Star Trek's Nichelle Nichols—Lt. Uhuru—on Integrating Prime Time Television

Makers:

Nichelle Nichols on her groundbreaking Star Trek role, a vital encounter with Martin Luther King, Jr. and NASA recruitment.

Blackface 2nd-grader--Dressed as MLK--Stirs Controversy

Jay Smooth: Ten OTHER Things Martin Luther King Said

Duke MLK Celebration Service 2012 with Donna Brazile

Sunday, January 15, at 3:00 p.m. in Duke Chapel, the University hosted the 2012 Service of Celebration in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Donna Brazile, Political Commentator and Vice Chair of Voter Registration and Participation of the Democratic National Committee is the keynote speaker. The service includes the 100 Men in Black Choir and the Collage Dance Company.

"Race is an Economic Coding System": Walter Mosley @ BAM

The Mixtape “King”

The Mixtape “King”

by Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan

Two of my favorite images of Martin Luther King Jr., are not of actual images of King at all.  They are of actor Jeffrey Wright in his performance of King from the HBO original film Boycott, directed by Clark Johnson.  The first scene occurs nights before the launch of the Montgomery bus boycott and King and Ralph Abernathy (portrayed by  Oscar nominated actor Terrance Howard)—the duo functioning more like running partners—dispatch themselves to local pool halls to get the word out about the bus boycott, on the premise that, “not everybody goes to church.” 

The gesture itself is not all that important, but the film presents an image of King that suggest how seamlessly he might have integrated himself into what many might have thought—at least at the time—as fairly disparate spaces; a point that was not lost on the film’s characters who were hustled into a games of pool by the otherwise devout servant of the Lord—and his people.

The second image occurs during the film’s closing credits. With the film’s version of King’s legacy assured, we see King in contemporary Montgomery, holding court with a bunch of corner boys—young African-American men—seemingly physically, and perhaps, rhetorically at home with the denizens of the Hip-Hop generation at the turn of the 21^st Century. 

In this scene it is not unimaginable to imagine this King doppelganger, rolling up on this group of would be thugs—legible in that way to far too many casual observers—and greeting them with the gesture “Lil Nigger, Just Where You Been?”.  This is, of course, part of the private King—the King that played the rhetorical dozens with his inner circle, the King who sought sexual release in the afterhours of public life, the King that has become most relatable to those generations, who’ve only known him as a dead icon and a ready made postage stamp. 

As Michael Eric Dyson notes in his book I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr., the “rules for public discourse for blacks have changed from the fifties…neither is cursing an automatic sign of unintelligence or unrighteousness.  Those stereotypes must be broken up in order to open communication between the civil rights and hip-hop generations.” As Jonathan Rieder suggests, the “sublime and decorous universalism” that defined the public King, “never encompassed the entirety of King’s repertoire of talk an identity.”

Rieder’s essay “What Kind of People Worship Here? The Labor of Legitimacy and the Passion of Prophesy in ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’” is focused on King’s dexterity at speaking to multiple publics, most often one Black and one White.  The King that Rieder presents us, is one who is highly skilled at navigating these distinct publics or what some social scientists have called parallel publics; one who deftly gestures across race and religion, who, as Rieder describes it, “glides from gentility to rudeness and from the labor of legitimacy, to the passion of prophecy.”  This is the King, who needed the comforts of community, to whoop it up, when the reporters were gone, and he needed to recover from the rhetorical pirouettes that were as necessary to the forwarding of the freedom struggles as the direct action that took place in the streets.

In many ways the translation of this King to the hip-hop generation is not an empty or simple conceit; The King that Rieder give us—the King who some view with suspicion because of his liberal borrowing of ideas in that doctoral dissertation—is the King who functions like a skilled turntabalist, dutifully mixing and remixing narratives of freedom, resistance and redemption—for himself and the nation;  A King who is at home with the sampling practices that have come to define the sonic genius of rap music production, both part of a broader continuum of Black expressive culture that privileges borrowing, sharing, and the refashioning of style and ideas. Like Sean “PuffyDiddyDaddy” Combs boasted a decade ago, “we invented the remix.”

As Richard Schur writes in his book Parodies of Ownership: Hip-Hop Aesthetics  and Intellectual Property Law, “Sampling is not simply the reshaping and reuse of recorded text, but a method of textual production…that proceeds by listening for and incorporating discrete parts, rather than completed wholes, and constructing an aesthetically satisfying text out of them.”

Part of King’s genius, was not simply his ability to speak across disparate publics, but to do so in a way that was aesthetically pleasing within these publics.  Yes, this is, as Rieder suggest, the crossover King—the King we remember every January, who gets invoked in visual mashups with Malcolm X and President Barack Obama.

Yet we still have this private King—the barbershop King, shooting the shit with his “lil Niggers”—well offstage, sometimes into the afterhours, on drives across the South, in hotel rooms where they are partaking in the fruits of their segregated celebrity. 

