Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program -Eleven-In the Beginning

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program -Eleven-In the Beginning   

…they came out of the hard okie/arkie white trash Hell’s Angels- dominated mean streets of Oakland, Oakland out in sunny California at the end of the American continental line. The place where the staccato faux -Spanish style (speaking unknowingly of earlier conquistador invasions) was to close out dreams, dreams of plenty, dreams of an ocean’s worth of good times.  They came out of the cop- infested army of occupation on those dark 1960s negro streets (the streets that they wanted to make black, proud black, devouring that old Spanish negro alien word, and deed). They came out of the mid-1960s hard reality that while their brothers and sisters in Selma, Montgomery, Lake Charles, Albany (GA), Greenwood, and all points south, south of the American slick democracy had gained something, something worth fighting (and dying) for that they, Oakland, Watts, Harlem, Cleveland, Newark, and all points North and West, north and west of American slick democracy, had been left behind. That they too had to face down their own copper nightmare, their own ghetto-imposed wanting habits nightmare, wanting some decent sweat-less non-grinding job, wanting their own cozy bungalow (white picket fence optional in the laid-back Frisco Bay night), wanting their own take a vacation out in the high Sierras, wanting above all to stop being cop looked at every time they went onto the white streets of  town, hell the black streets too, and to get rid of their own subtle damn neighborhood (and maybe not so subtle when they started to rile up the okies and arkies) Mister James Crow.

And so they, okay, okay, Huey and Bobby they, started putting together a little group, a little group of students and the young bucks from the ‘hood  (neighborhood , okay, but who else would you expect to start stuff like that, insurrection kind of stuff, out in sunny blood-stained California, even a California by that freaking fog-bound bay ), corner boys really, under a simple proposition-voting and the such might have been okay in that all point south night down in America but in land’s end that didn’t mean jack. What meant jack was to get that damn down presser man, the guys in blues, the almost totally white guys in blue off their backs, and let the brothers and sisters breath.  And so they, black proud, and black smart, decided after looking at history a little, fog-bound black history as fogged as that rusted colored golden gate bridge once Mister Whitey got through with it, that the only time that Mister Whitey paid attention was when proud black warrior-savants pressed the issue, defended themselves against that slave market and jim crow night. And so they looked to the mighty 200,000 strong of the Union black army in Civil War times, hell, even the brothers who bled arms in hand with that prophet angel-avenger Jehovah John Brown at Harpers Ferry fight, and the mighty southern struggle Robert F. Williams over across the land in Monroe, North Carolina just a few years back and said enough. So they righteously armed themselves. And said in some small recess of the brain they knew that this too was worth dying for.                      

The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:^[39][40]



1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.



2. We want full employment for our people.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.



3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.



4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.



5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.



We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.



6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.



We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.



7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.



8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.



9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.



We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.



10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.



When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.



We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

“And The Choir Kept Singing Of Freedom”- Birmingham Sunday-1963-A Reflection After Viewing "Dawoud Bey: The Birmingham Project"Photograph Display At The National Gallery Of Art

“And The Choir Kept Singing Of Freedom”- Birmingham Sunday-1963-A Reflection After Viewing "Dawoud Bey: The Birmingham Project"Photograph Display At The National Gallery Of Art

Richard Farina's Birmingham Sunday 

Dawoud Bey: The Birmingham Project

September 12, 2018 – March 24, 2019

West Building, Ground Floor

Dawoud Bey, Mary Parker and Caela Cowan, 2012, 2 inkjet prints mounted to dibond, overall: 101.6 x 162.56 cm (40 x 64 in.), National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the Collectors Committee and the Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

For more than 40 years photographer Dawoud Bey (b. 1953) has portrayed American youth and those from marginalized communities with sensitivity and complexity. Dawoud Bey: The Birmingham Project marks the National Gallery of Art's recent acquisition of four large-scale photographs and one video from Bey's series, The Birmingham Project, a tribute to the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. Coinciding with the 55th anniversary of this tragedy, the exhibition focuses on how Bey visualizes the past through the lens of the present, pushing the boundaries of portraiture and engaging ongoing national issues of racism, violence against African Americans, and terrorism in churches.

