Tag Archives: African-American History

African-American History, RACE

WPA SLAVE NARRATIVES (HIST 2813)

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During the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt commissioned writers and folklorists, the most notable being the esteemed writer Zora Neale Hurston, to travel throughout the South and capture the voices of the last living victims of American chattel slavery. What grew out of this research was volumes and volumes of interviews from the last living enslaved Africans. Their accounts are in a word, riveting.

Your task is to view the theatrical portrayals of these irreplaceable stories and chose at least one to highlight as your favorite and please explain why it stands out to you.

Click on the video to view U.S. History. I am sure that you will recognize many of the actors participating in this brilliant project.

African-American History

Was John Lewis Correct? Were Sixties Black Power Slogans “Empty Rhetoric?”

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My initial exposure to John Lewis occurred while researching Black Panther Party for Self-Defense co-founder Huey P. Newton’s calamitous attempt to surrender control of his organization to the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). By the late-sixties, Huey P. Newton believed that his cadre had been infiltrated and driven into unprecedented chaos by internal and external factors. In the wake of the killing of Lil’ Bobby Hutton and the lack of uniformity from Panther chapters throughout the nation, it became obvious that the Black Panther Party’s teenagers and twenty-something lumpen proletariats did not possess the bourgeoisie skills needed to effectively guide the organization. Hence, Huey P. Newton’s decision to give control of the organization to SNCC’s collegians.

Newton’s decision, a decision that every Panther that I interviewed disagreed with, forced me to study the history of SNCC. It is this research that exposed me to Marion Berry, Diane Nash, John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, H. Rap Brown, and Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). If you need your faith in the future restored, engagement with the story of SNCC members following an Ella Baker-centric decentralized leadership model will accomplish that lofty goal. John Lewis is a central figure in this narrative.

SNCC, officially formed at Shaw College, Ella Baker’s alma mater, exceeded the expectations of old-guard Civil Rights leaders by becoming much-grander than an auxiliary group to adult Civil Rights groups like Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Make no mistake about it, SNCC activists, unlike the adults of SCLC, were on the frontline of hand-to-hand combat with white bigots.

Whether it was the Sit-In Movement or the continuation of CORE’s Freedom Rides, John Lewis was central to this on-going battle of good vs. evil. As expected, SNCC activists grew increasingly frustrated by the slow pace of integration as governed by white bigots. The alluded to frustrations facilitated a segment of SNCC activists to begin publicly questioning “Who wants to integrate into a burning house.” Increasing doubt regarding the wisdom of integrating with a hostile white community were most publicly articulated via angry not fully defined Black Power slogans.

It was the ascension of Black Power slogans within SNCC that facilitated John Lewis’ exit from SNCC. According to the SNCC leader, Black Power slogans were little more than “empty rhetoric” that threatened to dismantle hard-fought gains in the struggle for racial equality.

Since John Lewis’ death was announced, I have been thinking about what I could say about this man that has not already been stated in the voluminous coverage that he has received. I finally settled on an examination of Lewis’ criticism of Black Power slogans as being nothing more than “empty rhetoric.”

Of all the riveting moments in the struggle for African-American liberation, there may be no more exhilarating one for Black America than the Black Power Era. At the center of the adoration for this historical period is the polarizing slogan of “Black Power” whose debut most attribute to the courage of SNCC worker Willie “Mukasa” Ricks in Greenwood, Mississippi.

As with most slogans, its power is found in its flexibility to address a host of situations; a pliability that flows from its lack of specificity. To the present moment, the meaning of undefined “Black Power” slogans are determined on a person-by-person basis. It is this lack of definition that led Congressman John Lewis to render it as little more than empty rhetoric. Lewis was not alone in his summation.

In response to SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael’s insistence that “Power is the only thing respected in this world, and we must get it any cost” The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., responded

We must use every constructive means to amass economic and political power. This is the kind of legitimated power we need. We must work to build racial pride and refute the notion black is evil and ugly. But this must come through a program, not merely through a slogan…The words ‘black’ and ‘power’ together give the impression that we are talking about black domination rather than black equality.

MLK’s rebuttal to Carmichael buttresses John Lewis’ assertion that the mid-sixties call for “Black Power” was empty rhetoric that threatened hard-fought gains. I am certain that the future Congressman feared that the undefined slogan threatened to destroy the tenuous relationship between black and non-black activists.

