Full text of "Drum"

IKS

jm^KMSu^gl

' ' 1

^^Bi

■

ik. .jMm -r

BLACK

Drum University of Massachusetts, New Africa House 115, Amherst, MA 01003

Volume 18, Number 1 & II, May 1988

Lift Every Voice and Sing

^Vii , 1 J j i |'' I i 1 1" i p f p 1 1" N= l it

I. Lifl ev - 'ry voice and sing, 'Tii earth and heav ■ en ring,
3. Cod of our wea - ry years. Cod of our si - lent lears,

be-- -P-' f- f- -f- ]»•

-U-

-k-.

H 1

^^v=i

—^=^

=*=

I —

^^^^

;—

—4-

— r-6*

Ring with the har - mo -

[=!-- — ' — -^ — ' g\^ i]cj ^ — '

nies of lib - er

flpic fir nn the

"y.

way.

J J

£• b

p- , p' , , ?'p — ,

n^f^

g5."i ^ r r f

1 —

^ —

■if—

-^ — t

i±-i — 1

L 4 —

1 !*^

-U

f^^^s^

— ■ — •

^fl^-

=r=

"^•-^

-^!

y — '

L
I.. 1

et our re - joic -
ou who hast by

rise,
might,

1**

s 1

he
n -

isl ■

'ning
the

skies,
lighl,

^^^^^i*=

'=^

— w

>^ —

— P'

P' 1

-'^^ h

M-

H- '

H '

i ''- | -- >!■ I J. 1,1. 1 J J j I J J j I J J j 1 ^

Sing a song full of the faith (hat (he dark past has taught us.
Lest our feet stray from the plac - es, our God, where we met Thee,

Sing a song, full of the hope that the pres - ent has brought-
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of Ijie world, we for- get Thee..

^''i> r I ['■ l y- I' l f tJ i tJiY^JitJiiif^iiiJifaJF".

Fac - ing the ris - ing sun Of our new day be - gun.
Shad -owed be-neath Thy hand. May we for ■ ev - er stand,

J A.

Let us march on. til vie- to - ry is won._ is won.

True to our God, true to our na - live land._

j A^^r

Let it re-sound, loud as the roll - ing sea._

Keep us for - ev - er in the path, we pray

r^jfYfp-

Bit-ter the chas-t'ning rod.

*ord) and niiiiic copyii^ht 192'? Kdwaid H. Marks Mujjc Corporaliun,
Arr ©copyriphl Rdward B. Marks Miisit Corporation. Used by perm

:jiijii,ii li ij^ii^jii

Felt in the days when hope — un

ry feel — come to the place for which our fa - thers sighed?

Jinn - , o

We have come o - ver a way that with tears has been wa - tered. We

Front & Back Cover Art by Romare Bearden
Back: "Guitar Executive"

have come, tread ■ ing our path through the blood of the slaught

/O, /:>

Where the whitegleam of ourbrighl star is cast, (piano)

(piano)

3 3 3 3

Printed by Excelsior Printing Company

THE COLUMBIA SCHOLASTIC
PRESS ASSOCIATION

awards this

MEDALIST CERTIFICATE

Given at Columbia University in the City of New York,
November 2, 1987 in its Sixty-fourth Annual Contest.

DIRECTOR

A Medalist Award is granted to publications selected from the First Place ratings for special qualities evident to the
judges, characterized as the personality, spirit or creative excellence of the entry. This is for overall achievement.
Usually, only the top ten percent of entries receive a Medalist Award. [Taken from Magazine Fundamentals: Third
Edition, Columbia Scholastic Press Association, 1984.1

3 Editorial

by Martha Giiei-Deen

4 The Fire Next Time —
James Baldwin

8 Marcus Garvey: An Unsung Hero
by Simone Nicholson

14 Supreme Court Justice Thurgood
Marshall
by Pancho Monis and
Rudolph Miller

16 Bookworm Raps on Literature:
Andrea Benton Rushing
interviewed by Garrick Amos

18 The Price of the Ticket
James Baldwin

23 Blues For Mister Chame —
James Baldwin

24 Nelson Stevens on Romare Bearden

27 Afri-Cobra: Twenty Years Later
by Kara Banks and
Desmond Dorsett

33 We Have Seen His Righteous Witness
by Michael Thelwell

35 A Brother's Love

by Maya Angelou

36 Jimmy

byAmiri Baraka

38 Fashion Through an Angel' s Eyes :
Angel Estrada

by Susan Hodgkins

'drum

40 Coaching Excellence
by Mark T. Childs

42 Equality: By Any Means Necessary
by Simone Nicholson

46 Akhenaten: Unique Among Pharaohs

by Sara Shapiro

50 Black To The Future: Spike Lee,
Filmmaker
by Martha Grier-Deen

55 Amnesty International: Better To
Light A Candle Than Curse
the Darkness
by Cathy Mahoney

5^ Chinua Achebe: Owner of Words

^t interview by Charles Perry

6 1 Interview with Kandula Sastry

by Victor Alexander

62 Music is Cultural Power: Jane Sapp

by Mark T. Childs

67 I Am Because We Are:
Nelson Stevens

by Martha Grier-Deen

70 Dr. Johnnetta Cole: First Lady
interview by Rio Gabriel

78 Yusef Lateef

interview by Nelson Stevens e)
Barry Brooks

87 CANE

by Lori Robinson

90 Stars That Play With Laughing
Sam's Dice
by Rio Gabriel

92 State Representative Raymond
Jordan: the Answerman
interview by Dawn Marshall

95 Ashanti

by Terrelle Hodge

SPECIAL DEDICATION TO THE LATE
CHARLES ABRAMSON
' AND THOSE WHO KNEW HIS ARTISTIC""
-^ GENIUS ^-^

.his issue of DRUM Magazine Is a par-
ticularly special one for several reasons.
The fact that this issue Is in print is a
miracle in itself. Thanks to letters of sup-
port from our readers, as well as to the per-
sistent efforts of UMass students and
DRUM staff, our budget, although cut, was
guaranteed for two more issues. We hope
that this issue, and the next 20th anniver-
sary issue, will be so baad that when the
time for re-funding comes around again, we
won't have to go begging.

This issue is also, unfortunately, in
dedication to preservers of our culture who
have passed on in the last year — James
Baldwin, John Killens, Harold Washington,
Romare Bearden, Channing Phillips, Peter
Tosh—people who, during their lifetimes,
made significant contributions to the strug-
gle against injustice that Blacks and other
people of color continue to face. It seemed
that just as we were getting over the shock
and sorrow of one loss, we had to endure
yet another. It is still hard to believe that
James Baldwin — a man who was literally
the voice of Black America— is no longer
alive. But the brilliance of their legacies
shines on.