On September 15, 1963, four girls were killed in the dynamiting of the church, and two teenaged boys were murdered in racially motivated violence. Each of Bey’s diptychs combines one portrait of a young person the same age as one of the victims, and another of an adult 50 years older—the child's age had she or he survived. Alongside these photographs, the exhibition features Bey's video 9.15.63. This split-screen projection juxtaposes a re-creation of the drive to the 16th Street Baptist Church, taken from the vantage point of a young child in the backseat, with slow pans that move through everyday spaces (beauty parlor, barbershop, lunch counter, and schoolroom) as they might have appeared that Sunday morning. Devoid of people, these views poeticize the innocent lives ripped apart by violence.

This exhibition is curated by Kara Fiedorek, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow in the department of photographs, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

By Seth Garth

Sometimes things, events, ideas, and such lead into one another. Recently I had written a short piece based on hearing a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where the reporter was ruminating about the effect that folk-singer/songwriter Bob Dylan’s “anthem” The Times They Are A-Changin’ had on her and the Generation of ‘68 when it first hit the airwaves in 1963. That reportage got my attention since I have spent plenty of cyber-ink throughout my journalistic career highlighting various aspects of the tremendous push on my generation, that Generation of ’68 or the best part of it, of events in the early 1960s which were harbingers of what we expected to have occur that would change the world, would turn the world upside down. I thus need not go into detail here about my notion that Bob Dylan’s song set him up as the “voice” of a generation whether he wanted to be that or not. Nor about what effect that song, and songs like his had on us, gave us our marching orders.          

As part of her presentation the reporter mentioned that some events, some events down South around the black civil rights movement against one Mister James Crow like the beatings, the water-hosing and the unleashing of the vicious dogs by the police on innocent protestors had on her growing political consciousness, her desire to work for social change. Although she did not specifically mention Birmingham Sunday, the bombing of a black church killing four innocent children and wounding others that event triggered the activism button of many young people, including myself. 

I have detailed elsewhere some of the events like the black civil rights struggle down South, the fight for nuclear bomb disarmament, the emerging struggle against the escalating Vietnam War as acting as catalysts to action. Also tried to convey a more general sense of the mood of the times among young people that the world, a world then on the brink, on as one song had it on the “eve of destruction” was not responding to their needs, was not changing in ways that we could understand. Most of all that we had no say, had not been asked about what had been created in our names. And nobody in power seemed to think that they needed to consult us.  

All of this came to mind as well by a recent visit to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. where on the ground floor there was a small photographic exhibit centered on that Birmingham Sunday bombing. A kind of what if, or rather what would those who were killed or maimed look like today if they had been permitted to live out their precious lives. That got me to thinking the thoughts I expressed in that “voice of a generation” commentary and about the changes in people who did survive, who now have aged, gracefully or not, and who are thinking about, are summing up their lives and what they did, or did not do. Powerful stuff although when one realizes what is what in the world today one has to be very circumspect about the little changes we have made. Not profound but something to think about whatever generation designation.

Happy Birthday Frederick Douglass- A New Biography-In Honor Of John Brown Late Of Harpers Ferry-1859 *For Frederick Douglass On His 200th Birthday- Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By- James Weldon Johnson's "Lift Every Voice And Sing"

Happy Birthday Frederick Douglass- A New Biography

Click on link to hear a serious biographer of Frederick Douglass the revolutionary abolitionist who broke with the William Lloyd Garrison-wing of the movement when the times called for remorseless military fighting against the entrenched slave-holders and their allies. This from Christopher Lydon’s Open Source program on NPR.

https://player.fm/series/open-source-with-christopher-lydon/behind-the-leonine-gaze-of-frederick-douglass

This is what you need to know about Frederick Douglass and the anti-slavery, the revolutionary abolitionist fight. He was the man, the shining q star black man who led the fight for black men to join the Union Army and not just either be treated as freaking contraband or worse, as projected in early in the war by the Lincoln administration the return of fugitive slaves to “loyal” slave-owners. Led the fight to not only seek an emancipation proclamation as part of the struggle but a remorseless and probably long struggle to crush slavery and slaver-owners and their hanger-on militarily. Had been ticketed at a desperate moment in 1864 to recreate a John Brown scenario if they logjam between North and South in Virginia had not been broken. Yes, a bright shining northern star black man.    

February Is Black History Month

Lyrics

The first verse is the one most commonly heard.

Lift every voice and sing,
'Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til victory is won.



Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
'Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.



