Rarely Seen Film "King: A Filmed Record" Traces MLK’s Struggle From Montgomery to Memphis

Every Day is History: Malcolm X Debate with James Farmer (June 12, 1963) Clip

Every Day is History: Malcolm X Bayard Rustin Debate Clip

eleventy seven reporters reporting on nothing

As you may have noticed I have not posted a blog in more than a month, not that I was not writing or thinking but because I lost my grandmother a few days before Thanksgiving and my aunt, my mother’s eldest sister, who lived with my granny a few days before Christmas – add that to trying to keep my business opened, I have been extremely occupied. However this week, while at a restaurant, I was able to see the news coverage regarding Haiti. I also saw some of the coverage while over my daughters God parent’s house.

Now it is a very sad conundrum, the aftermath of the Earthquake. Seeing people dead in the streets, maimed, injured and dying is enough to make ones flesh crawl. It was devastation that I could not imagine. Now with that said, I don’t want folks to take this the wrong way albeit I don’t care – but what good is relief and news coverage if it only parades folks for the purpose of individual attention and ratings. What little I saw gave me this opinion and this as a man who has worked in places all over Africa stopping infectious disease pandemics in small rural communities. When I see news folk broadcasting, all I can think is that they may be sorry but really don’t care and that they really acting, just like the major relief groups as well. Unfortunatelly our government places more importance on getting military troops on the ground than physicians. And then there are the media pundits.

They ask questions as if the folk in Haiti could have dealt with this not recalling that the last Earthquake to occur was some 200 years ago. Then they stand over folks and as opposed to presenting news they present commentary. Figure if they really cared they would be sleeping in the fields with the folk they covering instead of hotels, and being out removing rubble instead of taking pictures and showing make-believe I care faces. Then there is the issue of not know history. Reporters never speak of how Woodrow Wilson and the US occupied Haiti in 1915, or how we basically killed folk on site, or how Bill Clinton continued the same Progressive political approach of Woodrow Wilson. And yep, I’m not in support of progressives for around the world they feel that folks can’t solve their own problems and prefer to interfere and mess things up and ex post facto blame the targets. We forget that Haiti was made poor by the French and even US who did not even recognize them as a sovereign nation on until 1862. We neglected them then for years and now we blame them and don’t even see how we made them or accept that we made the one of the four poorest nations on the globe. And I won’t even mention all this talk about orphans and having folks in America on TV looking sad because they can’t get the kid they wanted to adopt – when these same folks don’t even want to adopt black kids in their own backyard.

Yep, this is why I don’t watch TV news – they will pass anything over as objective information and we are too ignorant to see that what is presented is neither objective nor information but rather conjecture empty of historic perspective. Cut your TV folks, they making you make yourselves slaves. We should see that there is enough research on Earthquakes and their impact historically to act as if this is a new thing and we have to study to help folk on the ground – humbug. I wonder what else is really going on in the world, cause it aint being covered given eleventy-seven news reporters are all occupied with Haiti.

negro comfortable up in here

One book that left a lasting impression on me as a child was written by Samuel Yette. It was called the choice. In summary he suggested that people of African descent in America had a choice to be proactive or inactive in sustaining their survival in America in light that many in the majority would not lift a finger, if the government proffered such, to enact measure to repress African Americans.

I say this for as some of you all know, I am proud to have been raised in a strong family. My aunt was arrested for sitting in a library to study in the late 1950s. My mother and her siblings marched and were confronted with dogs being unleashed on them as well as the forceful pressure of water from fire hoses sprayed on them. I have learned that the weapon of choice in the war with injustice and hate is the mind as facilitated with words seasoned with serious rumination and historical precedence. So it is not surprising II feel it is my duty to protect and enunciate my beliefs as eloquently as possible in forums with those who preach hate and intolerance. This is why I frequent and post to the Nazi, and racist and skinhead websites/blogs and read them just as much and if not more than blogs run by African Americans.

And you may also be aware that it frustrates me when I share these blogs with others, in particular African American men, and they on the surface appear afraid to post for whatever reason. I had one fellow inform me in query, why post and address such ignorance? My response was that Martin Luther King Jr, and out parents confronted such ignorance in the face of death but it did not stop them for freedom most be aggressively pursued as Frantz Fanon wrote and cannot be given, for if it is it can also be taken back.

As men we must protect and serve our community as a collective. Meaning when we see any form of injustice we must assert our thoughts objectively in the stance for self determination. To do no such thing is unacceptable. Many of these folks, like the skinheads who were just recently exposed to have plotted to kill 88 African American college students, behead non-whites and murder Barack Obama; do so for they know that African American men will not stand to confront them as our ancestors did, men such as David Walker, Martin King Jr and Malcolm X.

