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  • Mother of Mike and the Bigger Game

    The recent documentary, Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power, chronicled the riveting grass roots effort by the people of Lowndes to organize, register, and vote African Americans into key local offices in the late 1960s. While they were eventually successful at the ballot box, they soon learned that the vote was just the beginning. Being elected sheriff, tax assessor, coroner and to the school board was still paper without power. There was a bigger game afoot that they didn’t realize it at the time. True power rested in Lowndes’ economic centers in which they were not part. Business, banking, and land remained primarily in white hands, as it does today. That documentary came to mind as I was watching the new movie, Air, starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Viola Davis. It’s the story of the campaign waged by Adidas, Converse and third place Nike to woo new NBA recruit Michael Jordan to a shoe deal. Matt Damon and Viola Davis in Air, 2023 Nike was initially not even willing to put its entire basketball budget behind one player in order to stay competitive with the other brands. But three people knew Jordan’s true worth and potential - his mother, Deloris, and Nike scout, Sonny Vaccaro and Jordan himself. I’m not spoiling the outcome because we all know Air Jordan put Nike on the map and MJ into the financial stratosphere. What I did not know was how the deal his mother helped negotiate transformed the leverage of future players in the economics of the sport. She set her sights on the bigger game, and was not afraid to reframe the rules of engagement. It was thrilling to watch - and you know Viola did it justice - as the Jordans visited the boardrooms of the shoe giants, listening to pitches by their (all-white) leadership. When they finally selected Nike, Mrs. Jordan calmly insisted on her son receiving the fees offered, a sports car, and (really it was so obvious, she remarked, that it was probably just an oversight in the paperwork) a cut of the profits from every Air Jordan sold henceforth and forever more. That is not how it was done then, and watching the stunned Sonny Vaccaro character try to talk her out of it was an illuminating display of the poverty mentality. He mansplained that Nike was taking the bigger risk. Suppose Michael got injured and curtailed his career? Nike was making a huge investment. Surely the endorsement contract was generous enough. (Viola sighed and held the phone away from her ear.) Then he poor mouthed that they were all mere working stiffs. The true power brokers in the shoe and hoop games would never part with that much of the profits to a player. Mrs. Jordan countered that the shoe line was being built around her son’s name, talent, and on-the-court execution. He would be held to the highest standard, expected to stay in shape, score high, break records, win titles and secure championships for the rest of his career. He deserved a cut because, “A shoe is just a shoe until my son steps in it.” The Nike Air Jordan logo is a globally recognized icon. The rest is history. With that deal, not only were the Jordans’ personal fortunes profoundly altered, they disrupted the way future hoop stars would partake of the fruit of their labor while creating a multi-billion dollar business and philanthropic engine. The beef about MJ back in the day was that he was not vocal about social and racial issues. Now we can see that Mike and his Mama were firmly grounded in courage, vision and confidence. They were always playing the bigger game. Isisara Bey Artistic Director, March On Washington Film Festival