God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

In Honor Of John Brown Late Of Harpers Ferry-1859- *Poet's Corner- Langston Hughes' John Brown Tribute- "October 16"

Click on the title to link to an article about the relationship between Langston Hughes' forbears and Captain John Brown, late of Kansas on the anniversary of the Harpers Ferry raid.


October 16-Langston Hughes

Perhaps
You will remember
John Brown.

John Brown
Who took his gun,
Took twenty-one companions
White and black,
Went to shoot your way to freedom
Where two rivers meet
And the hills of the
North
And the hills of the
South
Look slow at one another-
And died
For your sake.

Now that you are
Many years free,
And the echo of the Civil War
Has passed away,
And Brown himself
Has long been tried at law,
Hanged by the neck,
And buried in the ground-
Since Harpers Ferry
Is alive with ghost today,
Immortal raiders
Come again to town-

Perhaps
You will recall
John Brown.

Honor Colonel Shaw And The Massachusetts 54th Black Volunteer Regiment

Honor Colonel Shaw And The Massachusetts 54th Black Volunteer Regiment

FEBRUARY IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Those familiar with the critical role that the recruitment of black troops into the Union Armies in the American Civil War usually know about the famous Massachusetts 54th Regiment under Colonel Robert Gould Shaw which has received wide attention in book, film and sculpture. Those heroic black fighters and their fallen leader deserve those honors. Glory, indeed.

Although Shaw was hesitant to take command of those troops after suffering wounds at Antietam, when he accepted, he took full charge of the training and discipline of the regiment. Moreover, as the regiment marched into Boston to cheering crowds before embarking on ships to take them South each trooper knew the score. Any blacks captured (or their white officers, for that matter) were subject to Southern ‘justice’, summary execution. Not one trooper flinched. Arms in hands, they fought bravely at the defeat of Fort Wagner and other Deep South battles, taking many causalities.

I have remarked elsewhere (in a review of William Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner)that while the slaves in the South, for a host of reasons, did not insurrect with the intensity or frequency of say Haiti, the other West Indian islands or Brazil that when the time came to show discipline, courage and honor under arms that blacks would prove not inferior to whites. And the history of the Massachusetts 54th is prima facie evidence for that position.

I should also note that the Massachusetts 54th was made up primarily of better educated and skilled freedman and escaped slaves unlike the black troops recruited from the plantations in the Deep South in the 1st and 2nd South Carolina Volunteer black regiments. Thus, one might have suspected that they would not be up to the rigors of Southern duty. Not so. After reading a number of books on the trials and tribulations of various Union regiments, including the famous Irish Brigade, the story of the 54th compares very favorably with those units.

However, so as not to get carried away with the ‘liberalism’ of the Union political and military commands in granting permission for black recruitment it is necessary to point out some of the retrograde racial attitudes of the time. It took a major propaganda thrust by Frederick Douglass and other revolutionary abolitionists to get Lincoln to even consider arming blacks for their own emancipation. Only after several severe military reversals was permission granted to recruit black troops, although some maverick generals were already using them, particularly General Hunter. As mentioned above there were qualms about the ability of blacks to fight in disciplined units. Moreover, until 1864 black troops were paid less than their white counterparts. The Massachusetts 54th is also rightly famous for refusing pay until that disparity was corrected.

One should not forget that the North in its own way was as deeply racist as the South (think of the treacherous role of the Southern-sympathying Northern Copperheads and the Irish-led anti-black Draft Riots in New York City, for examples). This reflected itself in the racial attitudes of some commanding officers and enlisted men as well as the general paternalism of even the best white commanding officers, including Colonel Higginson of the 2nd South Carolina. It was further reflected in the disproportionately few blacks that became officers in the Civil War, despite the crying need for officers in those black regiments and elsewhere. Yet, all of these negatives notwithstanding, every modern black liberation fighter takes his or her hat off to the gallant 54th, arms in hand, and its important role in the struggle for black liberation

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night- “You Are On The Bus Or Off The Bus”- The Transformation Of “Foul-Mouth” Phil Into “Far-Out” Phil- With Writer Ken Kesey In Mind

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night- “You Are On The Bus Or Off The Bus”- The Transformation Of “Foul-Mouth” Phil Into “Far-Out” Phil- With Writer Ken Kesey In Mind  

