It's A Long Walk To DC, But I'm On My Way

An elderly man wakes up one Monday morning and remembers something he planned to do a long time before. He puts on a winter jacket and a grey cloth cap. Like he used to do, he stops at the hallway mirror, looks at his reflection, and sets the cap at a jaunty angle. That's more like it, he thinks, and chuckles, raising one eyebrow as he recognises the face staring back at him. The one who, with the confidence of a younger man, set out to do this same thing 40 years ago.

His children and grandchildren came by yesterday to see off their grandpa. They are not here right now on this cold icy morning as he opens the front door and steps off the porch - but the old man knows that they will be waiting for him somewhere in the center of Petersburg, ready to join him for the first stretch of his journey, and they won't be the only ones. As the journey contines, more and more will join him for a time, and others will converge on his destination by different routes leading from across the nation. This time.

The first time, 40 years ago, the journey ended before it began. They were waiting for a good friend, but he couldn't make it. Someone made sure of that. The old man thinks about him for a moment. It is his birthday soon, he'd like that, he muses.

The old man takes one last look up at the house, and thinks upon the number on the door. 244 is sure a lot less than 65000, and it's a long walk to DC. But you do it one step at a time, Carl Winfield reminds himself, like we did all those times before. He steps out onto the frosty sidewalk and the crisp crystals crunch beneath his feet, announcing the first step. At times it feels like he is going to fall, but neighbors are coming out now to see him alright. I'm going to see the President, no matter what it takes, he laughs!

The Staple Singers - Long Walk To DC (Stax 1968)

To everybody setting out for Atlanta this Martin Luther King Day or for Washington for Inauguration Day, I hope that it proves to be an unforgettable moment in your life and the life of your Nation! Happy Birthday Dr King, and Godspeed President Obama!

I 'll Change If You Vote Me In As The Pres...

Out of all of the images of yesterday's events in Memphis that were broadcast in Britain, the most surprising for me, but also ironically the most heart-warming, was the sight of Republican nominee John McCain standing at the balcony where Dr King was killed and being shown around the museum. The fulsome praise which he heaped upon Dr King and the admiration for his legacy which he expressed was exemplary, and I imagine they took quite a bit of political courage from a man who, throughout most of his life, had not in his own words "even considered" the significance of the Civil Rights Movement, and had frequently in his career campaigned and voted against the institution of a National Martin Luther King Day, and also the establishment of that holiday in his state of Arizona.

How did Senator McCain come to this point of view? Well, I imagine that his early upbringing was typical of many white suburban Americans in the 40s, still in a time when segregation was considered by much of white America as an acceptable fact of life. In his own words in an interview, the Senator described further:

"I had not been involved in the issue. I had come from being in the military to running for Congress in a state that did not have a large African American population."

So for Senator McCain, other issues such as Cold War foreign policy and economics occupied his mind at that time. The emergence of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s did not inspire or interest him. By the 1960s, he would have been heavily involved in the military - which he describes as having been an equal-opportunities environment. Compared to the rest of America at that time, he would have been right (though it was far from a paradise), and I can understand why at the time he might then have thought that civil rights protest was unnecessary and divisive. It is an uninspiring story, and reveals a deep lack of empathy and ability for analysing social issues, a disturbing tendency to go along with the flow and follow the herd of opinion, to blame the victim of injustice for not being strong enough to sort out their own problems, but it fits with where many similar young white men might have been at that time.

After this, the Senator was a POW in Vietnam, and he has described how his torturers used events like protests and race riots to try to sap the morale of the prisoners, portraying a nation in turmoil. I can understand how this might emotionally turn the Senator against expressions of admiration for the Civil Rights Movement, as the effects of torture do not make it easy to judge and evaluate events gleaned from patchy scraps of news easy. It is a shame that he had not thought more deeply about the numerous images of the fight against racial injustice which he had been exposed to on televisions and simply walking around any American town before his capture.