  • Between Emancipation and Independence

    This month, the nation observed Juneteenth— as of 2020, a national holiday commemorating the announcement of emancipation to the enslaved in Texas— two and a half years after the fact. In cities and towns across the country, Americans, mostly of African descent, held festivals, art exhibitions, dance and musical performances, and panel discussions in a rite performed for decades before it came to national prominence. In my hometown, NYC, rituals are performed at the African Burial Ground, one of the largest and earliest cemeteries of enslaved Africans in the US, now a national monument in Lower Manhattan. It is in this location that African slaves were allowed to congregate and practice their cultural traditions of nighttime burials. Archaeologists estimate that over 20,000 burials exist in this seven-acre plot. Beneath towering skyscrapers, amidst construction sites and buildings crowded together, I wonder how they rest. I first started going to Juneteenth celebrations at Coney Island in the 90s. In the spirit of traditional African culture and ritual, Djembe drums pulsated, and dancers offered up their prayers in movement. Brothers and sisters dressed in white and placed flowers in the waves to remember those who jumped, were thrown, or who died and were buried in the Atlantic during the Middle Passage. NNYC: Dance to the Sea, © Chester Higgins Jr. Mere weeks later, we celebrate the 13 colonies’ formal declaration of independence from the rule of King George III of England. It was ratified by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776 and established the USA as a sovereign nation (cookouts abound, grills blazing). In 1852, the great orator Frederick Douglass spoke eloquently and scathingly in "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" Said Douglass, “I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.” Frederick Douglass But as we observe both of these annual holidays, it brings to my mind some of the mis-told and under-told aspects of independence and emancipation as it pertains to African Americans. Allow me to elaborate on what has been forgotten, and what it could mean for our future. Abraham Lincoln’s address to Congress, commonly known as the Emancipation Proclamation, was actually issued in three parts. The first, a preliminary proclamation delivered to his Cabinet, was timed to be released after a significant Union Civil War victory. The Battle of Antietam served that purpose. Signed on September 23, 1862, it affirmed that if the rebels of the “slave states” did not end the fighting and rejoin the Union by January 1, 1863, all slaves in the rebellious states would be declared free, and that war would continue to be prosecuted to restore the constitutional relation between the United States and each of the States. Note: Beginning in 1861, Virginians who sided with the Union separated from the Confederacy and petitioned for admission to Congress as a state, with a constitution that included a plan for gradual emancipation. Lincoln signed the bill admitting West Virginia to the Union on December 31, 1862. The September letter also stated that Lincoln would, upon the next meeting of Congress, again recommend the adoption of some practical measures, including to “tender pecuniary aid” to the states and the newly freed; and to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent, upon this continent, or elsewhere with the previously obtained consent of those governments. That next meeting of Congress was December 1, 1862. In this 2nd annual message, Lincoln laid out in more detail the elements of compensation (AKA reparations): who would receive it and how the country would pay for it; and colonization: including regions in the continental US where freed bondsmen and women could live and engage in governance and commerce with the rest of the country. Isisara Bey, Artistic Director

  • Jump and Shout: Remembering the May 2nd Birmingham Children’s Crusade

    It was the 1960s, and AM radio provided the soundtrack that got the party started in parks, beaches, front stoops and backyards across the country. African American DJs, with their melodic voices and big personalities were the griots, broadcasting critical cultural and political messages to the masses. Their importance was never more evident than in the spring of 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama. After the murder of Emmett Till in 1955, the Civil Rights Movement grew steadily. Montgomery, Little Rock, Greensboro, Atlanta - marches, rallies, boycotts and sit-ins rippled across the South. But in 1962, the year-long Albany, GA campaign petered to an unfruitful end and cast doubts on the viability of the protests. By 1963, the Birmingham African American community was experiencing movement fatigue. There was the ever present fear of Klan reprisals and legally sanctioned firings by white employers. Volunteers were dwindling. Dr. King traveled to Birmingham to marshal the masses, but was unsuccessful, even after he was arrested and wrote Letter From Birmingham Jail. It was clear that a new strategy was needed. Then the SCLC’s Rev. James Bevel and Birmingham activist Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth proposed a highly controversial tack - recruiting children to fill the ranks. For this they enlisted the help of popular radio DJs, Shelley “Playboy” Stewart and “Tall Paul” White. DJ Shelley “Playboy” Stewart The DJs mobilized student leaders, athletes and cheerleaders to bring their friends to church rallies. They screened film strips of sit-ins, segregationists’ attacks, and police arrests, then drilled in nonviolent response. The children, eager to join the fight, hid their participation from their more reluctant parents. In late April, they distributed leaflets directing their peers to leave school early on May 2nd. Birmingham H.S. students converging in the 1963 Children’s Crusade That morning the DJs, using code, announced a “party in the park,” and played Big Joe Turner’s Shake Rattle and Roll. They chanted “we gonna jump and shout, we gonna turn it out” to signal the mass rally. They advised the children to “bring your toothbrush, lunch will be served” to prepare for being arrested and jailed overnight. To confuse the police, the legion of students was divided into massive groups. One group met at the 16th St. Baptist Church. Another, in waves of 50, walked two-by-two toward Kelly Ingram Park to pray. A third converged on City Hall. Fanning out in different directions, it was impossible for the police to stop them all. But Public Safety Commissioner “Bull” Conner, familiar with the movement’s usual tactics, surprised the organizers by unleashing K-9 units and high pressure fire hoses on the children, some as young as six years old. Birmingham students hosed during 1963 Children’s Crusade Thousands were arrested. A caravan of school buses carted the children off until the jails were overwhelmed. Then they were taken to the fairgrounds which quickly took on the appearance of a concentration camp. Some were released the same day, and returned to rally the next day. Many more spent several days imprisoned. The marches continued that week and brought all downtown commerce to a halt. Television crews and newspapers captured kids getting hosed and arrested, which sparked national outrage. Soon the white businessmen were calling for negotiations with Movement leaders to stop the demonstrations. By May 10th, agreements were announced to desegregate lunch counters, businesses and rest rooms, and improve hiring practices. Movement progress revived nationally and in August, the March on Washington became the largest Civil Rights demonstration in history. But a backlash reared in Birmingham. That September, the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed, killing four little girls. The following July, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