The Chiffons performing their classic Sweet Talkin’ Guy

From The Archives Of Allan Jackson

[Perhaps you missed it in a previous take, dated February 23, 2017, on the mighty Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters who set a certain bar for drug, sex, and rock and roll in the early days of what would be the great Generation of “68 jailbreak in the earlier part of the decade by the by-line listed, as here, “From The Archives Of Allan Jackson.” A causal reader or somebody who has not been paying attention to the not too distant past fierce internal struggle that roiled this site between the younger writers, dubbed, self-dubbed “the Young Turks” and the old guard around previous site manager (and a founder member of this publication when it started in hard copy times along with me and a few others) that very same Allan Jackson around the direction of the site that it was understood that he had been either retired or purged depending on your point of view. In any case to end the controversy and move forward it was agreed in negotiations between me and the new site manager Greg Green after Allan had lost a vote of no confidence that his name was not to be mentioned again.

Somehow Allan, who had been rumored to be doing anything in exile from feeding the Mormons out in Utah whatever they wanted to hear as long as they let him write copy in their kept newspaper (even commenting positively on the white underwear issue he was so desperate for work) to tending bar at Joe-Joe’s in La Jolla and living with a twenty something surfer girl to running a high end whorehouse in Argentina with Madame La Rue, found out Greg had been nipping at the archives looking for some fresh insights into the baby-boomer generation, that Generation of “68 mentioned earlier. Yes, Greg had finally figured out what some of us, friendly to him or not, already knew was that the generation or two after the 1960s doesn’t read book reviews, films reviews, music reviews or left-wing political comment. Doesn’t read period for all practical site purposes and so he has tried to “lure” the old base back with some retro music-laced archival material.

Problem. Greg problem. Since Allan Jackson has been purged and is a non-person around here the series he was running The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night has been done under the byline of Frank Jackman. Allan went crazy when he heard what had been done since he had never copyrighted the stuff, didn’t feel a need to. Some of Allan’s old friends, including Frank who went back to high school with him as I had, met with Greg and convinced him it would be best to give Allan a credit for a series that he sweated for something like two years over. All Greg would do was what you see in the by-line that maybe these were lost papers from the desk or something without stating outright that Allan had written or edited the whole thing. Enough for now. Jack Callahan]                     

*********

A while back, a couple years ago now I guess, Sam Lowell the recently semi-retired Boston lawyer from our high school class looking for some things to fill up his spare time and to respond to the nostalgic feelings that he had been having once he reconnected with a couple of his old corner boys from our North Adamsville High days in the early 1960s, Frankie Riley and Josh Breslin started writing little sketches about “what was what” back in the day. That “what was what” could have been anything from the local meaning of “submarine races” (that is simple, this was just an expression to denote what those who, boyfriends and girlfriends, were doing who went by midnight automobile down to Adamsville Beach and eventually came up for air and you can figure out what they were doing that required such a motion without any further comment); the grooming habits of working-class guys like Sam before the big school dance (plenty of Listerine, plenty of Old Spice, plenty of Right Guard, plenty of Wild Root hair oil, and new shirt and pants from the “Bargie,” a local pre-Wal-Mart institution for the chronically poor to look good for one night); the midnight “chicken run” down the back roads of Adamsville (self-explanatory for any brethren who craved a fast “boss” car, the ’57 Chevy being the prize of prizes), or the nefarious way to get six to eight males and females into the local drive-in for the price of two (easy, a snap, just load up that big old trunk and have said occupants stop breathing at the admissions booth).

Sam made a few people laugh beside Frankie and Josh when they placed his stuff on their Facebook pages and got a response from several of our old high school classmates asking for some more sketches (and other “friends” who came of age in the early 1960s and had similar stories to tell and get a chuckle over as well). Sam felt “compelled” to reply.           

A lot of what helped Sam remember various events from those days was going to the local library, the main Cambridge Public Library, and check out materials from their extensive holding of classic (ouch!) rock and roll compilations. One commercial series which covered the time period from about 1955 to 1968 in many volumes also had time-appropriate artwork designs on the cover of each CD. Those covers brought to Sam’s mind the phenomenon that he wanted to write about. In this case, this 1966 case, the cover art detailed the then almost ubiquitous merry prankster-edged converted yellow brick road school bus, complete with assorted vagabond minstrel/ road warrior/ah, hippies, that “ruled” the mid-1960s highway and by-ways in search of the great American freedom night. The “merry prankster” expression taken from the king hell king “hippie” philosopher-king of the time author Ken Kesey and his comrades who Tom Wolfe immortalized in his “new journalism” book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. That cover triggered memories of his own merry prankster moments with another corner boy from high school that he went west with in that year, Phil Larkin, and what happened to Phil when he “got on the bus” looking, well, “looking for the garden,” the Garden of Eden is what they called the adventure between themselves then. Sam said wistfully after he had finished the sketch that “We never found it in the end, but the search was worth it then, and still worth it now.” That is about right brother, just about right. But let Sam explain why he said that.