This is the mixtape King—the King that circulates to check the temperature of his street cred, the King who inspired those with no vested interest in the institutions and institutional figures, including King, who spoke for them, but instead simply appreciated the Swag, both rhetorical and political.  And perhaps it is this mixtape King that we all might also consider.

***

Mark Anthony Neal is the author of several books including the forthcoming Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities.  He is professor of African & African-American Studies at Duke University and host the weekly video webcast Left of Black. Follow him on Twitter @NewBlackMan.

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Political Strategist Donna Brazile to Speak at Duke University's MLK Program

Political Strategist Donna Brazile to Speak at Duke University

by Camile Jackson | Duke Office of News & Communication

The annual event is free and open to the Durham community

Durham, NC - Veteran political strategist and commentator Donna Brazile will give the keynote address for Duke University's Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration on Sunday, Jan. 15, in Duke Chapel.

The 3 p.m. speech is part of a program that includes music and dancing in the chapel celebrating King's life. It is free and open to the public. Parking is available in the Bryan Center Parking Garage.

Brazile is the vice chair of voter registration and participation for the Democratic National Committee. She is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, a columnist for United Media, Ms. Magazine and O Magazine, and an on-air contributor to CNN, NPR and ABC, where she regularly appears on "This Week." She is also author of the best-selling memoir, "Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics."

Brazile has worked on every presidential campaign from 1976 to 2000, when she served as campaign manager for former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. She is the first African-American woman to manage a presidential campaign.

A native of New Orleans, she has served on the board of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, working for a full post-Katrina recovery for the city. Her other passion involves voting rights and encouraging young people to vote and run for public office. She is the founder and managing director of Brazile & Associates, a consulting, grassroots advocacy and training firm based in Washington, D.C.

Brazile has been named to numerous top lists, including the Washingtonian Magazine's 100 most powerful women, O Magazine's top 20 remarkable visionaries and Essence Magazine's top 50 women in America. The Congressional Black Caucus bestowed her with its highest award for political achievement.

The theme for this year's MLK commemoration is "Act to Honor."

Learn more about this year's commemoration, including an updated listing of events, at mlk.duke.edu.

"Occupy, Occupy, Occupy"--Rev. Jesse Jackson on The #Occupy Movement

The Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr. at #Occupy Atlanta Making Connections between Martin Luther King, Jr's "Poor People's Campaign" and the #Occupy Movement.

A King for Our Times

 A King for Our Times

by Davarian Baldwin | special to NewBlackMan

On Sunday, October 17, 2011, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood, arms crossed, gazing out over the Tidal Basin on the National Mall. Once again he was surrounded by tens of thousands of people. Only this time, he was 30 feet tall, ensconced in granite, and etched with quotes from his historic speeches. All had gathered for the dedication of the long awaited monument for civil rights icon Martin Luther King. Yet it’s important to note that like Sisyphus pushing that boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down, King’s monument dedication seemed destined to never happen. For decades the memorial faced struggles with funding. Once plans moved forward many then grumbled about the “political correctness” of placing a civilian, a common man, “who happened to be African American,” next to presidents. Finally, once the date had been set, the monument dedication had to be rescheduled because of the howling winds of Hurricane Irene. So in a way that best commemorated the legacy of King, his memorial faced a range of struggles and still…overcame.

Under clear blue skies it was apparent King had once again drawn a cross section of Americana to the seat of national governance. In attendance were Civil Rights stalwarts who had walked next to King, some now moving much more slowly and aided by wheelchairs or walkers. The sun-kissed crowd was a mix of young, old, some in strollers, some having no idea who King was, staring behind searching eyes only knowing that they were told they were attending an historic event. And to be sure, it was an historic event…for a number of reasons. Notably, an African American president presided over the proceedings from the podium while the distinguished Princeton University professor and public intellectual, Cornel West looked on from the audience. In a way, King had put a momentary hiatus on what had been months of political disagreements (some say more ego-driven than ideological) between these two prominent African American men, both inheritors of King’s dream. But more important than who they were, it is equally telling to track where these two men were “coming from” on that clear and sunny day.

Obama had just come from a “beatdown” by Republican representatives over the defeat of his long-term health care insurance plan. He even not-so-subtly referenced the “Occupy” events taking the nation by storm: “I believe he [King] would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there.” While West left the dedication and headed straight away to an Occupy D.C. event where an estimated 250 people set up camp on the steps of the Supreme Court building. He was summarily arrested for occupying public space to reportedly denounce the court decisions that have opened the door to greater corporate influence on governmental decisions. Many scoffed at the very audacity of West or anyone, but especially Obama, “highjacking” the memorial dedication and mentioning in the same breath King and the more than 200 Occupy protest events that spread from Tuscaloosa, Alabama to the Saskatchewan province in Canada. These caretakers of “The Dream” emphasize the “King qualities” of silent suffering in the face of violent attacks, attempts to connect with a larger moral conscience, and a “rights-based” appeal through official political channels. Therefore, mention of King in the same discussion of the Occupy events is dismissed as sacrilegious.

