Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" entry for the Selma to Montgomery (Alabama) marches in 1965. In the mist of time I still say- Alabama-goddam.
Markin comment:
I am on my “soap box” today. (For those who do not remember, or are too young, the soap box used to be the standard platform, literally, that street orators like the Wobblies, Communists, Socialists and, frankly, just plain cranks used to get their messages across in the public square. Yes, I know, before “Facebook,” etc.)
My peeve of the day: I am sick and tired, make that heartily sick and tired, of hearing about the good old days of the black civil rights movement in the early 1960s and about that, admittedly, high-water mark struggle’s place in the American liberal mythology. This coming from black and white liberals alike. I will not even mention the many radicals and revolutionaries who, on this one, seem to have created another one of those never-ending popular fronts with the liberals, and their myths, that they are so keen on trying to consummate on every issue from Afghanistan to health care. And then, presto, case closed on the subsequent less “sexy” saga of that on-going black liberation struggle-the next almost half century of hard racial, class and gender oppression, under various guises, in this benighted land.
I should add that this feeling has been brewing in these old bones for a while but has taken a turn for the worst by some personal social experiences of late that need not concern the reader. More specifically, what has got my body temperature up is a rasher of folk-oriented music that I have been hearing lately. Now this is not a new feeling. In fact during 2008 and the early part of 2009 as American President Obama bathed in the praise and sentimentality of being the first black president, there, seemingly, was not a liberal dry eye in the house to think back to those old days and see “how far we have come”. And brought out the old folk standards about "we shall overcome," "blowing in the wind," and the like, including newer material based on that old liberal mythology. No question that Obama is a child of that civil rights struggle but remember this-he is only one child, one black child. I am interested in the fate of the rest.
I am going, simply for example’s sake, to highlight one song (see lyrics below), Emma’s Revolution’s “Bound For Freedom” (see below) to illustrate my point. Not because it is any worst than some others but because it actually has some good parts, some very good parts (concerning Pennsylvania death- row prisoner and “voice of the voiceless” commentator Mumia Abu-Jamal). But note the frame of reference back to Selma, Birmingham, and Montgomery. Key places in the 1960s civil rights saga.
Every left-wing liberation movement needs its musical anthems both to unify its supporters and to carry a broader message to the world, the political world at least. Thus, the international workers movement has long sung the message in the “The Internationale” as a way to draw attention to the class line and to highlight the vices of wage slavery. Other songs of liberation solidarity also come to mind but this little note is not about the vices or virtues of the songs so much as about the limitations of the liberal take on such efforts.
I cut my left-liberal political teeth on supporting the black civil rights struggle when I was nothing but a kid, seemingly, on the road to some bourgeois political career. I did support work, North and South, long before I even got out of high school so I am very familiar with what and what did not get done in that movement. I have also written a number of entries in this space about the qualms I had about various strategies and about various figures, black figures, in the liberation movement. What I have not done is gotten all misty-eyed over it. Not by a long shot. And that is going to be my point here. Plenty of those who also did support work did, and do, get misty-eyed over the experience. As if that time was the end, rather than the beginning of the struggle.
With rare, and seemingly rarer exceptions, the struggles after Selma (1965), or Birmingham (1963) or Montgomery (1956) from the riots in the black ghettos of the Northern cities over many issues, including police brutality by the armies of occupation in the late 1960s, the rise and fall of black nationalism and various social programs connected with those experiences, the systematic elimination of the Black Panthers and other leftist black militants when they moved beyond Uncle Tom politics, and the various “wars on drugs” (read: wars on minorities) that have decimated the black (and other minority communities) are all given short shrift.
Sure, those earlier, mainly southern located, events and movements were the tip of the iceberg, the political high-side in the liberal pantheon. Okay, fair enough. But then let us speak of the liberals’ abandonment of busing as a way to integrate the now resegregated public schools. Look at rates of incarceration especially young black males, unemployment, underemployment, residential segregation. Yes, the “talented tenth” (now, probably the “talented sixth”) has made it. The social basis for liberal social friendships but we are a long, long way from being able to, with a straight face, say that the masses of black people are better off today. So instead of Selma think about Harpers Ferry. Instead of Birmingham think about Fort Wagner. Instead of Montgomery think about Petrograd 1917. We’ll then let the liberals have the old timey songs and faded memories. Just stay out of our way.
*************
©1997 Pat Humphries
Moving Forward Music, BMI
www.emmasrevolution.com
In Montgomery and in Selma and the streets of Birmingham
The people sent a message to the leaders of the land.
We have fought and we have suffered but we know the wrong from right.
We are family, we are neighbors, we are black and we are white.
Chorus:
Here I go bound for freedom, may my truth take the lead
Not the preacher, not the congress, not the millionaire but me
I will organize for justice. I will raise my voice in song.
And our children will be free to lead the world and carry on.
From a cell in Pennsylvania, from an inmate on death row,
Mumia had the courage to expose the evil show.
From the court room to the board room in the television's glare
How the greedy live off poor and hungry people everywhere.
Chorus
Bridge
Here I go though I'm standing on my own,
I remember those before me and I know I'm not alone.
I will organize for justice. I will raise my voice in song,
And our children will be free to lead the world and carry on.
From the streets of New York City 'cross the ocean and beyond
People from all nations create a common bond.
With our conscience as our weapon, we are witness to the fall.
We are simple, we are brilliant,
We are one and we are all.
The following is the first first paragraph of a review of James Baldwin's "Notes Of A Native Son" that expresses some of the same sentiments as those expressed in the blog entry:
ReplyDelete"Recently, in a blog entry, I went on my “soap box” to speak about those now seemingly endless references, by black and white liberals alike, to the ‘good old days' of the black civil rights movement and how far the black liberation struggle has come here in America so that even one (harried and vilified) black man can be President of the United States. This sentiment is codified by the ‘post-racial’ aura (or rather, in truth, the ‘benign neglect’ aura) that surrounds the subject of race lately. By reference to the the good old days these liberals have simply appropriated the catch words of Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma, names, forever, associated with high-water marks of resistance back in the early 1960s to their own uses. Moreover, to embellish the myth they have created a Martin Luther King who apparently was nothing short of the black ‘messiah’ rather than a man made of clay, a great deal of clay, and in turn have emasculated Malcolm X, the real “truth to power” speaker on race of the era, into a harmless icon suitable for framing."