During this period of seemingly endless
and highly discriminating fatality, the very
valid questions of "Who's next?" and
"Who will be left?" were asked. The urgen-
cy of these questions is increasing as the
ever-present racism and conservatism in
this country are no longer cloaked in subtle-
ty but exposed anew each day through acts
of legal and illegal violence. In this issue
of DRUM we pay tribute to those like Mar-
cus Garvey, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Baldwin, Bearden, and the still-living (God
Bless him!) Supreme Court Justice
Thurgood Marshall. We also celebrate
those who have chosen to continue the
struggle and who have dedicated their lives
and work to the passing on of tradition and
culture— the President of Spelman College,
Dr. Johnnetta Cole, filmmaker Spike Lee,
, Professor Andrea Benton Rushing, musi-

cian Jane Sapp, the artists of Afri-Cobra
and writer Chinua Achebe. It is from all of
these people, and many more like them,
that we draw strength.

Along with the question, "Who will be
left?" comes another — "Are those who
come next prepared?" Although the last
couple of years have shown that many of
us are willing to fight against injustice— as
the article on the recent New Africa House
takeover illustrates— I think that our
preparation is lacking, especially given the
nature of the current struggle. The strug-
gles of the 60s and 70s — which are, to
many of us, ahistorical — were relatively
easier to fight because inequality was more
identifiable. Today, however, racism is
much less evident and much more institu-
tionalized. Many Americans— Black and
white— believe that because some have
been given the opportunity for better
education, employment and housing, all
can attain these same goals — if one works
hard enough. But it's not just about oppor-
tunity. "One of the striking challenges that
your age has to face is the fact that
freedom without equality is not enough.
Freedom didn't cost very much. Equality
does. Because in freedom, you simply
have the option to push from out to in and
from in to out. But with equality it's about
moving up. It's about equity and parity, as
opposed to welfare and charity .... You
are of the equality generation ... at least
you have the opportunity to be about that."
[The Rev. Jesse Jackson]

Many of us grew up not having to ride
on the back of the bus, or to fight and die
for the right to vote, so maybe we think that
acts of injustice today are isolated incidents
that can be solved on an individual basis,
but this is one of America's greatest fan-
tasies. Racism and inequality are inherent
in the foundation of America— a fact clever-
ly veiled in the disguise of rhetoric. The
founding fathers of this country were not
advocates of "freedom and justice for
all," — they were murderers and enslavers.

All men are created equal, indeed.

Therein, however, does not lie the
tragedy. The tragedy lies in our belief and
indisputability of this myth. Our bodies may
no longer be in bondage, but our minds
certainly are. The nature of the struggle has
changed and we have to prepare our-
selves. The price of liberation is eternal
vigilance. We have to free ourselves from
the mind-imprisoning chains which hinder
us from moving up and continuing the in-
complete struggle against oppression. It is
not enough for the individual to go to
school, get a job and make money. If we
were to wait for each person of color to at-
tain equality and security in this country,
we would be waiting forever because the
cycle of oppression does not end. We need
to rock the foundation and expel the myths.

These chains which bind us are much
more destructive than those which shack-
led the bodies of our ancestors, and much
more incapacitating, because of their
relative insidiousness. Like fighting an in-
visible opponent — one keeps swinging in
hopes of landing an effective blow. But we
can't afford to fight with our eyes closed.
New chains are being forged and they will
continue to be further obscured if we don't
open our eyes and wake up from this sleep
which, if continued, will once again make
life a living nightmare for people of color
in this country and in this world.

While the tale of how we suffer, and how
we are delighted, and how we may triumph
is never new, it always must be heard.
There isn 't any other tale to tell, it's the on-
ly light we've got in all this darl<ness . . .
And this tale, according to that face, that
body, those strong hands on those strings,
has another aspect in every country, and
a new depth in every generation. [James
Baldwin]

—Martha Grier-Deen

^S^

TFie only tfving tvPvite peopCe have tPiat black peopte, neecC, or sFioutcC
want, is pouter— and no one. FwDtCs power forever. UFvite people-
cannot, in the generatittj, be tak^n as models of how to Give.
Rather , the white man is hiwsetf in sore neecC of new staruCarcCs ,
which Witt release him from, his confusion and place him once,
attain In fruitful contntunion with the depths of his own belncf.
And X repeat: The price o^ liberation of the white people is the
liberation of the b[acfe,s— the totat liberation. In the cities, in the
towns, before the law, and in the mind. Why for exampCe—
especially knowing the famdy as X do— T shouCd want to marry
your sister is a great m^ystery to me. But your sister and 1 have
every right to marry if ive wish to, and no one has the right to stop
us. If she canru3t raise me to her level, perhaps X can raise her to
mine.

JAMES
THE FIRE

Cotor is not a hanvan or personal reaCity ; it is a political reaCity .
But this is a distinction so extremcty hard to make- that the West
has not been able to make, it yet. A.nd at the center of this dreadful
storm., this vast confusion, stand the blacik, people of this nation,
who must now share the fate of a nation that has never accepted
them, to which they were brought in chains. Well, If this is so, one
has no choice but to do all In one's power to change that fate, and at
no matter what risfc— eviction, imprisonnvent, torture, death. Tor
the sake of one's children. In order to minimize, the bdl that they
nvust pay, one must be careful not to take refuge in any delusion—
and the value placed on the color of the skin is atways and
everywhere and forever a delusion.

BALDWIN
NJEXT TIME

\^jm^'

Tf one is continualU) surviving tfve ivorst tfiat Dije can bring , one
eventuaU^g ceases to be controUett by a fear o/ what tif e can bring ;
whatever it brings must be borne,. And, at this Cevet o| experience
one's bitterness beqins to be palatable, and, hatred, becomes too heavy
a sack, to carrg .... It tofe^s great spiritual resilience not to hate
the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of
perception and cFiarity not to teach, your chiCd to hate.

The American Negro has th^e threat advantxuje of having never
believed that collection oj my Uis to which white Americans cting :
that their ancestors were all JreecCom-toving heroes, that they were
born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that
^Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that
a^mericans have alivays dealt hotiorobty with Mexicans antt
Indians anct alt other neighbors or inferiors , that American men
are the. ivorCti's ntost direct and viriCe, that American wonten are
pure.

If ive—and now 1 mean the relatively conscious whites ancC the
relatively conscious bCac^s, who must, tifee Covers, insist on, or
create, the consciousness of the others— cto not falter in our cCuty
now, we may be able, hancifut that we are, to end the, racial
nightmare, anct achieve our country, anct chanye the history o^ the
world. If tve do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that
prophecy, re-created from the "Bible in song by a slave, is upon us:
Rod gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, the fire
next time!

S^^''

•i**"

,;--^K0f^^K

■it*'*'* « A

Ik'*'^ ^ * * * -»^ ■«> '
» •* *^

* '^!*^.^

Photo by Adger Cowans

MARCUS GARVEY:
THE UNSUNG HERO

A study of Marcus Garvey is at its best,
enlightening, and at its worst, frustrating.
He was perhaps the most underplayed of
our historical Black leaders and yet he
should be the most praised, for even if one
is in disagreement with Garvey's ideas
and views, he was the foremost inspira-
tion for the modern Civil Rights Move-
ment that Black Americans hold in such
high regard. He inspired Black society and
the Black world as no leader has since,
with his freeing hand having reached in-
to colonialized Africa, as well as the
America in bondage. Garvey knew no
boundaries when it came to the enslaved.
What began as plans only for his Jamaican
brothers and sisters, inspired by the ac-
tivities of Booker T. Washington, ended
with a worldwide movement from which
white society has yet to recover.

