I Am A Man-With Big Bill Broonzy’s "When Do I Get To Be Called A Man" In Mind

I Am A Man-With Big Bill Broonzy’s "When Do I Get To Be Called A Man" In Mind 

By Fritz Taylor

Ralph Morse had had to have a moment of truth. Had to confront the question of whether he supported the ideas of the Black Lives Matter movement or whether he would once again retreat into what he recognized was his passive liberal and non-violent inclinations that things with that movement seem to be getting out of hand with serious physical confrontations every time you turned around. The immediate cause though of his need for a moment of truth had been when he had placed a CD compilation of classic American Folk music on the machine and during that time Big Bill Broonzy’s When Will They Call Me A Man came up. For those not familiar with the recording Bill had sang the piece during the 1940s and 1950s when the new world order was bearing down on poor and black alike with a vengeance and blacks were right on the edge of getting “uppity.” big time. He speaks of all kinds of inequalities from wages to Mister James Crow’s laws, overt and covert, North and South that confronted the black man despite his own recent military service and the hard fact that this country was built on the slave labor of his forbears as he tries to survive in this wicked old world. Did the black man really have to wait until he was ninety-three to gain redress of grievance? Needless to say that recording could have with some small updating for a little better social interactions been written and sung today. That was the social contradiction Ralph was facing today.                    

It had not always been that way for when Ralph was young back in the early 1960s he had been very enthusiastic in support of the black civil rights movement down in the American South. He had taken plenty of flax first from his parents down in his growing up white working poor Acre neighborhood in Riverdale where the common word for blacks at the table was n----r and later from his corner boys around Tonio’s Pizza Parlor, especially Frankie Riley the leader of the crowd who went out his way to n----r bait Ralph when he so much as got involved with a small project of trying to gather books to be sent to black children down in woe begotten Alabama. Later when he demonstrated in support of black rights in Boston at a Woolworth’s to let them eat at their lunch counters down South and then headed South himself one summer to aid the voter registration drives there he had had to sever all connections with his old friends. Had been red-baited as well. As he thought about the old days he marveled that he had been so active, had such activist liberal views, and had not feared for his life any more than anybody else. Oh youth.

 As that black civil rights declined after the various voting rights acts were enacted and there was still work to do, a few civil rights reforms were not going to change the economic or social position of the vast majority of blacks especially in the North where that had had formal civil rights for a long time Ralph had moved along accordingly. When the avenging angels Black Panther Party with its bulky Ten Point program most of it on point and to the point Ralph had shifted his tactical non-violent approach and avidly supported the brothers, worked hard for their defense in the days when they united with white supporters after a period of social and political hostility to their former brethren. So it was not that Ralph did not have a past, did not have a history if rather in the long in the tooth past.                   

What had happened to Ralph though was that as he aged, as he saw that the old dreams were going up in smoke and that he would not be around to see that great commonwealth come to fruition he had become very passive in his politics as he scurried to build his printing shop business and raise a parcel of kids. Had other than passing some dough along to various causes, mostly anti-war organizations and candidates, been a spectator on the political scene for a fair amount of time. Got involved a little in opposing the Iraq and Afghan adventures but as opposition faded from view so did he.      

Then a couple of years ago, maybe more, right after the Trayvon Martin case exposed the hard fact in everybody’s face that there were serious racial problems still to be addressed he began haltingly to get the old itch. And hence his moment of truth. In or out as an “associate” of the black-led BLM movement. So he again played that old Big Bill song, saw that what Bill was talking about then played hard and strong today-jobs and wages, decent housing, decent schooling, keeping the young black men out of prison and off drugs, and a million other inequalities. Yes, Ralph, although he had his qualms, agreed with Bill that no black man should have to wait until he is ninety-three to get some justice, to be recognized as a man. And the same for black women too!