In a sense, once the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed, King’s relevance seemed to also pass. Therefore, the current struggles over health care, unemployment, the corporate control of government, the protests of various interest groups work against King’s grander appeals to an American “we.” But then those of us with any historical memory or those invested in social justice, scratch our heads and wonder precisely who is this King that has been memorialized in granite and in a sense frozen in time; caricatured at the “I Have a Dream” moment of his life and confined to the “content of our character” phrase for at least the last thirty years. What do we lose in the struggle to make the American public feel that a King memorial dedication stands in opposition to our current economic climate? We lose a King for our times.

We lose the 1967 King, who at Riverside Church in New York City defied the Civil Rights establishment to make links between what he saw as a colonial war in Vietnam with a failure to achieve racial equality and socio-economic justice at home. We lose the King who was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee organizing primarily Black garbage workers fighting for better wages and racial dignity as part of his larger Poor People’s campaign. We lose the King who said Progress is meaningless when the economy expands and stock values rise but millions of people remain unemployed or underpaid, without health care, a pension or economic security. We lose a King who described American capitalism as “socialism for the rich and free markets for the poor;” who linked urban poverty with suburban plenty. We lose a King that would comfort and rest beside those occupy protestors, as they sleep under the stars in open air encampments. We lose a King for our times.

Now I am not one who peddles in useless speculations about how King would vote or which political position sitsnearest King’s dream in 2011. But I do know what he fought for. Once those “rights” bills were passed, King knew the battle had to be waged on other fronts and he continued to fight. He fought for an “economic bill of rights,” calling for “massive public works programs (to build) decent housing, schools, hospitals, mass transit, parks and recreation centers.” He argued, these public investments would “enrich society” and spur private investment. I know that even at the end he still had a dream…

that one day all of God’s children will have food and clothing and material well-being for their bodies, culture and education for their minds and freedom for their spirits.

In my mind, this is the King for our times. This is King the Christian preacher and the world citizen. This is the King who openly admired American presidents and Trinidadian Marxist C.L.R. James. This is the King who made appeals to Civil Rights but when faced with urban northern poverty strangling black communities that had rights, he expanded his political vision to something greater. This is a King who saw the redistribution of state power and economic wealth as part of the American Creed. This is the King who understood social justice as an act of love and not mere sentiment. Perhaps if citizens had listened to all King had to say we wouldn’t be faced with such a daunting task ahead. And therefore as we dedicate a memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. let nobody turn us around, let no one tell us who he is. King lives in our current struggles and remains a drum major for justice unfulfilled. We need his full legacy now, more than ever before.

***

Davarian L. Baldwin the  Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies at Trinity College. Baldwin is the author of Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life (UNC, 2007). He is also co-editor, with Minkah Makalani, of the essay collection Escape From New York! The 'Harlem Renaissance' Reconsidered (forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press). Baldwin is currently at work on two new projects, Land of Darkness: Chicago and the Making of Race in Modern America (Oxford University Press) and UniverCities: How Higher Education is Transforming the Urban Landscape.

Could Dr. King Watch Big Time College Sports?

Could Dr. King Watch Big Time College Sports? Race Beyond Shame

by David Leonard and C. Richard King | NewBlackMan

In “Shame of College Sports,” legendary American historian Taylor Branch turns his college sports in this month’s The Atlantic.   Focusing on the profits generated through college sports, the lack of power available to student-athletes, and the absurdity to claims of amateurism and student-athletes, Branch exposes the exploitation and hypocrisy that is as much part of the NCAA experience as March Madness and Bowl Games.   Almost hoping to disarm critics who often scoff at ‘slavery analogies,’ Brand avoids that comparison instead embracing one that centers on colonialism.

Slavery analogies should be used carefully. College athletes are not slaves. Yet to survey the scene—corporations and universities enriching themselves on the backs of uncompensated young men, whose status as “student-athletes” deprives them of the right to due process guaranteed by the Constitution—is to catch an unmistakable whiff of the plantation. Perhaps a more apt metaphor is colonialism: college sports, as overseen by the NCAA, is a system imposed by well-meaning paternalists and rationalized with hoary sentiments about caring for the well-being of the colonized. But it is, nonetheless, unjust. The NCAA, in its zealous defense of bogus principles, sometimes destroys the dreams of innocent young athletes.

Providing readers with an amazing history, including the origins of the term student-athlete (as part of a systematic effort to avoid paying workers’ compensation claims for injured football players) and illustrating the methods used by NCAA and its partner schools to maintain the illusion of amateur sports all while raking in the dough, Branch surprisingly avoids the issue of race.  The colonial analogy notwithstanding, there is virtually no discussion of the racial implications in this system, the larger history of the NCAA in relationship to race, and the ways in which white racial frames help to justify an acceptance of such a system.  

