent
They said, “if you was white, ‘t should be all right,
If you was brown, could stick around,
But as you black, hmm boy, get back, get back, get back”
I went to an employment office,
Got a number ‘n’ i got in line
They called everybody’s number,
But they never did call mine
They said, “if you was white, should be all right,
If you was brown, could stick around,
But as you black, hmm brother, get back, get back, get back”
I hope when sweet victory,
With my plough and hoe
Now i want you to tell me brother,
What you gonna do about the old jim crow?
Now if you was white, should be all right,
If you was brown, could stick around,
But if you black, whoa brother, get back, get back, get back

Photo of Big Bill Broonzy by Terry Cryer.

 On the eve of a national election, I was shocked to learn that an otherwise educated and aware acquaintance never votes. He had some convoluted argument about how Henry David Thoreau was against voting on the theory that “it only encourages them” and, “no matter who won, it wouldn’t make any difference.”

I could have started the quote game with him. I distinctly remember reading in Civil Disobedience that Thoreau said, “Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.” I always took it to mean Thoreau was warning against just casting a vote and thinking that you’d done your bit for society. That voting is a starting place, but demanding accountability from government constantly was the next, logical and more important step.

But Thoreau was beside the point. What shocked me is that someone couldn’t be bothered to perform the absolute bare minimum of what our society asks of us. My friend is white and educated and professional, as I am. He’s probably right, no matter who wins, WE will be okay. Our taxes might go up or down. A war might rage, but we won’t be called to fight in it. We’ll go on buying iPods and laptops and watching our TV shows without too much inconvenience. Sort of the equivalent of Thoreau living in his faux woods, yet stepping out to enjoy the spirited conversation and dinner parties of his intellectual friends, protected by the militia and laws of the town whose limits he still lived in and whose maintained roads he travelled on although he refused to pay for them with his tax dollars. Nice to opt out if you can still keep all the privileges.

What I really want to talk about when someone says they can’t be bothered to vote are The Black Church Ladies.

In college, I became involved with a Democratic-backed initiative to help the elderly and those without cars get to polling stations on voting day. One of the areas that most needed those services were the slum areas around the dying mill towns that dot Massachusetts. The seasoned volunteers didn’t really want that duty, so they were more than happy to delegate it to the college students who didn’t know any better. My college friend and I were assigned to work with a predominantly Black church that needed cars and drivers to help their many elderly and poor members get to the decentralized voting places. (I’m always amazed in San Francisco that I walk in the sunshine to my neighbor’s garage and cast my vote. It wasn’t that way in Massachusetts in the 70s. Voting places were at schools in the suburbs and the weather always seemed to be harsh.)

The minister gave us a list and addresses of the “Church Sisters” who needed assistence. In these days before SatNav and Google Maps, we were lucky groups of them had chosen to gather at a few houses and at the church for their rides. It meant fewer hour-long round trips at 30MPH in the sleeting rain. The unexpected benefit was that it meant a chance to listen to these ladies talking among themselves and to us about their voting experiences.

The most amazing thing we discovered when we pulled up to our first stop, was that these ladies were dressed to the nines: church clothes and magnificent hats. This wasn’t just voting, it was a momentous occasion. Once loaded into the van, the ladies began talking about what it used to be like in the South (most were from the African American Diaspora of the 30s and 40s when many Southern Blacks fled Jim Crow Laws for what seemed like better opportunities in the factories and shipyards of the North.) Every one of the ladies knew or knew of someone who had been beaten, harassed or even killed, not just for trying to vote, but sometimes for having been seen with a vote organizer.

The next thing we discovered was that there was a tremendous pride in walking into the polling place. Some of the ladies had canes and walkers. They were happy to let us help them out of the van and negotiate the path to the polling place. But at the door, they all dropped our arms. Damn it, they were going to walk in on their own steam, heads high in magnificent hats and cast their votes under their own power. It was a matter of pride.

The choice that year included Jimmy Carter who many of these women saw as someone who would be attuned to the needs of people like them. But in the end, they were still voting for another White Man. Didn’t make a difference. They had the vote and no one was going to stop them from using it.

After each round of passengers had voted, we were instructed to drop them off at the church where a large pot-luck supper and celebration was planned. Voting day was almost like Thanksgiving Day for a whole community.

So that’s what I think of when anyone tells me they can’t be bothered to vote. I think of those wonderful Black Church Ladies who remembered when they couldn’t vote or were prevented from voting. Who knew people, even relatives, who died because they tried to vote. And after hundreds of years of disenfranchisement from the American system, still had the belief that their votes mattered.

I know the Seventies seem like ancient history to many of you. Things have changed, those scars are healed, right? Nobody, even the Black community looks on voting as such an important act.

A trip to the Civil Rights Museum put me in contact with more marvelous Church Ladies.

I would say you were wrong. Last summer, my niece and I took a cross-country road trip. One stop took us to Memphis and the Civil Rights Museum housed in the motel where Martin Luther King was shot. We were surprised to be surrounded by at least 10 parties of family reunions. (Southern family reunions, especially among African Americans, are a wonder. They get T-shirts made and family members come from hundreds of miles away to participate in what are often three day events.) It seems in the Memphis area, a stop at the Civil Rights Museum is a must.

We surreptitiously tacked ourselves on to groups to overhear what was being said. Church Ladies very much like my Voting Church Ladies were herding grandchildren through the exhibits and adding personal commentary: “I remember when this happened. I was with your grandfather at Selma. Our neighbor was lynched.”

It took me a moment to realize that these Church Ladies were not MY Church Ladies. They were probably the daughters of those Church Ladies. Which meant the personal lessons of sufferage were thriving and being passed on actively through the generations. I’m hoping most of the little kids I saw that day will come back to Memphis when they are fifty and take their grandchildren through the exhibits, recounting tales from their elders. And I hope they’ll be telling those grandkids that they remember when the first African American President was elected. I think they will.

This is a long post to share with you the best Political Science lesson I ever learned. Those Church Ladies taught me never to take my vote for granted — even though I never had to struggle for it. For those who suffered or even died for the right of enfranchisement, you MUST cast your vote. And do it in an informed thoughtful manner. It’s the least effort that citizenship requires of you, except it may be the most important requirement.

Those Church Ladies didn’t quote Lyndon Johnson to me, but they had high regard for him. I think he may have said it best:

“The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.”

Image at top left from Google Images and inmagine.com