When one considers that the man who earned the moniker of “the conscience of Congress” stood against insurgent Black Powerites for their use of undefined language during the mid-sixties and never moved off of his square of doing what he considered correct in the pursuit of racial equality, there is little negativity that one can attach to Lewis’ legacy. The historical record has been kind to Lewis’ belief that Black Power slogans were little more than “empty rhetoric” that was an unwise choice of words that threatened to do more damage than most could imagine. In many ways, Lewis’ warnings regarding the use of empty rhetoric should be heeded in this present moment filled with the proliferation of phrase-mongering and undefined slogans that are wielded by individuals to advance personal interests. Unfortunately for us all, few paid attention to Lewis’ warnings during the sixties and even fewer will heed them as we travel into an uncertain future.

Dr. James Thomas Jones III

©Manhood, Race, and Culture, 2020.

African-American History

Why The Destruction of Frederick Douglass’ Statue in Rochester, NY is a Meaningful Sign for Freedom Loving Americans

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It never fails that at least one of my student’s response to Frederick Douglass’ infamous speech What to the Slave is the Fourth of July with a question of “How in the world did Douglass escape the building after those harsh words?”  

The referenced speech delivered on July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, at Corinthian Hall during an address to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society is the Abolitionist leader’s most remembered moment for a host of reasons. Just consider for a moment that the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society invited Douglass, an enslaved person, we must never forget that the nation’s leading Abolitionist was never freed by a vengeful owner who informed all callers that they didn’t have the kind of money needed to free Douglass, to offer comments regarding the Founding Fathers decision to no longer be “slaves to Britain.” What follows is an excerpt from Douglass’s message.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour. Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival . . .

I do not know of a single living Black leader who would stand in front of an audience full of whites and deliver such a daunting speech. There is no room to debate against the assertion that Black America certainly needs more American leaders like Frederick Douglass.

It is the respect that Douglass is due that makes recent reports that a statue honoring him in Rochester, New York, was ripped from its location at Maplewood Park; a former station on the Underground Railroad. The damaged statue was found approximately 50 feet away at the edge of the Genesee River.

As a writer and historian, my soul cringes when I learn that a morsel of Black America’s contributions to this nation has been erased by racial bigots or institutionalized racism. Nonetheless, the damaging of Douglass’ statue speaks volumes regarding the unknown perpetrators’ historical illiteracy and worldview. Make no mistake about it, historical illiteracy is the gateway for foolish thoughts resting on a vast sea of nothingness.  

As you well know, the present moment is contextualized by raging culture wars that have led many whites to feel that their cultural heritage and ancestry are being assailed in some manner. Making this inexplicable situation more volatile are the daily dispatches from “45” that stoke the flames of racial animosity. It is the illogical nature of many of our countrymen that best explains the attack on Douglass’ statue in of all places Rochester, New York, a city that used to be as distant from the Confederacy as one could imagine.

However, the rising of racial bigotry in what used to be a haven for freedom loving Americans is a notable marker regarding the anger, frustration, disappointment, and fear rumbling in the hearts of a significant segment of White America.

Contemporary opponents of societal progress remind me of predecessors who also resisted the rising tide of change during the identity politic driven 1960s. While women pursued equal footing in American society, an old-guard conservative element pushed back. When Black citizens pursued the exercise of the theoretical equality found in the 1964 Civil Rights and 1965 Voting Rights Acts, many whites longed for a time when “Negras” knew their place. When the LGBTQ community rose in an unprecedented manner, the alluded to populace fought against their desperate pleas for recognition. When Brown activists rallied under a banner of “Chicano power” frightened whites behaved as if it were the end of American civilization.

The descendants of such backwards thinking people can still be found at political events issuing tone-deaf pleas to Make America Great Again. Such is the lament of a sad group who fear that the inclusion of others jeopardizes their privileged status and politico-economic monopolies. Unfortunately for this aging aggrieved populace, the political whirlwind is encouraging an irrestible Black Panther like “All Power to the People” moment; it would not be a stretch to consider this shift in the same vein as a rising tide constructed by Mother Nature. Try as they might, those opposing change will lose, it is impossible to retard, let alone reverse, this rising tide of change.

In many ways, it is ironic that the damaging of a statue constructed to honor Frederick Douglass validates the very thoughts that he spoke nearly two centuries ago. If he were alive, I am sure that Douglass would direct his commentary at a particular segment of White America and tell them that when it comes to “revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, y’all reign without a rival.” Fortunately for the soul of this nation, in the words of Sam Cooke, a change is gonna come and it is occurring much sooner than many of us ever expected.

Dr. James Thomas Jones III

© Manhood, Race, and Culture, 2020.