The name Marcus Garvey, to the few
who know more than his name, is
synonymous with the ideas of Black
power and Black nationalism. He was the
advocate of a Black nation long before
Malcolm X.

Garvey is irreplaceable in the history of
Blacks in America because he did more
to raise the consciousness of his people
than any other leader. Further study of the
man, and the movement that resulted, ex-
plains in clear terms the belief after which
a large majority of Black society modeled
their thinking. What came to be know to
the world as "Garveyism" was a force that
could not be ignored.

Garvey's experience with racial oppres-
sion began in early childhood — born in
the small town of St. Ann's Bay on the
northern coast of Jamaica on August 17,
1887, into a society where division by col-
or dictated the division of class. As a child
his parents were financially stable and the
area in which they lived provided him
with the opportunity to interact with
white neighbors; hence, he had an early
education about the injustices of life. He
was genuinely awakened to the existence
of racism when the little white girl next
door with whom he frequently played told
him that she could no longer speak to or
play with him because he was a "nigger."
[Cronon, 8] Garvey expressed his rite of
passage best when he said, "it was then
that I found for the first time that there
was some difference in humanity, and
that there were different races, each hav-
ing its own separate and distinct social
life."

Unsettled by this first incident, as he
grew older he continued to be disgusted
and frustrated by the treatment of Black
people in the places that he visited, but
most especially by the treatment they
received at home. On his visits to Costa
Rica and to Panama, he saw how unjust-
ly his Jamaican brothers and sisters in the
fields and on the canal were dealt with.
The social caste system which existed in
Jamaica — where dark-skinned Blacks
were the lower class, the light-skinned or
"mulattos" comprised the middle class,
and the white minority made the upper
class — would prepare him for his eventual
trip to the United States. Here he would
have to combat the same lack of self-pride
that Jamaican Blacks felt due to color-
prejudice. However, in the U.S., the
persecution was primarily on the part of
white society, even though a strong
undertone of color-casting existed within
the Black community itself. Garvey
essentially grew to despise miscegenation
of any form. "We are conscious of the fact
that slavery brought upon us the curse of
many colors within our race but that is
no reason why we ourselves should
perpetuate the evil." [Martin, 29]

In 1912, Garvey went to London to ex-
perience the treatment of Blacks outside
of Jamaica and was introduced to a copy
of Booker T. Washington's autobiography
Up From Slavery. From that time forward
Garvey wondered where the Black leader-
ship was and resolved to try to provide the
guidance that was needed.

Having read Booker T's novel while in
London, Garvey returned to Jamaica on
August 1, 1914 with plans to unify his
people. It was at this time that he formed
the Universal Negro Improvement and
Conservation Association and African
Communities League. [Cronon, 16] This
eventually was shortened to the Univer-
sal Negro Improvement Association
(UNIA) — whose purpose was to imite the
oppressed Blacks of the world in a collec-
tive struggle for Black power. The UNIA
constitution stated that the organization
would be dedicated to the idea of "univer-
sal brotherhood and would continually
work towards the uplifting of the Negro
peoples of the world." JCronon, 17]

Marcus Garvey at ysik

Garvey wanted to establish a trade
school in Jamaica modeled after
Washington's Tuskegee Institute. Realiz-
ing that he had neither the funds nor the
manpower to fulfill his plans he decided
to solicit help from the United States.
Knowing Washington had acquired large
amoimts of money for Tuskegee he wrote
to him asking for his backing. Just as his
plans for arrival in the U.S. were finalized
his expected host died, but Garvey came
to the U.S. anyway. When he arrived, he
discovered that the African- American was
in such a position of hopelessness after
World War I that they warranted new
leadership. Seizing the opportunity
Garvey stepped in: "Where is the black

ALL PHOTOS PROVIDED BY THE SHOMBURG CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN BLACK CULTURE

!l invention parade in Harlem.

man's government? Where is his king and
his kingdom? Where is his President, his
covmtry and his ambassador, his army, his
navy, his men of big affairs? I could not
find them and then I declared, I Vk^ill help
to make them." [Cronon, 16]

After being unable to talk to even
Washington's aide, Garvey quickly toured
the United States and assessed the racial
and political climate. He decided that
there was a definite need for a New York
branch of the UNIA. He had come to
Harlem at a time when Blacks were
becoming increasingly dissatisfied with
their position in society. Many had
migrated from the South to the North in
search of better economic conditions in

"the promised land." What they found
when they arrived was that they were still
the last hired and first fired. It was into
this atmosphere of unrest that Marcus
Garvey stepped.

Garvey first focused much of his atten-
tion on the West Indian population of
Harlem but was soon speaking to the
masses of Blacks. He spoke about
freedom, independence and an independ-
ent nation. He also alluded to the
possibility of a Black owned and operated
steamship line to carry freight, mail and
people back and forth to Africa.

Garvey had brought the UNIA to New
York in 1917 and by 1919 he could boast
that there were thirty chapters with two
million members. [Vincent, 101] It was
with this strength that the idea of the
Black Star Line was made a reality. The
line met with much approval and was im-
mensely popular because it gave even the
poorest Black a chance to own stock. The
investor could feel as if he was promoting
the betterment of his race while also mak-
ing some money. [Cronon, 51|

Commercially and economically, the
Black Star Line was a failure. Its first and
only real or legitimate purchase was of the
Yarmouth for which an exorbitant sum
was paid. This purchase, for 165 thousand
dollars, would set a pattern. During the
next few years the company repeatedly
purchased over-priced items which left
the company with no money to outfit
ships, and eventually the line went
bankrupt. [Vincent, 103] The cause of the
Line's failure was largely due to hounding
by government agents, coupled with the
fact that most of the stockholders had in-
vested because of Garvey's plans for
emigration back to Africa.

The Black Star Line was probably most
effective as a propaganda tool. [Stein, 156]
Because the idea was so appealing to the
Black community, Garvey spoke about it
whenever he could to improve member-
ship. The flashy parades that accom-
panied the voyages also brought attention
and increased enrollment. Although it
didn't successfully accomplish its de-
signed purpose, the Black Star Line
boosted membership of the UNIA, as well
as the morale of the people. Furthermore,
those who held stock in the Black Star
Line really believed they were con-
tributing to a big business, and the Fac-
tories Company inspired many Blacks to
become small business owners. In-
dependence breeds power and pride.

Concerned about Black youth, Garvey
began the Negro Factories Company.
With its establishment, he believed he
was assuring them profitable, steady
employment. [Cronon, 60] Through this
company, stores and other private
businesses were opened and many Blacks
were inspired to begin setting up their
own businesses. Once again, though
Garvey may not have made exceptional
financial gains but he did succeed in help-
ing the Black man gain a sense of
self-respect.