However, from his entry into politics, Senator McCain had the means, advice and political duty to learn the truth. His record stands up to now as a sorry testament to his ability for self-reflection. It took him literally decades to abandon his trenchant position opposing Martin Luther King Day, and in the meantime, because he had political position, he was able to add his vote to preventing Arizona joining the rest of the Union in celebrating Dr King's life.

It seems that in the meantime, John McCain has grappled with how his experiences of imprisonment and the experience of racism in America both highlight injustice and indignity. I hope that his conversion is a heartfelt and a genuine one. To be sure that Senator McCain remembers, I have chosen a song from an old nemesis, Stevie Wonder, one of the originators of the idea of Martin Luther King Day, which will serve as a reminder.

Stevie Wonder - Big Brother (from Motown LP 'Talking Book STMA8007) 1972

For this post I read an interesting debate at the Chicago Tribune website.

The Dream Marches On...

A phenomena is taking place in Memphis today. Thousands of Americans of all kinds are congregating at the Mason Temple Pentacostal Church and near the National Civil Rights Museum, housed in the Lorraine Motel, to celebrate the memory of a man who changed the face of America and the world, before his life was taken from him by an assassin's bullet.

In his last speech before his death, Martin Luther King Jr almost prophetically said, "Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

This is a day then for contemplation of the way Dr King's legacy has been continued, by others working in their own ways for equality and freedom and justice, up to the present day. Have we reached the mountaintop?

Dr Martin Luther King Jr - I Have Been To The Mountain Top (April 3rd 1968)

The recording of this speech is hosted by DrMartinLutherKingjr.com. Photograph taken by Mike Segar.

Happy Birthday!

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr - All Here And Now

I Could Never Be President!

Race in US politics has always determined the heights of possible ambition. Is this about to change at the highest level? Jesse Jackson succeeded to the Democratic Party nomination. Will Senator Barack Obama first take the nomination and then the Presidency? That brings up very exciting possibilities. Mr Obama has strong family ties to Kenya, and supports local schools in his grandmother's town. I feel that such a man, if elected President, would therefore have a radically different perspective on the USA's relationship with the Third World. Then again, I feel less comfortable with his blanket praise for Ronald Reagan's ability to 'change' the entire nation. Ronnie, and even more so Nancy, have many great achievements in their favour, particularly in the sphere of the conclusion of the Cold War. However, domestically, the USA could not have been further from the goals of the Great Society during his Presidency. Maybe this comment by Obama explains what happened next...

On the other side, is the warning word of the cynic. Ironically, it was the Come-Back Kid himself, Bill Clinton, sometimes nicknamed 'the first black President' who, by referring to the rise of less experienced Obama as a 'kid' in 'the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen' left himself open to the charge of having a paternalist attitude. Don't set your hopes too high, he seems to suggest. I think it was the Reagan jibe that made him snap. To his credit, Bill did then make an attempt at amends, telephoning Rev Al Sharpton's radio show to tell him that "He [Obama] had put together a great campaign... he might win." Ah, Bill, you charmer. I can never stay made at you. You'd still make a great First Man. And when I look at certain policy proposals supported by Hillary, such as a health care or insurance scheme for all Americans regardless of wealth, I am of the view that Hillary too could make a President who made a difference.

However, Hillary Clinton and her campaign staff had by this time already proceeded much further in their politicking, in a manner that must leave her husband despairing. She discussed the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King Jr in the run up to the anniversary of his birth, and decided to give an ad hoc lecture on the importance of President Johnson in implementing civil-rights reform. Be it true that Martin Luther King could not alone in 1963 sway the politicians to support change. And it is one of those ironies of history that it was actually the career southern politician Lyndon Johnson, and not the dashing John Kennedy, who would actually turn out to care about civil rights and have the political skills to push them through Congress. Yet, to deny one of these facts over the other is to deny the obvious interplay between them. Historical factors do not work in isolation. Johnson knew very well his chance to pass the Civil Rights Act on 1964 depended on the up-swell of despair and human idealism that followed the death of a President and the mobilisation of that idealism by activists inspired by the speeches of hope given by Martin Luther King. Every one of those ordinary, extraordinary people who stood up and did something made a difference, as Johnson could refer to the popular movement and apply pressure to the stalwarts and cynics in the Congress.