Branch seems to point to the racial implications here in a section entitled, ““The Plantation Mentality,” where he quotes Sonny Vaccaro:

“Ninety percent of the NCAA revenue is produced by 1 percent of the athletes,” Sonny Vaccaro says. “Go to the skill positions”—the stars. “Ninety percent African Americans.” The NCAA made its money off those kids, and so did he. They were not all bad people, the NCAA officials, but they were blind, Vaccaro believes. “Their organization is a fraud.”

The reference to the “Plantation mentality” and the explicit acknowledgement that the bulk of profits are generated within sports that in recent years have been dominated by African American athletes generates surprisingly little discussion of the radicalized political economy of college athletics today.  Over a decade ago, D. Stanley Eitzen observed

These rules reek with injustice. Athletes can make money for others, but not for themselves. Their coaches have agents, as many students engaged in other extracurricular activities, but the athletes cannot. Athletes are forbidden to engage in advertising, but their coaches are permitted to endorse products for generous compensation. Corporate advertisements are displayed in the arenas where they play, but with no payoff to the athletes. The shoes and equipment worn by the athletes bear very visible corporate logos, for which the schools are compensated handsomely. The athletes make public appearances for their schools and their photographs are used to publicize the athletic department and sell tickets, but they cannot benefit. The schools sell memorabilia and paraphernalia that incorporate the athletes' likenesses, yet only the schools pocket the royalties. The athletes cannot receive gifts, but coaches and other athletic department personnel receive the free use of automobiles, country club memberships, housing subsidies, etc.

To our minds, then, Branch clearly  misses an opportunity to reflect on the ways in which the system is built around generating profits through the labor of young African American men.  Those profits – the billions of dollars earned through television contracts, merchandizing, video game deals, concessions, booster donations, ticket sales – find there way into the hands of overwhelming white constituency, coaches and athletic directors, in support of a largely white establishment. 

Much of the money generated by football and basketball programs funds those other non-revenue generating sports; those that are not only overwhelmingly white but also reflect a larger history of segregation and inequality.  That is, the labor of black student-athletes pays for sports that many African Americans have no chance of securing scholarship in because those sports are not available in high school.   

In “The Color Gap in Girls' Sports,” Sara Clarke Kaplan highlights this inequality, comparing the sports offered at Washington D.C. schools compared to those Arlington County, Virginia and Montgomery County, Maryland, concluding that whereas D.C. (and most urban school districts) offer “varsity basketball, volleyball, softball, and track for girls” those neighboring suburban districts offer the “big 4” along with “soccer, field hockey, tennis, swimming, gymnastics -- even crew.”  According to studies, roughly 85-95% of suburban youth play sports, compared to 15-25 percent of those living in urban areas.  EuroAmericans play high school sports at far greater levels (more sports=more opportunities) than African Americans and therefore have a greater chance of securing a scholarship.  According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, “African-American females represent less than 5% of all high school athletes, less than 10% of all college athletes.”

We can see a similar reality with boys sports, with golf, tennis, volleyball, baseball, lacrosse, and countless others.  The pipeline to a college scholarship comes from America’s suburban public school and private school; yet, it is the profits generated from football and basketball that pays the ticket for those other athletes.  Indeed, without the labor of black athletes in college football and basketball, support and subsidies for other sports would wither away.  Importantly, it is this radicalized labor, moreover, that enables more elite or rarefied sports to thrive on many Division I campuses: on the one hand, black athletes subsidize white privilege; on the other hand, they make it possible for many schools to recruit and retain white student-athletes, arguably making historically white institutions more competitive in their efforts to attract white students.

And here, the historian of Civil Rights Movement misses a fundamental connection between those struggles for freedom and the bondage of the black student-athlete.  The most prestigious and profitable college sports programs in the country are all historically white institutions, some which resisted for decades efforts to integrate them. Now, ironically, even as these ivory towers remain disproportionately white, they happily exploit those too long excluded and marginalized.  Moreover, these white dominated institutions of higher learning still refuse to properly educate African Americans.  Where, historically, it was the color bar, Jim Crow, and separate-but-equal that enabled them to avoid their obligations, today, it is the primacy of on-field performance, overt and covert efforts to discouraging thinking and learning, and the threat of losing one's scholarship.  Graduation rates for black athletes should remind us how little interest or care most institutions of high learning have for their black student-athletes: it as if most colleges and universities regard them as chattel that can be easily replaced with another disposable body.  This pattern of denying access and blocking education attainment, same as it ever was, multiplies the exploitation. 

Big time college sports feeds on a system of primary and secondary education that under-educates African Americans, skimming of the most talented, while rarely giving the communities from which they corm and to which they will return a second thought.  The NCAA has structured a system in which coaches, scouts, and administrators are all too happy to channel the dreams and desperation of young black men who often have no other options and nothing to fall back upon but their bodies.  In the process, they not only reinforce tacitly the notion of black physicality--in contrast with white intellect, but they also strengthen racial hierarchies, including the barriers that have kept African Americans from participating fully as students and as athletes.