In 1920, Garvey announced that there
would be a mammoth international con-
vention, with delegates representing the
entire Black race who would report on
conditions in their communities and
establish a Negro Declaration of Rights
to be presented to the governments of the
world. [Cronon, 62] The conference was
immensely successful and marked the
highlight of the Garvey Movement.
Followers came from as far as Africa for

Black Star Line Stock Certificate:

The Black Star Line was an international shipping corporation that
fostered black trade, transported passengers and served as a symbol of
black enterprise. Begun in 1919, it immediately became the major tool of
Universal Negro Improvement Association recruiters who sold its stock.

.?;v'^'^^

■

- r ^/^•"'■""■iB

■

""r^ ('','■

'.■ "

■X

■■■V.;''

,';f '

■ '^

the month-long convention. "Cutting
across national lines and banishing na-
tional allegiances, the racial doctrines of
Marcus Garvey were infusing in Negros
everywhere a strong sense of pride in be-
ing black." [Cronon, 70]

ASWMi* MFVr TO

■tut ATT««Mrr iiMiuh'
AMBiitriaT*

tHrTlMS MB HUMMN

:yiqT-flpn

DEPARTWKNT OF JUSTICE,

WASHINOTONrO.O.

Ootober 11, 1919.

MEUORAHSUU i<OR MR. RIC&BLT.

I em tranemltting herewith a oonmimloatlon wbloh has qome
to my attention from the Panama Oanel, Washington offloe, rela-
tive to the aotlTltles of MARCUS 0AKVB7. Oarrey la a Weet-
Zn&lan negro and In addition to his aotlvltles In endeavoring
to eatablleh the Bleolc Star line Steamship Corporation he has
also 'been parti oolarly aotlve among the radloal elements In
Dew Zork 01 ty In agitating the negro movement. Unfortunately,
however, he haa not as yat violated any federal law whereby
he oould be prooeeded against on the grounds of being an tm-
deslrabls alien, from the point of view of deportation. It
ooours to me, however, from the attached ollppiiig that there
might be some prooeedlng against him for fraud in oonneotlon
with his Blaok Star Line propaganda and for this reason I am
transmitting the oomnunloatlon to you for your appropriate
attention.

The following is a brief statement of Marous Garvey and
his aotlTltlea:

Subjeot a native of the V/eat Indies and one of the most
prominent negro agitators In IJew York;

He is a founder of the Universal l^ogro Improvement Asso-
olatlon and African Communities League;

He Is the promulgator of the Blaok Star Line and la the
isaaaglng editor of the Negro World;

He la an exoeptlonally fine orator, creating muoh excitement
among the negroes through his steamship proposition;

In hlB paper the "Begro World" the Soviet Russian Rule Is
upheld and there Is open advocation of Bolshevism.

Respectfully,

'duV^

ervv^-A_^

LETTER APPEARS COURTESY OF
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The Black Star Line, the Negro Fac-
tories Co., and the conference of 1920
were the major accomplishments of a
decade of enlightenment that came with
Marcus Garvey. All, of course, met with
opposition from the white community
and, more often than not, from members
of the Black community as well. In 1919
the District Attorney's office in New
York threatened Garvey twice with
charges of fraud. [Vincent, 103] The Negro
press, although complimentary of
Garvey's newspaper. The Negro World,
was critical of Garvey himself throughout
the movement. This was due in part to
their opposing integrationist-separatist
ideologies. Garvey also felt that the Black
press was solely out to better its condi-
tion and was unconcerned for the welfare
of the people — ideals which Garvey con-
sidered venal and ignorant.

"Unfortimately the Colored or Negro
Press of today falls into the hands of un-
principled, unscrupulous and character-
less individuals whose highest aims are
to enrich themselves and to find political
berths for themselves and their friends, or
rather confederates." [Garvey, 77]

In 1925, with the help of a disgruntled
ex-employee of the UNIA, the District At-
torney arrested Garvey and two col-
leagues on charges of mail fraud. J. Edgar
Hoover, who was now head of the new
General Intelligence Division, had had
Garvey watched for months in hopes of
finding him guilty of a deportable offense.
[Stein, 191] Garvey was sentenced to five
years of imprisonment, but served only
three. During Garvey's incarceration.
Blacks began to realize the injustice and
viciousness of the whites who sentenced
him for a crime that was usually
pimishable by probation.

At this time the Black press, his lifelong
adversary, felt that he had been punished
sufficiently, and began to find some truth
in Garvey's ideology of Black nationalism.
[Cronon, 141] Instead of hindering
Garvey's strength and popularity as a
leader, the plan of Hoover and the govern-
ment actually backfired and provided
Garvey with even more support.

During his last year in prison in 1927,
the UNIA was no longer strong enough
to establish programs on its own, so
Garvey instructed the leadership to work
along with other organizations. Prejudices
within the UNIA, added to outside
pressures, caused disunity within the
organization.

Garvey's influence did not disappear
after he was deported in 1927. Although
he could not restore the UNIA to its
former strength, due to the demise of the
Black Star Line and the resistance of
African governments to the emigration
plan, the dream of the UNIA becoming a
world power was kept alive by using the
Jamaican chapter as a base. Letters of in-
spiration, which were to be printed in The
Negro World, were cabled to the United
States. He continued to work with the
organization until his death in 1940.

"The legacy of Garvey and his followers
goes beyond the many programs they in-
itiated. Garvey and many of his leading
lieutenants were masters of psychological
warfare. Garvey tried to restore to the
black man the masculinity stolen from
him during the centuries of slavery." [Vin-
cent, 19]

Garveyism, like its founder, advocated
Black power, freedom, unity and a return
to the motherland to make it a powerful
Black nation. Garvey's critics said that he
won his followers by emotion-laden pleas
that had no realism behind them,
however, this was not the case. [Vincent,
28] Garvey was an opportimist who loved
his people. He came to them at a time
when leadership and guidance was lack-
ing, when the injustices they were suffer-
ing encouraged the militancy in them to
speak out. The "New Negro" wanted to
fight for what he believed should rightful-
ly be his. But, the "New Negro" still suf-
fered the same self-esteem problems that
the "Old Negro" had. Marcus Garvey's
restoration of a sense of Black pride in his
people earned him the distinction of
leader. "Garvey's vision for his race's
redemption was of a new world of black
men, not peons, serfs, dogs and slaves, but
a nation of sturdy men making their im-
pression upon civilization and causing a
new light to dawn upon the human race."
[Cronon, 16]

Garveyism, in its quest for a strong
Black nation, has led many to believe that
he advocated a total emigration to the
motherland. On the contrary, Garvey
wanted his people to work and establish
themselves in the United States while a
small number traveled to Africa to help
the continent regain her freedom; from
that he expected Blacks everywhere to
gain prestige and strength. [Martin, 45]

Marcus Garvey was only directly in-
volved with American society for a
decade, but his presence can still be felt.
The existence of the red, black and green
flags that represent Black nationalism,
and the current stances of emigration
back to Africa are testament to the sur-
vival of Garvey's message.