*****

A rickety, ticky-tack, bounce over every bump in the road to high heaven, gear-shrieking school bus. But not just any yellow brick road school bus that you rode to various educationally “good for you” locations like movie houses, half yawn, science museums, yawn, art museums, yawn, yawn, or wind-swept picnic areas for some fool weenie roast, two yawns there too, when you were a school kid. Two yawns because the teachers were trying to piece you off with some cheapjack sawdust hot dog with a Wonder Bread air-holes bun, some grizzled hamburger, ditto on the bun, maybe a little potato salad from Kennedy’s Deli for filler, and tonic (a New England localism meaning soda) not your own individual bottle but served from gallons jugs into dinky Dixie cups. [Sam not knowing until much later that the teachers had pitched in to buy the provisions from their own pockets, belated thanks.] And certainly not your hour to get home daily grind school bus, complete with surly driver (male or female, although truth to tell the females were worst since they acted just like your mother, and maybe were acting on orders from her) that got you through K-12 in one piece, and you even got to not notice the bounces to high heaven over every bump of burp in the road. No, my friends, my comrades, my brethren this is god’s own bus commandeered to navigate the highways and by-ways of the 1960s come flame or flash-out.

Yes, it is rickety, and all those other descriptive words mentioned above in regard to school day buses. That is the nature of such ill-meant mechanical contraptions after all. But this one is custom-ordered, no, maybe that is the wrong way to put it, this is “karma” ordered to take a motley crew of free-spirits on the roads to seek a “newer world,” to seek the meaning of what one persistent blogger on the subject has described as "the search for the great blue-pink American Western night." [Sam an inveterate blogger since the first days he found out about that medium.]

Naturally to keep its first purpose intact this heaven-bound vehicle is left with its mustard yellow body surface underneath but over that “primer” the surface has been transformed by generations (generations here signifying not twenty-year cycles but numbers of trips west, and east) of, well, folk art, said folk art being heavily weighted toward graffiti, toward psychedelic day-glo hotpinkorangelemonlime splashes and zodiacally meaningful symbols. Mushroomy exploding flowers, medieval crosses, sphinxlike animals, ancient Pharaoh’s pyramids, never-ending geometric figures, new religion splashes whatever came into a “connected” head.  

And the interior. Most of those hardback seats that captured every bounce of childhood have been ripped out and discarded to who knows where and replaced by mattresses, many layers of mattresses for this bus is not merely for travel but for home. To complete the “homey” effect there are stored, helter-skelter, in the back coolers, assorted pots and pans, mismatched dishware, nobody’s idea of the family heirloom china, boxes of dried foods and condiments, duffle bags full of clothes, clean and unclean, blankets, sheets, and pillows, again clean and unclean.

Let’s put it this way, if someone wants to make a family hell-broth stew there is nothing in the way to stop them. But also know this, and know it now, as we start to focus on this journey that food, the preparation of food, and the desire, except in the wee hours when the body craves something inside, is a very distant concern for these “campers.” If food is what you desired in the foreboding 1960s be-bop night take a cruise ship to nowhere or a train (if you can find one), some southern pacific, great northern, union pacific, and work out your dilemma in the dining car. Of course, no heaven-send, merry prankster-ish yellow brick road school bus would be complete without a high-grade stereo system to blast the now obligatory “acid rock” coming through the radiator practically, although just now, as a goof, it has to be a goof, right, one can hear Nancy Sinatra, christ, Frank’s daughter, how square is that, churning out These Boots Are Made For Walkin.’