Now, maybe Hillary Clinton, when she reflects a little out away from Washington, will come to see this, and the contribution of so many. What to say about the Clinton staff member, though, who briefed journalists that one reason not to choose Barack Obama as presidential candidate is that someone might want to assassinate him? Can the currency of civic duty be so debased that some would accept meekly the authority of an assassin to determine who should or should not stand in democratic election? And once again, skin colour stands as the shibboleth that America is too afraid to confront? No, too many times that has been allowed. No more, not this time.

I'm going to play Johnnie Taylor's I Could Never Be President, recorded in 1969. Johnnie is having one of those dilemmas we all have - should he be President and end discrimination and poverty, or spend time loving his woman. Or, in Bill's case, women. Now, I've gone through a half dozen changes of mind on what exactly this song is trying to infer in the light of recent events. It has the word President in it. Listen, then make a difference in your community, by using your voice and your vote. I Could Never Be President? Why the hell not?

Johnnie Taylor - I Could Never Be President (Stax 0046) June 1969

I'm sure this has been all over the press in the USA, but here is a link to a news report if you haven't heard the furor: Daily Telegraph report

99 1/2 Just Won't Do: Brown Eyed Has Got To 100!

I have let another milestone pass me by... my post about The Chants was in fact my 100th published post.! With all of the half-started posts strewn in my blogger dashboard, I never realised...

To help me celebrate it, here is the late, the great, the wicked Wilson Pickett, to sing that ode to perfection, 99 1/2 Won't Do. I just hope 102 is enough! Accompanying him, The Alabama Christian Movement For Human Rights Choir sing the hymn and freedom song from which Pickett, Eddie Floyd and Steve Cropper took their inspiration.

In the summer of 1963, in the midst of the gruelling Birmingham, Alabama protests co-ordinated by Rev Fred Shuttlesworth of the ACMHR and Rev Martin Luther King of the SCLC, the Alabama Christian Movement Choir perfomed nightly at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in support of the protests. According to historian Wilson Fallin Jr: "In two organizations within the ACMHR, women made up the majority of the members. The ACMHR choir, formed in 1960, was intended to enhance the spirituality of the Monday night meetings. Twenty-three members formed the group. Most were Baptist women who sang in their church choirs and were accustomed to singing songs similar to those sung by the movement choir, including spirituals and gospel hymns. They sang "God Will Make a Way Some How," Walk with me Lord," and "Ninety-Nine and a Half Won't Do." One member of the choir remarked that "the choir sang with faith in God knowing that his power worked through their songs to give courage." In the mass meetings, female singers allowed their emotions to take over, and on many occasions, they had to be restrained by the ushers."

Choir conductor Carlton Reese adapted the lyrics to add new civil-rights phrases to a popular gospel song sung by Mother Katie Bell Nubin (mother of even more famous Sister Rosetta Tharpe). Reese is leading the singing, backed by a powerful thumping Hammond organ. This version was recorded by folk singer Guy Carawan. The recording served a dual purpose, giving nightly hope and strength to those taking part in the protest, but also as a conscious element of Project C, a strategy to confront the racialist system of segregation in the city head-on in a high-visibility strategy that would engage the entire nation. The singers themselves faced intimidation and arrest. Cleopatra Kennedy was 20 years old in 1963 when she sang solos for the choir. She recalls what it was like the first time she was sent to jail: "That first time, she was in jail for 14 days, but the group sang songs and stomped their feet on the iron beds to make their music. "Singing songs was our way of keeping our self-esteem up, of washing away fear," she says. The day after she was released, she went back on the picket line." When Martin Luther King was arrested and jailed in April of that year, local liberal white church leaders wrote to him urging him to tone down the movement's activities, calling them "unwise and untimely". His response was the famous Letter From A Birmingham Jail, with his powerful riposte: "For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." The situation would become even more ense later in that year, with the use of dogs and fire hoses against student and youth protestors, and the bombing of the 16th Street Church during a Sunday school session, with the tragic death of four children. It was in trying times like these that freedom songs could give hope and inspiration.