They know and smell our aura of weakness and insecurity. And this makes no sense to me, for we will fight our own for calling us out of our name, or will tell a person who is washing our car that they missed a spot, before we would tell a skinhead that we don’t get down like that.

But they do what they do, for they know we Negro comfortable up in here. Yep, we got our Iphones, our 25 pair of air force ones, our big cars, but we don’t have the appreciation of knowledge when we know that there was once a time when folks did learn to read, if found out, their eyes would be removed from their heads and their tongues cut out. That alone should show one the importance of such. Instead we wait for other to tell us instead of have the patience to inform ourselves.

Maybe Frank Tannenbaum was correct when he wrote in Slave and Citizen about the history of America when he asserted “We have denied ourselves the acceptance of the Negro as a man because we have denied him the moral competence to become one, and in that have challenged the religious, political, and scientific bases upon which our civilization rest…and this separation has a historical basis, and in turn it has molded the varied historical outcome.” Yep we still thank we free, and even worse, are Negro comfortable up in here.

and this poem is for we:

Is my mind clear can I see?

I hold my TV and radio dear

Im Negro comfortable up in here

So what I care about the other

About stars and actors over there

Im Negro comfortable up in here

Yea, I don’t read, I listen to what they say

The drop date for lil Wayne’s new cd is near

Im Negro comfortable up in here

Yea im voting for Barack

Don’t know how he differs from McCain real clear

Im Negro comfortable up in here

Stocks and bonds and economics, say what

To busy waiting for VIP in club and BET with cold beer

Im Negro comfortable up in here

Still U.S. ing

For those of you who don’t know, I used to teach ancient African History. Although it was supposed to start from 200 B.C.E. (before Christian Europe) to 1100 A.C.E. (after Christian Europe), I started it during the time of the Djebel Ouenat carvings in Libya during the Upper Paleolithic age as well with a brief introduction of the Gloger Law. If you are not familiar with the latter, simply stated it postulates that warm-blooded animals need to be pigmented in hot climates. This means as a primer, folk started the class with a brief overview of the origin of man from homo habilis to Homo erectus to Homo sapiens sapiens.

I did this although my main interest in history was during the periods of colonialism and slaver (of which a lot seems to over lap). Slavery for me holds both emotion and disdain. I was even asked and authored several historical pieces for the World Enclycopedia of slavery. Particularly on the punishment of slaves , the Kansas Nebrask Act and Church Schisms Slavery. I can’t see for the life of me how a group of folk can be so lazy and evil to place another (with or without their assistance) in bondage. It just confuses the shit out of me. Moreover, it really trips me out how some may suggest that it was not “that” bad, or that it is over and happened hundreds of years ago. Such a position pisses me the fuck off too.

It is as if they don’t see capitalism and racism as being the same thing as formulated in slavery. It is as if they don’t see how years of perpetual servitude without profit can have a devastating impact on the psyche, soul and more importantly pocket of the one enslaved. I really would love to see someone today work for Sears, or Wachovia or U.S. Steel for their entire life and not receive a penny, get am benefit or pension from said years of effort.

The way I see it, the proclamation announced by Lincoln really did not free the descendants of Africa. Sure it enabled them to move away from pimps called slave masters, but it was not freedom. For freedom has to be pursued aggressively. It is like Julius K. Nyerere said “Freedom to many means immediate betterment, as if by magic. Unless I can meet at least some of these aspirations, my support will wane and my head will roll just as surely as the tickbird follows the rhino.”

It was really, as Douglass Blackmon called it a new time and more so the start of the “Age of Neoslavery.” A period where folks could still enjoy slave labor without the title of “slavery” attached. Just as the Jim Crow laws or the Black Code statutes passed to maintain white control after the Civil War, today, the same form of slavery exist except with out the chains, torture and punishment. Just as then, current laws are designed and put in place to intimidate African Americans, namely males because they were able to do rigorous free labor.

Yes I am talking about prison, and really since the freedom of slaves. But this is not important, because it is over and it had no impact on the current condition of Africans in America today. But I bet if you asked U.S. Steel, Tennessee Coal (Pratt Coal & Coke Co.), the Georgia and Alabama Railroad, U.S. Pipe & Foundry (Jim Walter Corp/ Walter Industries) or Sloss-Sheffield Steel & Iron Co among a lot of other major corporations that I won’t name, they aint willing to give back the money they stacked as a function of free labor. But then again it was prison labor; labor not protected by the Fair Labor-Standards Act. Just as today, a many folk end up in prison due to stupid shit that is exacerbated by ridiculous sentences and ridiculous fines. It just seems that it is deliberately directed mathematically disprotinatelly to African Americans, and it amazes me how folks can even say that the insidious legacy of racism called slavery doesn't reverberates today.

Yep, convict leasing is still really real, but no longer in the South, as in days of old but rather nation wide. They don’t keep records anymore, but back in the day it was estimated that the Alabama's forced-labor system made $17 million for the state government alone (about 250 million in today's dollars).