But then, perhaps, this should not surprise us.  The very notion of amateurism and its later complement, the student athlete, emerged as meaningful social and political forces during an era in which intercollegiate athletics were almost exclusively white only spaces--and in the case of amateurism elite white spaces.  And importantly, both constructs took shape to contain threats to big time college sports: amateurism to rebuff scandals and corruption, the latter to squash the rights of athletes.  The invocation of the ideals (if that is the right word) often works to contain threats to the status quo and do so by cleansing or forgetting the radicalized history of the NCAA and sport more generally in the USA. 

In post-Civil Rights America, African Americans now find themselves awkwardly crowded under ill-fitting ideas of the past, but try as it might big time college sport cannot hide the proliferation of racial hierarchy.  One need only glance at studies of stacking and until recently the paucity of black quarterbacks to see the truth; but it is perhaps more visibly seen in the small numbers of African American coaches, athletic directors, and university presidents.  Big time college sport may be one of the few domains in American life where the people with most experience in pursuit have the smallest representation in its management and leadership.

In responding to Branch’s piece, Kenneth Shropshire points to the missed opportunity in expanding upon the colonialism analogy when he writes, “Colonialism was shrouded in, "Europe knows what's best for Africa, and by colonizing them we will guide their savage ways toward ours."   The ubiquitous references that celebrate college sports as a place of discipline, as a place of teaching values, “seasoning,” maturation, enlightenment, and otherwise HELPING student-athletes points to a larger history encapsulated by the ideology of white man’s burden.  The celebration of college sports as a vehicle to secure the “American Dream” and to secure the requisite skills and discipline needed to excel in society reeks of colonialism and race given that (1) it is so often used in reference to African American athletes, and (2) because it is used as evidence of the compensation provided to those excelling in revenue sports. 

White owners and overseers then, white administrators and coaches now: in both cases systems of slavery.  To return to Eitzen,

Slaves, by definition, are not free. The slaves of the antebellum era did not have the right to assemble or petition. They did not have the right to speak out or freedom of movement. Those conditions characterize today's college athletes as well. The NCAA, schools, and coaches restrict the freedom of the athletes in many ways. By NCAA fiat, once athletes sign a contract to play for a school, they are bound to that institution. They make a four-year commitment to that college, yet the school makes only a one-year commitment to them. If an athlete wishes to play for another big-time school, he is ineligible for one year (two years if his former coach refuses to release the athlete from his contract). Yet, if a coach wants to get rid of an athlete, the school is merely bound to provide the scholarship for the remainder of that academic year. Coaches, on the other hand, can break their contracts, and immediately coach another school… The right to privacy is invaded routinely when it comes to college athletes…Freedom of choice is violated when athletes are red-shirted (held from play for a year) without their consent. Athletes may have little or no choice in what position they play. They may be told to gain or lose weight, with penalties for noncompliance. Coaches may demand mandatory study halls and determine what courses the athletes will take and their majors.

While we, with Eitzen, acknowledge that the analogy between athletes and slave can be "overdrawn," we remain mystified that did not foreground the racial politics of big time college sports.  Even if only an element in his larger analysis, discussing race would surely have produced a more hostile reception and may have led some to dismiss his reading of the NCAA now.  As it, "Shame of College Sport" affirms common sense understandings of the racial contours of contemporary American life, allowing most Americans, the NCAA, and sport off the hook precisely when we should insist on engagement, equality, and inclusion.  Dr. King would expect nothing less of us.

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He is the author of Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop (SUNY Press). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.

C. Richard King is the Chair of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University at Pullman and the author/editor of several books, including Team Spirits: The Native American Mascot Controversy and Postcolonial America.

Michael Eric Dyson: In the Name of King

In the Name of King

by Michael Eric Dyson | Time.com

A year ago, as my interview wrapped with President Obama in the Oval Office, he led me to the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. by Harlem Renaissance sculptor Charles Alston that he had installed near a bust of Abraham Lincoln. Obama's gaunt visage creased in delight as we gazed in silent awe on the face of a man the two of us baby boomers have acknowledged as a great inspiration. In the near future Obama will participate in a far more public recognition of the martyr's meaning when he speaks at the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall. King becomes the first individual African American to occupy the sacred civic space dominated by beloved Presidents like George Washington and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. King's image on the Mall is a sturdy reminder that his story, and the story of the people for whom he died, helped to rescue American democracy and make justice a living creed. King's memorial is even more impressive because his statue rises 30 ft. high on a direct line between the likenesses of Jefferson and Lincoln, dwarfing those memorials by 11 ft. — it is one of the tallest on the Mall. Even in death, King is still breaking barriers.

Obama's words on the Mall will be framed by a bitter dispute over King's legacy in black America and its revelation, or distortion, in leaders like Al Sharpton and Obama himself. Sharpton has emerged as an improbable leader of black America and a more improbable defender of Obama, a status that challenges his prophetic credentials in some quarters. Sharpton tangled on radio in 2010 with television host Tavis Smiley over Sharpton's contention that Obama shouldn't "ballyhoo 'a black agenda.' " Earlier this year on cable television, Princeton professor Cornel West shouted at Sharpton that the voluble minister could be "easily manipulated by ... the White House" to become the "public face" of entrenched Wall Street and corporate interests.