Garvey was popular and respected
because, although largely self-educated,
he was a great orator and expressed the
thoughts of the Black community that

might otherwise have been kept a secret.
[Cronon, 4] Although his methods may
not have been traditional in the context
of what many see as the proper methods
of leading a people, all his concepts of uni-
ty and brotherhood were based upon the
realities of living in a segregationist socie-
ty. He sought to uplift the people and in-
still in them the pride of being Black, in-
dependent and therefore separate from
white society.

It has often been deduced by critics and
the uninformed that Garveyism was
largely unsuccessful because although he
had grasped the ears of the nation, much
of what he said was in opposition to the
true desires of the Black person.

The African- American had just recent-
ly come out of a position of slavery and
was seeking to establish rights in a place
where formerly they had had none. Blacks
wanted to be successful in the society in
which they lived and didn't want to run
from it.

"The inherent weaknesses of
Garveyism itself also acted to limit his
ultimate influence. Garvey sought to raise
high the wall of racial nationalism at a
time when most thoughtful men were
seeking to tear down these barriers ....
Garveyism failed largely because it was
unable to come up with suitable alter-
natives to the unsatisfactory conditions
of American life as they affect the Negro.
Escape, either emotional or physical was
neither realistic, lasting or desired."
[Cronon, 221, 224]

Perhaps if Garvey were a leader of to-
day he would find an attitude on the part
of Black Americans more conducive to his
desires, although it is difficult to deter-
mine what the current attitude would be
if Garvey had never existed.

Whatever Garvey's contributions
would have been in the 1990s, the man
must be given credit for reestablishing
what is the key to any successful move-
ment of a people then or now: Black Pride.

"When you tell this Black man in
America who he is, where he came from,
what he had when he was there, he'll look
around and ask himself, 'Well what hap-
pened to it, who took it away from us and
how did they do it?' Why, brothers, you'll
have some action just like that . . . that
knowledge in itself will usher in your ac-
tion program." — Malcolm X

Simone Nicholson is a sophomore
Journalism major.

Marcus Garvey at 1921 convention parade In Harlem.

"^.'

■c

^■.- V

i'if^^.

■-'\y\

•.,■■.-

B<'.- ::■

" t\

.' "") ^

' ■'>

ki-

■i-i

■■'V-

^^^^m:^^~^^- ■■■■ \:^-vM:::i-:-,

!lfi*i!ipWi-f,r' -;■-'•./;, ;-'.'..,,-;:•: \:::^^.-'^'i;:i:^, "VCiv;':'^

i::--.^\-'^.:\---:- ::":'' ■'• : ■'■■-: ; ■v-^ fe.-., '''.,■>■ -.---iV:'

■•;•-.>':',■

Native Land...Africa

by Dawn Marshall

Why? Why?

Thousands and thousands

miles apart

Our Native Land...

Africa, the second largest continent.

Our traditional customs are taken

away from us
Our colorful dashikis and turbans
Why? Why?
Our Native Land...
Africa, the most colorful country.

KiX'-

hm^^-'

'-^r^j^ti'M-r^d"?-

rJV'^y

Our music, beating heavenly on the

bamboo drums.
Watching our Brothers and Sisters

dancing lively with rhythm ^

Our Native Land...
Africa, the origin of soul and Black Music.

Blood-in-Blood families, together

Chief of tribes, in many villages

Mud and Huts, our shelter ,

People of color, our people, Africans.

Why? Why?

Did the white men take our place away from us?

Why? Why?

Were they so cruel?

Why? Why?

Are we Brothers and Sisters, thousands and thousands

miles apart.

Our Native Land...

Africa, oh so far away.

■^■■i'f,.^

^^.-v>v?

Supreme Court Justice
Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall was born in
Baltimore, Maryland, on July 2,
1908, the younger of two sons bom
to William Caniield and Norma A.
Marshall.

The Marshalls taught their children to
be proud of their ancestry, which they
traced to a Congolese slave who was
known as a troublemaker. According to
Marshall, the fellow made his objections
to slavery so well known that his master
had to release him from bondage.

Marshall's parents were intelligent and
strongly opposed to segregation. Mar-
shall's father was a dining-room steward
and his mother was an elementary school
teacher.

Young Thurgood, on the urging of his
mother, made an attempt to study den-
tistry during his first couple of years at
college; however, the dentistry field failed
to hold his interest. It was his father who
eventually turned his interest toward the
legal profession. He was taught by his
father to always challenge and prove
theories because, in his father's view,
"nothing should be taken for granted."

Thurgood, as a young boy, was forced
to endure what all other Blacks were en-
during: racism and bigotry.

Thurgood's father was convinced that
shiftlessness was a direct cause of crime
and poverty and that recklessness could
be acquired at any time. As a result of this
belief, Thurgood was sent to the school
where his mother taught so she could
maintain surveillance over him. After
elementary and high school, Thurgood ap-
plied and was accepted to Lincoln Univer-
sity. He would always find the time to
read books by and for Blacks. He read
works such as The Negro in American
History, by Mortimer J. Adler, The
American Negro by f . MelvUle Herskovits
and the works of W.E.B. Du Bois. In his
senior year at Lincoln, he was an excellent
debater in the Forensic Society, and in
June of 1930 he received his A.B. degree
with honors in the humanities.

It was during his sophomore year that
he met and married his first wife, Vivian
Burney. They were married for twenty-
five years — until Vivian's death due to
cancer in February, 1955. She was a
source of great inspiration to Thurgood.
During his marriage, Thurgood worked to

finance himself, his wife, and his
education.

During the 20s, Thurgood was par-
ticularly impressed by Blacks such as Paul
Robeson and Florence Mills, the musical-
comedy star. By this time, he had already
begun to find his own identity and to
slowly mature.

In 1930 he applied and was accepted to
Howard University. He had applied
earlier to the University of Maryland and
was refused entry because he was Black.
During his first year at Howard, Marshall
came into contact with Dr. Charles
Hamilton Houston, Vice-Dean of the Law
School, who was to become Marshall's
mentor. Houston taught Marshall the
strategy of using existing laws to defeat
racial discrimination. It was also Houston
who represented the NAACP in several
of its cases. Marshall did so well under
Houston's tutelage that he led his class
in all three years and graduated as valedic-
torian in 1933.

After graduating, Marshall and his sec-
ond wife, Cecilia Suyat, moved back to
Baltimore. His early years in Baltimore
were hard and discouraging. His clients,
whenever he had any, were poor — usually
victims of dispossession, eviction and
police brutality. He handled many of
these cases, knowing that the chance of
compensation would be small. Soon he
became known in his community as "the
little man's lawyer."