Jump forward in time two years, to May 1965. Wilson Pickett arrived in Memphis courtesy of Jerry Wexler, who was sure that The Little Label That Could had the spark he needed to secure Pickett, former member of The Falcons, an elusive r&b hit. Pickett sat down with Steve Cropper, and within a matter of half-an-hour, they had come up with In The Midnight Hour and Don't Fight It, both taking the behind-the-beat Stax sound in a new direction by incorporating a behind-the-beat 'Jerk' rhythm. Not a bad night's work! So pleased was he with the sessions, that he sent each of the MGs a $100 thank-you gift.

Wexler and Pickett were eager to return in October and again in December 1965. Eddie Floyd, Wilson's old partner from The Falcons, Steve Cropper, keen to earn some more songwriting money, and Donald Dunn, impressed with Pickett's vocal ability, were all pleased to see him again. Jim Stewart was less keen, perhaps fearful that Atlantic Records were borrowing too much of the Stax sound. The MGs were joined this time by Isaac Hayes, brought in to play piano while Booker T Jones was at college. The new sessions were more difficult, as the group felt the pressure to reproduce what they had achieved in May. Nervous about the prospect, Steve Cropper turned to the experienced Eddie Floyd for advice about songwriting. Cropper said in an interview with Gerry Hershey: "He had been on the stage, and he knew what was going on... He was real helpful to me. Eddie knew the pulse on the street, he knew the pulse of the ghettos of Chicago and Detroit, and I didn't know jack shit about that..."

Eddie Floyd and Cropper had been working on a new song for a whole week, 634-5789, before Wilson arrived back in Memphis on 19th December. After hearing a tape, a clearly tense and nervous Pickett let fly: "This is it? This is my hit tune? It's a piece of shit!" Eddie Floyd had to be prised off his old buddy! But apparently, it had been no different in the old days with The Falcons...

Later on that day, Wilson had calmed down, and so had Eddie, so they went over to Pickett's hotel to write something else. Eddie and Steve noticed a Coca-Cola billboard, with the slogan 'Ninety-Nine And A Half Won't Do.' Recalling the gospel tune and the freedom song, and with Eddie suggesting they add that stop-start behind-the-beat jerk feel, soon Pickett had another classic in the can, so to speak!

The songwriting and recording relationship was sometimes explosive but always professional, and could have produced even more hits, had not Jim Stewart become uncomfortable with the amount of studio time devoted to an Atlantic artist. Citing Pickett's 'drunkenness' (an assertion that Cropper and others hotly dispute, citing Pickett's sober dedication to every session), Stewart packed Pickett and Jerry Wexler back to New York. It was time for them to try to find similar magic at FAME Studios...

The Alabama Christian Movement Choir - 99 1/2 Won't Do

Wilson Pickett - Ninety-Nine And A Half (Won't Do)

Read A Letter From A Birmingham Jail here...

Information from Soulsville: USA by Rob Bowman, Nowhere To Run by Gerry Hershey, and liner notes of Voices Of The Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs 1960-1966 by Bernice Johnson Reagon and Phyllis May. Wilson Fallin's article about the ACMHR and the role of women in the organisation can be found here. Visit the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to read more and to study eye-witness accounts of events from 1956-1963. Quote from Cleopatra Kennedy from an interview for Baylor University magazine.