If Smiley and West fear that Sharpton has become Obama's pal and not his prophet, they seek to take up the slack and press Obama about his neglect of blacks and the poor at every chance. Their relentless criticism has earned them rebukes from many black folk and the enmity of radio host Tom Joyner, who once championed the duo, while Joyner's colleague Steve Harvey derided the pair as "Uncle Toms." These vicious attacks didn't stop Smiley and West from hitting the road recently for a 16-city "poverty tour" to spotlight the invisible poor in the name of King. Unfortunately, the political and racial circumstances that gripped their crusade drew more press to them than to the poor. Obama, Smiley and West and Sharpton all claim King's example. Who makes the most of it is a complicated story.

It is both fitting and ironic that Obama presides over the cementing of King's status as an icon in the national political memory. Obama's historic presidency is unthinkable without King's assassination and the black masses' bloodstained resistance to racial terror. Obama embraced King's rhetoric of justice during his presidential campaign while eschewing his role as prophet. Presidents uphold the country; prophets often hold up an unflattering mirror to the nation. King may now be widely regarded as a saint of American equality, but he often had to criticize his nation's politics and social habits to inspire and, at times, to force reform. He helped to make America better by making it bend to its ideals when it got off course as its loving but unyielding prophet. Had he lived, King would have certainly hailed Obama's historic feat even as he took issue with some of the President's policies toward black and poor people. It would have been principled criticism rooted in an obsession with improving the lives of the vulnerable. To paraphrase Obama's favorite film, The Godfather, King's arguments would have been business, not personal.

The same doesn't appear to be true for Smiley and West. Smiley openly criticized candidate Obama for not attending his State of the Black Union gathering in 2008, and many believe the slight stuck in Smiley's craw and has led him to blast the President ever since. The notion is swatted away by Obama's appearance on videotape at Smiley's 2009 event. Smiley criticized Presidents Clinton and Bush too, though, it must be noted, not as visibly or vocally as he's done with Obama. Smiley has admitted that Clinton seems to him like a fourth brother, a closeness that may have tempered his criticism of the former President. No such restraints keep the media marvel from an intrepid criticism of Obama.

The same is true for West, a brilliant intellectual who has even more aggressively aired his grievances, calling Obama "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats." It proved a pattern: West's trenchant analysis of Obama's policies is often sullied by needless name-calling. West's gripes are sometimes disturbingly personal and laced with macho psychoanalysis and peals of wounded ego: disgust with Obama because West and his family couldn't get Inauguration tickets (West's complaint that the bellman who carried his bags at a Washington hotel could get a ticket when he couldn't undercuts his noble advocacy for working and poor folk); the perception that Obama was afraid of a "free black man" like West (a belief that may be unfounded in light of Obama's in-your-face dressing-down of West after a presidential address in Washington); and the hostility West unleashed when he said that he wanted to "slap [the president] on the side of his head" after Obama had ambushed and embarrassed him in their D.C. spat. West's loving heart may belong to King at his best, but his lashing tongue belongs to Malcolm X at his worst. His legitimate criticism is lost in the mix. (See photos of the civil rights movement, from Emmett Till to Barack Obama.)

Sharpton's evolution may put him closer to King the presidential dealmaker than critics of the supremely gifted leader and newly minted talk-show host have so far let on. Sharpton cut his prophetic teeth on urban protest as an unpolished version of his idol Jesse Jackson, courting controversy and combatting police brutality against poor and working-class blacks. The accoutrements of his guerrilla resistance included the jogging suit, the lavishly styled perm, the bullhorn and the shrilly amplified mantra "No justice, no peace." Sharpton's odyssey from stubborn outsider to ultimate insider is documented in the shift to well-tailored suits and a more modest coif. Sharpton scaled the ire of the white masses and the embarrassment of the black elite to become a savvy power broker with unparalleled access to Obama. It remains to be seen what Sharpton makes of his opportunity, but the fact that he has it doesn't mean he should be condemned as a sellout. In fact, his greatest contribution may be not what he makes happen but what he keeps from happening by being at Obama's ear or elbow.

Constructive criticism of Obama is healthy; demanding that he pay attention to the needs of poor folk and people of color is righteous. Confusing personal beef with principled criticism only ends up undermining the high aims of social prophecy. When critics call Obama names, they sound no better than the bigots who wish him failure and death. We ought to remember that as we celebrate a man who was a selfless prophet and soldier of truth before he was murdered and turned into a saint and statue.

***

Michael Eric Dyson, a Georgetown professor and contributing editor of TIME, is author of April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America. Follow him at @MichaelEDyson.