In 1934, Marshall began his long
association with the NAACP when he
volunteered his services to the local
branch in Baltimore. Thurgood won his
first NAACP case in 1935. He convinced
the Maryland Court of Appeals to order
the University of Maryland Law School
(incidentally the same Law School that
had refused to admit him five years
earlier) to admit its first Black applicant.

In 1936, Charles Houston, who worked
for the national office of the NAACP, con-
vinced the organization to appoint Mar-
shall as an Assistant Special Counsel.
Three year later, the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. was
created. The purposes of the fund were
listed in the charter: to render free legal
aid to Blacks who suffer legal injustice
because of their race or color and who can-
not afford to employ legal assistance —

among other things — vital to the well be-
ing of Blacks, such as education.

In 1940, the position of Director-
Counsel was created and Marshall was
selected for the job. Marshall served in
this position for twenty-one years. The
majority of civil rights cases were han-
dled by the Fund during this period, and
the Director-Counsel was to a large degree
responsible for its successes and failures.

According to the United States Reports,
the official publication of Supreme Court
decisions, Marshall argued thirty-two
cases and assisted in preparing the briefs
for eleven others brought before the
Supreme Court. Of the cases he argued,
four were lost, one was dismissed for lack
of a substantial federal question, and
twenty-seven were substantive victories.
Marshall argued six of these cases without
the support of his staff. He argued his first
case before the Supreme Court in 1942
and won.

Marshall gained worldwide notoriety in
May of 1954 when the Supreme Court
relied solely on his sociological argument
in Brown vs. Board of Education. The
argument Marshall presented to the
Court in 1952, in part, was that "legally
enforced racial segregation in public
schools denied benefits required by the
'equal protection of the law' clause of the
14th Amendment. Along with his very
supportive staff, Marshall had broken
down the walls of segregation which were
supported by the case of Plessy vs.
Ferguson.

On January 10, I96I, John F. Kennedy
was elected to the presidency. During his
campaign Kennedy made both public and
private statements that he was in favor of
equal rights for Blacks. After he was
elected President, Kermedy, at the urging
of his brother Robert, appointed Marshall
to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in
New York.

Seven years after he was appointed to
the Second Circuit Court (on October 2,
1967), Thurgood Marshall gained fame
when he was appointed by President Lyn-
don B. Johnson to serve as an Associate
Justice on the Supreme Court of the
United States. He is the first and only
Black ever to sit on the highest court of
this nation.

Ever since his 1967 appointment.

Justice Marshall has been a faithful leader
in the fight for liberalism. For example,
in the case of Apodaca vs. Oregon in 1972,
when the majority held that unanimous
verdicts were not required in state trials,
Marshall became angry and wrote, "To-
day the court cuts the heart out of the two
most important and inseparable
safeguards the Bill of Rights offers a
criminal defendant; the right to submit
his case to a jury, and the right to proof
beyond a reasonable doubt .... The
skeleton of these safeguards remains, but
the Court strips them of life and of mean-
ing . . ." Marshall went on to state, "The
Court asserts that when a jury votes nine
to three for conviction, the doubts of the
three do not impeach the verdict of the
nine .... But we know what has hapened,
the prosecutor has tried and failed to per-
suade those jurors of the defendant's
guilt." Therefore, in this case, the prose-
cutor did not prove beyond a reasonable
doubt.

As we celebrate the Bicentennial of the
Constitution, Justice Marshall is once
again at the forefront of the news. In a
forum before patent lawyers in Hawaii,
Justice Marshall blasted the framers of the
Constitution for approving a Constitution
that "was defective from the start, requir-
ing several amendments, a civil war and
momentous social transformation" before
all human rights were recognized. Mar-
shall then stated that the framers "trad-
ed moral principles for self-interest" in
drafting the constitution. After Justice
Marshall's statements were aired, the con-
servative Washington Legal Foundation
invited the Honorable Justice to resign
because his remarks "reflect a deep-seated
bitterness and dislike that impairs his
capacity."

Although the 80-year old Justice is
criticized by the majority of the conserv-
tives in Washington, he is praised by
liberals such as Derrick Bell of Harvard
Law School who said: "We need less pomp
and more candor about why the Constitu-
tion was written the way it was and what
still needs to be done to insure individual
rights."

Throughout his tenure on the bench.
Justice Marshall has been an unwavering
voice for the poor and oppressed
throughout this nation. His eternal
vigilance brings African- Americans a bit
closer to equality in this nation.

Sources

Private Piessme on Public Lawhy Randall W.

Bland.

The Lonesome Road by Saunders Redding.

fet Magazine (October 2, 1967|

Negro History Bulletin (October 1967)

Newsweek (October 16, 1967)

New York Times (June 18, 1967)

US News and World Report (May 18, 1987)

Time (July 6, 1987)

Pancho Morris and Rudolph Miller are both
graduating Legal Studies majors from Jamaica,
and will be attending law school in the fall of
1988.

Racism

by Mark T. Childs

Still,

racism

rampant

blatant, subtle

in churches

schools

neighborhoods

from infancy.

Behind, beside

among, ahead

of us always.

why

when it hurts

cuts

bruises

debilitates

destroys

human beauty.

How can

we keep fighting

to cure disease

and prolong life

when we can

not

soothe

the deep

festering wounds

of bigotry.

I don't know

Fear and ignorance
seek a

colored scapegoat
before

acknowledging
we're all there is
brother and sister,
racism kills.

BOOKWORM RAPS ON LITERATURE

Andrea Benton Rushing

Andzea Benton Rushing is a New
York City-born professor of Black
Studies at Amherst College who has
taught in Nigeria, traveled to several
Caribbean countries, published ar-
ticles on African and African-
American literature, and co-edited
Women in Africa and the African
Diaspora with Rosalyn Terborg-Penn
and Sharon Harley. Feminist Studies
will publish her short story 'Hair
Raising' this summer.

1 got interested in literatiire while I was
a college student. Then I read the greats
in British literature: T.S. Eliot, Gerard
Manley Hopkins, and John Donne.

I've been interested in literature for as
long as I can remember. (I could hardly
wait to get an adult library card and once
I did, I read all around the Tompkins
Square branch of the New York Public
Library — except for books on dogs, horses,
and nurses.) When I was in college I
started reading poetry seriously. Though
it wasn't about my day-to-day life, it
fascinated me. I liked to decipher difficult
poems, look up words I didn't know, puz-
zle out ideas I hadn't though about. Dur-
ing the 1960s I was an activist in the Civil
Rights Movement. Working as a com-
munity organizer in Boston, I read a lot
and my reading was still Eurocentric.
Great white authors; mostly men.

The Black Arts Movement opened my
eyes to the wonders of African- American
literature, and I started reading it in the
same thorough but unsystematic way in
which I'd read through the public
library — James Baldwin, Langston
Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks. The "new"
Black poets really interested me: Sonia
Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Carolyn
Rodgers, Etheridge Knight, Mari Evans.
Their way of writing about things I knew
from personal experience, incorporating
the music that is the pervasive art form
in African-American culture, and seeing
art as doing something to raise our peo-
ple's consciousness to our problems and
possible solutions made me want to soak
up every copy of Black World, read every
slim volume of poetry Broadside put out,
send quotations from poems to my fami-
ly and friends. The first course I ever
taught was at Harvard and it was an in-
troduction to African-American poetry.
Later I branched out and taught courses

on autobiography and other genres, but
poetry was where I started and poetry is
still the genre that I love most.