And the driver. No, not mother-sent, mother-agent, old Mrs. Henderson, who prattled on about keep in your seats and be quiet while she is driving (maybe that, subconsciously, is why the seats were ripped out long ago on the very first “voyage” west). No way, but a very, very close imitation of the god-like prince-driver of the road, the "on the road” pioneer, Neal Cassady, shifting those gears very gently but also very sure-handedly so no one notices those bumps (or else is so stoned, drug or music stoned, that those things pass like so much wind). His name: Cruising Casey (real name, Charles Kendall, Harverford College Class of ’64, but just this minute, Cruising Casey, mad man searching for the great American be-bop night under the extreme influence of one Ken Kesey, the max-daddy mad man of the great search just then). And just now over that jerry-rigged big boom sound system, again as if to mock the newer world abrewin’ The Vogues’ Five O’ Clock World.

And the passengers. Well, no one is exactly sure, as the bus approaches the outskirts of Denver, because this is strictly a revolving cast of characters depending on who was hitchhiking on that desolate back road State Route 5 in Iowa, or County Road 16 in Nebraska, and desperately needed to be picked up, or face time, and not nice time with a buzz on, in some small town pokey. Or it might depend on who decided to pull up stakes at some outback campsite and get on the bus for a spell, and decide if they were, or were not, on the bus. After all even all-day highs, all-night sex, and 24/7 just hanging around listening to the music, especially when you are ready to scratch a blackboard over the selections like the one on now, James and Bobby Purify’s I’m Your Puppet, is not for everyone.

We do know for sure that Casey is driving, and still driving effortlessly so the harsh realities of his massive drug intake have not hit yet, or maybe he really is superman. And, well, that the “leader” here is Captain Crunch since it is “his” bus paid for out of some murky deal, probably a youthful drug deal, (real name, Samuel Jackman, Columbia, Class of 1958, who long ago gave up searching, searching for anything, and just hooked into the idea of "taking the ride"), Mustang Sally (Susan Stein, Michigan, Class of 1959, ditto on the searching thing), his girlfriend, (although not exclusively, not exclusively by her choice , not his, and he is not happy about it for lots of reasons which need not detain us here). Most of the rest of the “passengers” have monikers like Silver City Slim, Luscious Lois (and she really is), Penny Pot (guess why), Moon Man, Flash Gordon (from out in space somewhere, literally, as he tells it), Denver Dennis (from New York City, go figure), and the like. They also have real names that indicate that they are from somewhere that has nothing to do with public housing projects, ghettos or barrios. And they are also, or almost all are, twenty-somethings that have some highly-rated college years after their names, graduated or not). And they are all either searching or, like the Captain, at a stage where they are just hooked into taking the ride.

One young man, however, sticks out, well, not sticks out, since he is dressed in de rigeur bell-bottomed blue jeans, olive green World War II surplus army jacket (against the mountain colds, smart boy), Chuck Taylor sneakers, long, flowing hair and beard (well, wisp of a beard) and on his head a rakish tam just to be a little different, “Far Out” Phil (real name Phillip Larkin, North Adamsville High School Class of 1964). And why Far Out sticks out is not only that he has no college year after his name, for one thing, but more importantly, that he is nothing but a old-time working-class neighborhood corner boy from in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor back in North Adamsville, a close-by suburb of Boston.

Of course back then in town Far Out Phil was known, and rightly so as any girl, self-respecting or not, could tell you as “Foul-Mouth” Phil, the world champion swearer of the 1960s North Adamsville (and Adamsville Beach) be-bop night. And right now Far Out, having just ingested a capsule of some illegal substance (not LSD, probably mescaline) is talking to Luscious Lois, talking up a storm without one swear word in use, and she is listening, gleam in her eye listening, as ironically, perhaps, The Chiffons Sweet Talkin’ Guy is beaming forth out of his little battery-powered transistor radio (look it up on Wikipedia if you don’t know about primitive musical technology) that he has carried with him since junior high school. The winds of change do shift, do shift indeed.

[Sam and Phil were on that hell-broth road about a year, maybe a little more, until Phil faced an ugly draft notice from his “friends and neighbors” in Adamsville and figuring no other course, no jail, no Canada, no conscientious objector application came on the horizon to move this son of the working class from his fateful decision to accept his draft induction. Sam, another son of the working-class with a congenial heart problem (which his then drug intake could not have helped but we were young then and expected to live forever) and therefore 4-F decided to apply for law school and spent the next three years tied down to law books, court decisions, memoranda, and how to survive the bar exam.]       