Dr King We Sing!

Today is Martin Luther King Day. It is the celebration of one man's birthday. Rev King spent his life confronting injustice.

Some were disatisifed with the pace and the direction at times. Why did he put up with so much hostility and violence, and meet it with non-violence? Why listen to so much deliberate politicking and spend time trying to understand it? Did not Frederick Douglass once state that, "If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power gives up nothing without demands." Dr King understood these frustrations and points of view, and sympathised with them. He hoped that he was right to adopt the path of non-violent protest, and he persisted in making demands of the powerful. Along the way, he accepted the indignities that befell his fellow protestors, and shared their arrests and jailings. He was increasingly unafraid to ask questions about Vietnam, and to help stage the Poor People's Campaign as an alternative agenda for the American people, hoping to demonstrate the damage that a system of racism and war was doing to the fabric of the Great Society for all.

Who would Dr King celebrate today? An answer might be found in his Letter From a Birmingham Jail of April 16th 1963, written to shame those white liberal church leaders who had urged him to call off protests, and to wait for a concessions to be worked out. They misunderstood the nature of the black freedom struggle. Martin Luther King Jr knew that he did not have the power to stop something that he had not begun and did not control, and had been waiting long enough. In one passage, Dr King decides to introduce the true faces of the struggle:

"I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face Jeering, and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My fleets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. "

If you have done one thing, big or small, to face up to injustice and prejudice, which can still pernicously divide us, then today is for you to celebrate.

Happy Birthday Dr King.

In 1968, in the aftermath of Dr King's murder, a gospel group called the Spiritual Consolators went to Style Wooten's Designer Records in Memphis to record a double-sided tribute to Dr King. In part, it was a lament, mourning the loss of a great leader. However, at the same time, the lyric is at pains to demonstrate that they will not go away quietly, but will overcome his passing. Dr King, We Sing. And to the King we sing. And we'll go on singing.

The Spiritual Consolators - Dr King We Sing (Part 1) (Designer 6789) 1968

The Spiritual Consolators - Dr King We Sing (Part 2) (Designer 6789) 1968

P.S. My class (they are 7 and 8) at school today recognised MLK all by themselves after a big discussion, and told me some things they knew about him, and they liked Stevie Wonder's Happy Birthday, which we played over about five times. We thought about whether they would be brave enough to tell someone if somebody was being picked on or treated unfairly. But they did think 50 Cent was cooler now than Stevie...

I Would Not Let More Violence Happen: Roosevelt Grier and Bobby Kennedy

In today's Observer newspaper, there was a series of interviews with people who were present at the Ambassador Hotel on the day of Bobby Kennedy's assasination, as part of the build-up to the new film, which unfortunately will not be based upon or feature portrayals of real witnesses. Amongst the interviews was one with Roosevelt 'Rosey' Grier, football star, actor and soul singer, who had decided to work for Bobby during his campaign. I wrote about Rosey Grier in an earlier post, so I thought it would be interesting to include his recollections here:

"I had never been involved in any political campaign before, but when Bobby started to run for president, I decided to do all I could to help. This man meant so much to me. He was my hero.

I admired his sensitivity when Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was moved by the way Bobby tolk the folks in Indianapolis that King had been killed, sharing with them that his brother had also been assassinated by a white man and that color had nothing to do with it.

So I began helping out wherever I could. On the evening of the California vote, I turned up at the Ambassador. Bobby's supporters were all gathered in the Embassy Room, looking excited. Then I went to Bobby's suite where he was watching the election results come in.

As the evening wore on, it became clear that he had won, and he decided to go downstairs to the crowd. I was told to stay beside Ethel [Kennedy's wife], who was six months pregnant. We got to the elevator and I stood back because I was so large I would have prevented others getting in, but Bobby said, 'No, get in.'

As we went down, I punched him gently in the stomach - the way he had punched me the first time we met - and said we were on our way, first California, then the country. 'Not yet,' he replied. 'It's Illinois next.'