I can no longer remember how I started
reading things by African-American
women. A group of friends used to meet
at my house when I lived in Boston. All
of us were interested in literature and
either taught in Black Studies depart-
ments where we were the only women or
in Women's Studies programs where we
were the only people of African descent.
That group is where I first heard about
Toni Morrison's classic Sula. (I'm so glad
she's gotten the Pulitzer Prize!) We talked
about Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Cade
Bambara, and Alice Walker, too. At the
same time I was getting interested in
literature from other parts of the Black
world. My travels to the West Indies made
me listen to poets like Derek Walcott and
Edmund Kamau Braithwaite. In addition,
I read African authors like Wole Soyinka,
who won the Nobel Prize for literature
last year. (My pan-African literary in-
terests played catch-up with my pan-
African politics . . .)

By the time I came to the Valley (1975)
I had already written about images of
Black women in African- American poetry
and was getting increasingly interested in
the ways in which women are depicted in
literature by men and by women.

In 1983-84 I had the extraordinary ex-
perience of being a Fulbright fellow in
Nigeria. Although I had taught African
literature for many years, living in the
Motherland opened my eyes about so
many things. It is not just that I got to be
part of some of the experiences authors
like Chinua Achebe, Flora Nwapa, Ar-
mah, Ngugi and Wole Soyinka, etc. had
helped me imagine, I also got to teach
African students and see how differently
they read things (like Native Son] from
the way students I had taught in the U.S.
And I learned immeasurably from my col-
leagues in the department of literature in
English at the University of Ife. It's not
so much that they gave different answers
to literary questions than I did as that
they asked different questions and in-
troduced me to new authors.

Teaching has its rewards. You get to in-
troduce generations of students to books
which help them see themselves in a new
way, help them imagine things they
would otherwise consider impossible. I
also taught them how to express their

ideas in writing. I love to see students
who have no confidence in their ability
to write learn how to say what they
want — clearly and comfortably.

In some ways I'm a bookworm. I could
just burrow in my study and catch up on
all the reading that's gone by me in recent
years — we've had bumper crops of great
Black creative and critical writing. August
Wilson's plays ("Fences" is the prize-
winning one, but I think "Joe Turner's
Come and Gone" has the widest range
and deepest resonance); Mary Helen
Washington's Invented Lives which
studies Zora Neale Hurston, Dorothy
West, and Ann Petry; Bernard Bell's
magisterial analysis of the African-
American novel; Gloria Naylor's Mama
Day; and Toni Morrison's Beloved. I see
the challenge of writing about what I've
learned and discerned in literature acting
as a sort of translator between cultures of
Africa and the New World, academic life
and the people I meet in church, at the
hairdressers, and at family reunions.

But I also want to write more fiction.
That's what I hope my coming sabbatical
will allow me to do — immerse myself in
worlds that I make up and make them
come alive on paper in ways that will
speak to people's souls the way powerful
books have spoken to me.

I think it's important to start our
children off reading at an early age. Let
them see us reading and make sure that
they have books all around them, books
about people who look, feel and think like
them. The authors that come immediate-
ly to mind are: Lucille Clifton, Virginia
Hamilton, Jack Ezra Keats, Walter Dean
Myers, Eloise Greenfield, and Jan Carew.
If I were trying to get someone who was
shy about reading into literature, I'd prob-
ably start by having the person read a real-
ly good short story. Another way to begin
is to have people see literature come alive
the way it does when a play is performed
or a gifted poet reads her work aloud mak-
ing you laugh in recognition and shiver
in amazement.

Ms. Rushing was interviewed by Gaiiick
Amos who is a UMass student and
member of the football team.

JAMES
BALDWIN

1924-1987

Photo by Stephen Long

My soul looks back and wonders how I
got over — indeed: but I find it unex-
pectedly difficult to remember, in detail,
how I got started. I will never, for exam-
ple, forget Saul Levitas, the editor of The
New Leader, who gave me my first book
review assignment sometime in 1946, nor
Mary Greene, a wonderful woman, who
was his man Friday: but I do not
remember exactly how I met them.

I do remember how my life in Green-
wich Village began — which is, essential-
ly, how my career began — for it began
when I was fifteen.

One day, a DeWitt Clinton H.S. run-
ning buddy, Emile Capouya, played
hookey without me and went down to
Greenwich Village and made the
acquaintance of Beauford Delaney. The
next day, he told me about this wonder-
ful man he had met, a black — then,
Negro, or Colored — painter and said that
I must meet him: and he gave me
Beauford Delaney's address.

I had a Dickensian job, after school, in
a sweat shop on Canal Street, and was get-
ting on so badly at home that I dreaded
going home: and, so, sometime later, I
went to 181 Greene Street, where
Beauford lived then, and introduced
myself.

I was terrified, once I had climbed those
stairs and knocked on that door. A short,
round brown man came to the door and
looked at me. He had the most extraor-
dinary eyes I'd ever seen. When he had
completed his instant X-ray of my brain,
lungs, liver, heart, bowels, and spinal col-
umn (while I had said, usefully, "Emile
sent me") he smiled and said, "Come in,"
and opened the door.

He opened the door all right.

Lord, I was to hear Beauford sing, later,
and for many years, open the unusual
door. My running buddy had sent me to
the right one, and not a moment too soon.

I walked through that door into
Beauford's colors — on the easel, on the
palette, against the wall — sometimes
turned to the wall — and sometimes (in
limbo?) covered by white sheets. It was
a small studio (but it didn't seem small)
with a black pot-bellied stove somewhere
near the two windows. I remember two

windows, there may have been only one:
there was a fire escape which Beauford,
simply by his presence, had transformed,
transmuted into the most exclusive ter-
race in Manhattan or Bombay.

I walked into music. I had grown up
with music, but, now, on Beauford's small
black record player, I began to hear what
I had never dared or been able to hear.
Beauford never gave me any lectures. But,

in his studio and because of his presence,
I really began to hear Ella Fitzgerald, Ma
Rainey, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith,
Ethel Waters, Paul Robeson, Lena Home,
Fats Waller. He could inform me about
Duke Ellington and W.C. Handy, and Josh
White, introduce me to Frankie Newton
and tell tall tales about Ethel Waters. And
these people were not meant to be looked
on by me as celebrities, but as a part of
Beauford's life and as part of my
inheritance.

I may have been with Beauford, for ex-
ample, the first time I saw Paul Robeson,
in concert, and in Othello: but I knew that
he bought tickets for us — really, for me
— to see and hear Miss Marian Anderson,
at Carnegie Hall.