Imani Perry on the Significance of the MLK Memorial

The Michael Eric Dyson Show

Friday August 26, 2011

 

Imani Perry on the Significance of the MLK Memorial

Despite the threat from Hurricane Irene, visitors are beginning to gather on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. to celebrate the opening of the new memorial dedicated to fallen Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King Jr. But how diverse is this group? A recent USA Today/Gallup poll showed that seven out of 10 Americans are interested in visiting the new MLK memorial, but that number has some huge racial disparities. We talk to Dr. Imani Perry, professor in the Center for African-American Studies at Princeton University, to help us make sense of those numbers and to explore the larger significance of the MLK memorial.

Listen Now: Dr. Imani Perry

The Corporate King Memorial and The Burial of a Movement

The Corporate King Memorial and The Burial of a Movement

by Jared Ball | Black Agenda Report

Dr. King and the liberation movement he represents will again suffer a brutal blow this week when all are permanently entombed under the violent euphemism of “memorial.” The dedication of this $120 million stone sculpture is to be a national tribute to a man whose entire body of work was designed to destroy the very structure that now claims to honor him. It is no honor. It is a burial. The very entities against which the movement that produced King have struggled for centuries have now attached themselves to him as if to claim victory over, rather than along with, that man and that movement. This memorial should be seen as the hostile, disingenuous aggression against Dr. King that it is and should continue to be a reminder of the absolute absence of sincere change in this society.

Deborah Atwater and Sandra Herndon have written about the meaning of memorials and museums saying, in part, that they serve the “nation-state” by communicating an “official culture” whose job, “through sponsorship,” is to “retain loyalty” and the “virtue of unity.” Atwater and Herndon describe memorials as helping the state develop a “ collective American public memory” and a “shared sense of the past.” Museums and memorials become “the spaces in which that [public] memory is interpreted.” Perhaps most importantly is that memorials are said to also “give meaning to the present.” But given the vicious re-imaging King suffered before his assassination, the vitriol he withstood from a nation determined to resist the change he represented, and given the post-assassination routine destruction of his advancing radical politics, it is simply not hard to determine just what this memorial intends to convey or the present meaning it intends to define.

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Buffalo (Hamburg) Bound: Mark Anthony Neal @ Hilbert College

Noted Black Culture Expert to be Featured Speaker

HAMBURG, N.Y. – Acclaimed black popular culture expert Mark Anthony Neal, Ph.D., will be the keynote speaker at an address commemorating the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. that will be held at 4 p.m. Jan. 27 in Hilbert College’s Palisano Lecture Room (101 Bogel Hall).

Neal’s discussion will bridge the gap of knowledge between the civil rights movement and the hip-hop generation, and also address King’s historical significance with current events.

Neal is professor of black popular culture in Duke University’s Department of African and African-American Studies from where he received the 2010 Robert B. Cox Award for Teaching. A regular commentator on National Public Radio, he writes about popular culture and parenting in his column for theLoop21.com, hosts the weekly Webcast “Left of Black” and contributes to several online media outlets, including New Black Magazine.

Neal has authored five books, including the New Black Man and the forthcoming Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities. He’s also co-editor of That's the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, 2nd Edition.

A book signing will follow Neal’s address, which is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be provided.

The event is being co-sponsored by the Hilbert Offices of Multicultural Affairs, Admissions and Residence Life.

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Hilbert College, located in suburban Hamburg, N.Y., south of Buffalo, is a private four-year college founded in 1957 in the Catholic Franciscan tradition. With nearly 1,100 students, Hilbert is a dynamic Western New York college that offers career-focused majors, including one of the top criminal justice programs in the region, and more than 50 minors and concentrations. Hilbert’s personal approach to learning combines liberal arts with an outstanding professionally-focused education that’s taught by professors who bring a depth of real-world experience to the classroom. The college’s engaging, student-centered campus community offers numerous leadership, internship and service learning opportunities from which students launch successful careers while making positive changes in their communities.

Confessions of a Black Swim Parent: It’s Never Just Another Swim Meet

Confessions of a Black Swim Parent:
It’s Never Just Another Swim Meet
by Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan

I suppose that years from now, my daughter will have little memory of the recent North Carolina YMCA swim championships. Yes she walked away with the 50-Yard Freestyle championship in her age group, lowered several of her times and anchored two championship relays, but in many ways it was just like any other meet.

Except the meet was not held on any other ordinary day; it was the 82nd anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr.. I couldn’t help being reminded that if it were only 40 years earlier—in a state like North Carolina—my daughter might not have been allowed to even swim in the same pool with her White peers, let alone stand on the blocks and believe that she could be the fastest swimmer in any of the competitions.

Not to put any additional pressure on my daughter, I let the significance of the date sit quietly with me (though not quite, given the Curtis Mayfield and Nina Simone soundtrack that accompanied our drive to the aquatic center), ironic given the fact that most swim meets in contemporary America would register as a minor Civil Rights-era notable; It’s simply far too usual for there to be only a handful of Black swimmers competing at meets in which competitors often number in the hundreds.