My thing is this, if it was not cool for Hitler to force Jews to work in a similar form, and they were awarded loot for making German corporations rich, why the double standard? As far as I am concernd, U.S. Steel is still using us, i mean they still making profit of tha loot, aint they, like the others. I’m through.

The father of Jim Crow

Now I consider myself an amateur historian. Although my preference is ancient African history, I consider myself astute in the history of America and the West Indies. I may have a limited knowledge of music videos, movies and entertainers, but I do feel I have a descent and particular grasp regarding information pertaining to the early colonies, presidential history, and slavery (inclusive of reconstruction and Jim Crow).

I have been thinking about what I am about to assert for a while. I know that it is rare when all of the aforementioned areas decussate such to pronounce a concise conclusion. Especially as it relates to the actual start of Jim Crow policies in the South (up south too). And being that this is the single month that is allocated to black folks, and the single month when black folks see to care about knowledge about themselves, I want to take this time to propose a new postulate on history relating to folks like me. Nope, I aint going to state no fact I can copy and past from wikapedia or some book about some person. That to me aint history.

Historians tend to define Jim Crow and/or the period of Jim Crow as a systematic practice of discriminating against and segregating Black people in the America from the end of Reconstruction to the mid-20th century. More specifically, they tend to focus on the South when it was nationwide.

Most or many historians like to start the period in the late 1890’s and like to over dramatize the importance of one man purchasing a single train ticket. In 1892, Homer Plessy bought a first-class railroad ticket. They say by doing such he broke the law since we were only allowed to ride only third class in his home state of Louisiana. You know, ye old separate railway accommodations for the races. To make a long story short, the Supreme Court heard, and rejected, Plessy’s challenge. This validated segregation in public facilities and engendered an atmosphere that promulgated even more restrictive Jim Crow laws.

I can get with this, but it is not where I start Jim Crow, I start it with the 19th President of the United States, Rutherford B. Hayes. Like George W. Bush, he was involved in a very contested election. The popular vote was 4,300,000 for Samuel J. Tilden to 4,036,000 for Hayes. Hayes's won via the electoral votes in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida. So close was the election that some historians suggest that it created a constitutional crisis and almost began another civil war.

Upon this, although Hayes pledged protection of the rights of blacks in the South, he also said he wanted to restore the south to the local governments of the region. So to do this, he did the main act in my eyes to start the distasteful legacy of Jim Crow; he withdrew all of the Union Troops in the South. He really wanted to provide some motivation for rich white businessmen in the South to join the Republican Party.

This single act ended the period of Reconstruction and abrogated the only protection that would preserve the rights of freed African-Americans. Historians have also suggested that Hayes made a deal to remove the Union troops to gather the votes from the electoral college (from South Carolina and Louisiana).

So In honor of Black history month, I just wanted to assert the aforementioned proposition: that it was not Plessy’s case in the Supreme Court that started the turmoil and savagery that many of our ancestors who were raised in the south experienced, but rather the act of removing the Union Troops as implemented by President Hayes, that started the “strange Career of Jim Crow” as C. Vann Woodward put it in his 1955 tractate with the same title.

Now, like I said, I have no formal training in History, but I can think. And as I said, history involves connecting the dots and is more than remembering some absurd fact like who made the firs traffic light. So please do le me know what you think, and remind your kids, the next time they mention Jones, I mean President Hayes name in class, tell them to say they know who he is, that he is the father of Jim Crow. Now back to our regular scheduled programming (what ever is on my mind and my granny's funeral).

not mine

History can be a judicious teacher. However, not all have the aptitude to learn from the past. With Respect to Iraq, this can be stated in inordinate respects. It is understandable the Bush Administration did not heed the lessons of the thirty some odd years the British were in Iraq. Nor have they learned that one cannot build an army in a country that is occupied by the US – at least not the last four or five times the US has invaded a sovereign nation and attempted to build an army (Panama, Haiti, Nicaragua to name a few).

Most prominently is not learning from Haiti in 1915. Like the Bush Administration, the Woodrow Wilson Administration fabricated a reason to enter a foreign country. The U.S. Occupation of Haiti was said to have been implemented to keep the Germans from establishing submarine bases in the country. The real reason for Wilson’s use of the military was to protect US business interest. History shows us that US presidents recurrently use the military (marines specifically) to protect financial interest abroad. Wilson like Bush desired to impose an American solution on a country that was unable to govern itself. We have failed miserably at building armies across the glob and usually, we end up with an autocratic despot or dictator in charge. Yes, this has happened each time we have removed leadership in power of sovereign nations and attempted to drop American political attributes on non American populations.

The concern is that Bush won’t tell us, the citizens of the United States of America the truth – what business interest are we protecting? Not Mine!