After the victory speech, Bobby jumped off the stage and went into the kitchen, and Ethel and I rushed to follow him. We were just entering the room when I heard a sound like firecrackers and then people screaming.




Ethel fell to the floor and I went to her, but the screaming got louder, so I ran forwards into the kitchen, where I saw a group [including Olympic gold-medal decathlete Rafer Johnson and writer George Plimpton] grappling with a man [Sirhan Sirhan]. I grabbed the man's legs and dragged him onto a table. There was a guy angrily twisting the killer's legs and other angry faces coming towards him, as though they were going to tear him to pieces. I fought them off. I would not let more violence happen.

And then I saw a man lying on the floor, with one knee up. I didn't know it was Bobby until he lifted his head and I saw blood by his right ear.

When Bobby Kennedy died, it changed my life completely. It was a tragedy for his children, his family and for all of us. I gave up football and became involved in trying to help young men avoid a life of violence, and now I'm a minister working to help the community.

That's something Bobby taught me: that individuals can make a difference. That was his inspiration, and God's message to us all."

Quotes by Roosevelt Grier. Interview conducted by Ed Pilkington, and published in the Observer newspaper. Photo by Bob Gumpert.

Toto, we're not in Topeka anymore...

I read recently about events in the school board of Omaha, Nebraska. It has been proposed that the public school system in the city be divided into three geographical zones. However, as is the nature of most American cities, this zoning just happens to correspond broadly with the black, hispanic and white concentrations of the school-age population. While the stated intention is to deal with inequality for African-American schoolchildren by creating what in Britain is called an 'education action zone', this version seems to neglect the fact that funding for public schools in the USA comes primarily from the district itself. Remove the wealthier white districts from the taxable base for northern Omaha City, and lose the biggest slice of funding for those who most need it. Even on an educational level, the proposal seems flawed, since unlike in UK models, where it is easier to find a mixture of communities and schools in a fairly compact area, I cannot see how the important partnerships between 'successful' and struggling schools will occur, when geography and a divided education authority are acting as barriers. Already, it is admitted that the simple act of busing of students has long since been abandoned. So, if other public schools will have no incentive to assist each other, the shortfall in funding is going to have to come from the commercial sector, unless the black and hispanic communities can muster the talents and resources from within themselves. And if they can do that, and I believe they can, why did local politicians not support them long ago, rather than wait to support zoning changes?...

It is interesting to see that the chief proponent of this change is Senator Ernie Chambers, an African-American who has a long distinguished career serving his community, a voice of the dispossesed and discounted. "There is no intent to create segregation," says Sen. Chambers. He has long criticised the lack of resources for the northern part of town. He hopes for more local control of what happens there. He may have walked right into a trap white conservatives might never have dreamed was possible. Or, perhaps not. Sen. Chambers is known as "The Defender of the Downtrodden", and has a penchant for plain speaking as he unapologetically fights for his corner of the city. He decries 'color-blind' politics that really mask the inequalities around us, and would rather say things out loud if it will help get things done. So, to find out more about Ernie Chambers go to his page at the Nebraska State Legislature, and also read this fascinating and entertaining interview with "The Maverick of Omaha" at MotherJones.com, where he sets out why children's education shouldn't be left in the hands of the cosy "Repelicans and Demagogues".

Today's recording is linked to this theme, and is taken from the recording of a speech given by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr at the Detroit Freedom Rally on June 23rd 1963. In this segment of his speech, he discusses what African-Americans can do about segregation in the South, in which he reminds them, of course, about the ever-present ...

Segregation In The North - Rev. Martin Luther King Jr (Gordy Records G906 1963)

Incidentally, I remember that my local record dealer had found this record on a trip to Arizona, and was sorry to part with it. I've played it many a time to students in history lessons, so it is still playing its part in the freedom struggle!