And indeed, to judge by the number of adults, who randomly walk up to my daughter and her parents to comment on how fine her swimming technique is, I’m sure my daughter is more than aware of the race politics that are at play. As a White colleague remarked to me, comments about my daughter’s swimming technique—however innocent and even thoughtful—are apropos to the backhanded compliments middle class, educated Blacks receive about how “articulate” they are, as if there is some incompatible strain of Blackness that resists societal norms.

At twelve, my daughter is of a generation of young people whose lives are not ordered by race—that’s the job of their parents, who at least have a responsibility to make their children aware that despite best intentions (somewhere Edmund Perry is sighing), there will be many moments in their lives when race—and gender, and class and religious preference and sexual orientation will matter.

Thankfully, the only burden she takes onto the starting block is whether or not she will be able to drop her times, and that is as it should be. Nevertheless, my daughter and I have begun to talk about her unasked for role in this small post-race, racial drama. The conversations are borne out on the number of times that parents of younger Black swimmers have sought her out to meet their swimmers.

It has taken my daughter some time to realize that forty-plus year after Dr. King last walked the earth, the idea of a Black swimmer—and one who can compete at the highest levels, as she aspires—is an oxymoron. At any given swim meet, there’s going to be another Black swimmer that will see my daughter and others like her, and say “that can be me.”

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Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of African & African-American Studies at Duke University and the author of five books including the forthcoming Looking For Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities. He is the host of the weekly webcast Left of Black. Neal is also a Black Swim Parent, who resides Durham, NC with his family, where his daughters swim for the YMCA of the Triangle Area (YOTA).

In Search of King

Discovering the complexities of the late Civil Rights leader was part of author's coming of age.

In Search of King
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21

Like many African-American households in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. in my parents’ apartment when I was growing up in the Bronx. It was a classic King pose as pastor, without expression—I imagine there have been millions of these prints of King produced. Less prominent in my parents’ living room, just below the portrait of King was a button from the Poor People’s Campaign. Both existed without remark in my household and while I could fill in the gaps about King, there was little from which I could draw the significance of the Poor People’s Campaign to my parents, who rarely talked politics with me. That was my introduction to Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the years before the official King holiday, the great orator and Civil Rights leader was just that to me—a flattened “great” image from a past that my parents, both with deep southern roots, refused to talk to me about. It was during one of my earliest forays into crate digging—as a 13-year-old in the Bronx in 1979, who wasn’t going through their parents record collection in our imaginary quest to be Grandmaster Flash?—that I came across a collection of King’s speeches—In Search of Freedom—in my father’s collection. As I could not recall ever hearing the record played in my parent’s home, I took it upon myself to listen to the speeches myself.

What I heard mesmerized me—a nod to the sense of power the man possessed over language and the more tangible sense of opportunity that I felt just as the 1980s were dawning. As a Bronx kid, trekking to a huge “integrated” high school in Brooklyn—6,000 students to be exact—the sound of King’s voice on my first generation Walkman served as symbolic armor. Perhaps.

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21

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Mark Anthony Neal is the author of five books, including the forthcoming Looking for Leroy. He teaches Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African-American Studies at Duke University. Email Mark at mark@theloop21.com. Follow him on Twitter @NewBlackMan.

Vincent Harding: Martin Luther King, Jr.--The Inconvenient Hero

November 2010 conversation with Dr. Vincent Harding, Professor Emeritus, Religion and Social Transformation, Iliff School of Theology, and Chairperson, Veterans of Hope Project, Denver, Colorado.

MLK 'Day On' @ YWCA-Raleigh

2011 MLK Day On

Make it an inspiring “day on" this January 17. Hear untold stories about Dr. Martin Luther King and help us launch three YWCA Study Circles on race in our community.

Join the YWCA and partners Community United Church of Christ and the N.C. Social Justice Project for a special program commemorating Dr. King that will include:

• A community forum moderated by WUNC's Frank Stasio.
• Panelists including youth activist Sanyu Gichie; civil rights scholar Benita Jones; education activist Olga Matos; race/culture expert Mark Anthony Neal; and Muslim interfaith leader Jihad Shawwa.
• Refreshments provided and free childcare on a first-come, first-serve basis.

REGISTER NOW

The event marks the official kick-off of three YWCA Study Circles in our community. Study Circles are multi-racial groups of eight to 10 people who gather for six weeks to learn about present-day racial equity in our nation and the region. Participants share their experiences and learn steps to foster proactive resolutions.

If you're committed to racial equity, join us as we strive toward justice for all!

• Date: January 17, 2011
• Time: 3:00 p.m.
• Location: Community United Church of Christ, 814 Dixie Trail, Raleigh
• Contact: Julia Dawson (919) 828-3205

Maurice Wallace Presents "King's Vibrato"

Maurice Wallace
Associate Professor of English and African American Studies, Duke University

presents

"King's Vibrato"

in conversation with

Louise Meintjes
Associate Professor of Music, Duke University

Duke University
January 13, 2011 5-7pm
Friedl 225