  • We Teach Ourselves

    When my mother emigrated to the US from British Guiana in 1949, she was already a certified primary school teacher. But the prejudice of the times prevented her from securing a teaching position in American public schools. So she, with a couple of other Caribbean teachers and two Anglican priests, started their own school in Queens, NY. And since they enrolled their own children, my mother was my first grade teacher. Originally the school was housed in a church basement. Then for the next several years, classes were held in a Jewish Community Center. We were free to use the classrooms during the day since they did not have classes until after 3 pm, when the Jewish children arrived for a few more hours of education about their religious heritage. I thought it unfortunate that they had to have a second school shift. Later, I understood that many other nationalities and religious groups supplement their children’s American education with lessons in their own history, values, language and traditions. The observance of national Negro History Week was initiated in 1926 by historian and scholar, Carter G. Woodson. He selected the month of February because it included the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Sixty years later, in 1986, Congress passed Public Law 99-244 designating February as National Black (Afro-American) History Month. Now our country is embroiled in a fevered national conversation around the actions of the College Board, which stripped its African American Studies Advanced Placement curricula of the scholarship of many African American writers. These intellectuals used topics including critical race theory, intersectionality, feminism, Black Lives Matter, the prison industrial complex, reparations, and the queer experience to center the African American perspective in the history of this country. The names and works of progressives including Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Dr. Kimberle Crenshaw, Michelle Alexander, bell hooks, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Audre Lord and Alice Walker were removed. This conservative backlash uses the denunciation of the aforementioned AP topics to reinforce a whitewashed version of Western Civilization. But we know it takes more than a week or a month to encompass the many achievements and contributions of African Americans to the American story. In fact, we have incorporated an understanding of our own history as part of our lives for centuries, even when it was illegal for enslaved Africans to read and write. I once heard the late noted historian, John Henrik Clarke, praise the education his teachers delivered in his segregated school, which lifted up the works of African American writers, inventors and scholars, and set him on his path to become a brilliant teacher/activist. The scores of independent schools, after school programs, and public and private historically Black colleges and universities, are also testament to our understanding that we are responsible for learning about who we are, what we have done, and what we can and must do now as a people. As my good friend Paul Coates, founder of Black Classic Press (re)publishing company says, Du4Self. With this in mind, I am offering just some of the books and authors who have strengthened my sense of self-determination, appreciation for the richness of my culture, and my understanding of my authentic place in the world. World’s Great Men of Color, by Joel Augustus Rogers; The Moors in Spain, by Stanley Lane-Poole; Two Thousand Seasons, by Ayi Kwei Armah; The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, by James Weldon Johnson; The African Origin of Civilization, by Cheikh Anta Diop; Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire; Soledad Brother, by George Jackson; Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston; The Heart of a Woman, by Maya Angelou; The Big Sea, by Langston Hughes; The Color Purple by Alice Walker; They Came Before Columbus, by Ivan Van Sertima; Mama Day, by Gloria Naylor; So Long a Letter, by Mariame Ba. Enjoy!

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