On The 60th Anniversary Of The Cuban Revolution *Spanish Is The Loving Tongue- A Song In Honor Of Ernesto "Che" Guevara

Markin comment:

The politics of " picking up the gun", as portrayed in the film clip,and going off to the bush a la Che is dead wrong (and has been for a very long time, including during his own time). However, Che represented, for the second half of the 20th century, the closest approximation of an communist idealist leader (albeit of the left-Stalinist variety) that the international working class movement produced during that time. For that he deserves all honor, and our political differences aside, the admiration of today's youth. But anyone who has visited this site knows that. If not then get busy reading about Che and then go out and DO NOT do what he did. Stay in the cities and organize the working classes and their allies for political power. In the end that is the only road forward.

Yes, The Way You Look Tonight-Ginger Rogers And Fred Astaire’s “Swing Time” (1936)-A Film Review

Yes, The Way You Look Tonight-Ginger Rogers And Fred Astaire’s “Swing Time” (1936)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

Swing Time, starring Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, and all importantly music and lyrics by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, 1936

It probably is not good form to start off a review of a light-hearted musical comedy, what the heck, a dance film with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers with the music and comedy as filler, or the comedy part anyway complaining about the assignment. But I will try the reader’s patience long enough to make a point that I made in my last film review since this is of a piece with that comment. Then, and now, I have complained I won’t say bitterly yet that I have now been given five straight “women’s films,” the modern cinematic term “chick flicks” although that does not ring as a true statement with the ones I have done by new site manager Greg Green.

As I pointed out in that last review, Coco Before Chanel, once Greg became the day to day manager here he went out of his way to “lure” me from a very comfortable by-line that I had with Women Today. I also noted that I had over a decade ago been a stringer here under the old management when my companion Josh Breslin worked here (which he still does) and had left for that Women Today by-line when the old site manager Allan Jackson would not give me a by-line. Those were the days when it was clear for all to see, all who wanted to see, that while the site had all the right positions on the women’s liberation struggles (and still does) that Allan, who moreover was Josh’s very long time friend, was starting down the road to keep the place very much a male bastion haven for his “good old boys” friends whose friendship was defined by the litmus test of being stuck in the nostalgic 1960s when all hell broke loose in American society as they came of age. Greg was supposed to be a welcome break from both of those conditions. Right now I wonder, wonder out loud.                  

Don’t get me wrong this little Rogers-Astaire vehicle Swing Time one in about ten that this pair danced away the stars in is fine, is worth reviewing if for no other reason that the Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields music and lyrics collaboration on some classic songs from the American Songbook which torch-singers like Billie Holiday and Peggy Lee would feast on later. One good example which served as headline here-The Way You Look Tonight. Looking at the site archives though, after storming out of Greg’s office when I received the assignment and I could not budge him off his position that I needed to “broaden my horizons” since at Women Today any film reviews that I did, which were not many, were contemporary efforts I noticed that all the previous four or five Rogers-Astaire reviews had been done by men. Men who did a very good job of making the salient points about the films but who also made the point that from their collective perspectives these films were geared to the tastes and heartstrings of the women of those times who made up the majority, in some cases as during World War II the great majority, of the movie-going public. In other words-women’s films. So I bring no special wisdom to this genre, and maybe less so since I, unlike Sam Lowell, Sandy Salmon, and even one by my old heart-throb Josh did not live and die by watching college time revivals of such films in the 1960s having been a child of the late 1970s when that revival had burned itself out as a cheap date college night out.

As to the film itself well I think I telegraphed my take on these flashy big budget productions which were merely, let’s face it, an excuse to have Fred and Ginger dance and sing between coos. Here Fred plays Lucky, as in lucky at cards, gambling that sort of thing who also happens to be light on his feet (not that “light on his feet” used back then to signify a homosexual trait but dancing feet) who is stepping up in class, literally. That step up to be done by marrying a town debutante and on to easy street. Except through a series of lame pratfalls it never happens. No wedding and so Lucky (and Pop) lam in to the Big Apple, to New York to see if they can make some jack either from gambling or from his hoofing.  

Through another series of lame pratfalls Lucky meets Penny, Ginger’s role, a dance instructor. Meets and the rest is really history. No, the rest is a song and dance through the Kerns-Fields score interrupted by the usual attraction, distraction, misunderstanding, and finally, lovers’ bliss. I would have thought that it would have been hard for this pair to stumble through a series of plot-lines that would freeze the most indulgent brain but they did until audiences got weary. But watching one or two, and make this film one of them, will carry you through a few blue spots.