Because of her color, Miss Anderson
was not allowed to sing at The Met, nor,
as far as The Daughters of The American
Revolution were concerned, anywhere in
Washington where white people might

risk hearing her. Eleanor Roosevelt was
appalled by this species of patriotism and
arranged for Marian Anderson to sing on
the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. This
was a quite marvellous and passionate
event in those years, triggered by the in-
dignation of one woman who had, clear-
ly, it seemed to me, married beneath her.

By this time, I was working for the Ar-
my — or the Yankee dollar! — in New
Jersey. I hitchhiked, in sub-zero weather,
out of what I will always remember as one
of the lowest and most obscene circles of
Hell, into Manhattan: where both
Beauford and Miss Anderson were on
hand to inform me that I had no right to
permit myself to be defined by so pitiful
a people. Not only was I not born to be
a slave: I was not born to hope to become
the equal of the slave-master. They had,
the masters, incontestably, the rope — in
time, with enough, they would hang
themselves with it. They were not to hang
me: I was to see to that. If Beauford and
Miss Anderson were a part of my in-
heritance, I was a part of their hope.

I still remember Miss Anderson^ at the
end of that concert, in a kind of smoky
yellow gown, her skin copper and tan,
roses in the air about her, roses at her feet.
Beauford painted it, an enormous paint-

ing, he fixed it in time, for me, forever,
and he painted it, he said, for me.

Beauford was the first walking, living
proof, for me, that a black man could be
an artist. In a warmer time, a less
blasphemous place, he would have been
recognized as my Master and I as his
Pupil. He became, for me, an example of
courage and integrity, humility and pas-
sion. An absolute integrity: I saw him
shaken many times and I lived to see him
broken but I never saw him bow.

His example operated as an enormous
protection: for the Village, then, and not
only for a boy like me, was an alabaster
maze perched above a boiling sea. To lose
oneself in the maze was to fall into the
sea. One saw it around one all the time:
a famous poet of the twenties and thirties
grotesquely, shamelessly, cadging drinks,
another reUc living in isolation on opium
and champagne, someone your own age
suddenly stnmg out or going imder a sub-
way train, people you ate with and drank
with suddenly going home and blowing
their brains out or turning on the gas or
leaping out of the window. And, racially,
the Village was vicious, partly because of
the natives, largely because of the
tourists, and absolutely because of the
cops.

Very largely, then, because of Beauford
and Connie Williams, a beautiful black
lady from Trinidad who ran the restaurant
in which I was a waiter, and the jazz musi-
cians I loved and who referred to me, with
a kind of exasperated affection, as "the
kid," I was never entirely at the mercy of
an environment at once hostile and seduc-
tive. They knew about dope, for example
— I didn't: but the pusher and his product
were kept far away from me. I needed love
so badly that I could as easily have been
hit with a needle as persuaded to share a
joint of marijuana. And, in fact, Beauford
and the others let me smoke with them
from time to time. (But there were peo-
ple they warned me not to smoke with.)

The only real danger with marijuana is
that it can lead to rougher stuff, but this
has to do with the person, not the weed.
In my own case, it could hardly have
become a problem, since I simply could
not write if I were "high." Or, rather, I
could, sometimes all night long, the
greatest pages the world had ever seen,
pages I tore up the moment I was able to
read them.

Yet, I learned something about myself
from these irredeemable horrors:
something which I might not have
learned had I not been forced to know that
I was valued. I repeat that Beauford never
gave me any lectures, but he didn't have
to — he expected me to accept and respect
the value placed upon me. Without this,
I might very easily have become the junky
which so many among those I knew were
becoming then, or the Bellevue or Tombs
inmate (instead of the visitor) or the Hud-
son River corpse which a black man I
loved with all my heart was shortly to
become.

shortly: I was to meet Eugene some-
time between 1943 and 1944 and "run"
or "hang" with him until he hurled
himself off the George Washington
Bridge, in the winter of 1946. We were
never lovers: for what it's worth, I think
I wish we had been.

When he was dead, 1 remembered that
he had, once, obliquely, suggested this
possibility. He had run down a list of his
girl friends: those he liked, those he real-
ly liked, one or two with whom he might
really be in love, and, then, he said, "I
wondered if I might be in love with you."

I wish I had heard him more clearly: an
oblique confession is always a plea. But
I was to hurt a great many people by be-
ing unable to imagine that anyone could
possibly be in love with an ugly boy like
me. To be valued is one thing, the recogni-
tion of this assessment demanding, essen-
tially, an act of the will. But love is
another matter: it is scarcely worth ob-
serving what a mockery love makes of the
will. Leaving all that alone, however:
when he was dead, I realized that I would
have done anything whatever to have
been able to hold him in this world.

Through him, anyway, my political life,
insofar as I can claim, formally, to have
had one, began. He was a Socialist — a
member of the Young People's Socialist
League (YPSL) and urged me to join, and
I did. I, then, outdistanced him by becom-
ing a Trotskyite — so that I was in the in-
teresting position (at the age of nineteen)
of being an anti-Stalinist when America
and Russia were allies.

My life on the Left is of absolutely no
interest. It did not last long. It was useful
in that I learned that it may be impossi-
ble to indoctrinate me,- also, revolu-
tionaries tend to be sentimental and I
hope that I am not. This was to lead to
very serious differences between myself
and Eugene, and others: but it was during
this period that I met the people who were
to take me to Saul Levitas, of The New
Leader, Randall Jarrell, of The Nation,
Elliott Cohen and Robert Warshow, of
Commentary, and Philip Rahv, of Par-
tisan Review.

These men are all dead, now, and they
were all very important to my life. It is
not too much to say that they helped to
save my life. (As Bill Cole, at Knopf, was
later to do when the editor assigned Go
Tell It On The Mountain had me on the
ropes.) And their role in my life says
something arresting concerning the
American dilemma, or, more precisely,
perhaps, the American torment.

I had been to two black newspapers
before I met these people and had simply
been laughed out of the office: I was a
shoeshine boy who had never been to col-
lege. I don't blame these people, God
knows that I was an vmlikely cub reporter:
yet, I still remember how deeply I was
hurt.

On the other hand, around this time, or
a little later, I landed a job as messenger
for New York's liberal newspaper, PM. It
is perhaps worth pointing out that PM had
a man of about my complexion (dark) in
the tower, under whom I worked, a coal
black Negro in the cellar, whom nobody
ever saw, and a very fair Negro on the
city desk, in the window. My career at PM
was very nearly as devastating as my
career as a civilian employee of the US
Army, except that PM never (as far as I
know) placed me on a blacklist. If the
black newspapers had considered me ab-
solutely beyond redemption, PM was
determined to save me: I cannot tell
which attitude caused me the more bit-
ter anguish.

Therefore, though it may have cost Saul
Levitas nothing to hurl a book at a black
boy to see if he could read it and be ar-
ticulate concerning what he had read, I
took it as a vote of confidence and swore
that I would give him my very best shot.
And I loved him — the old man, as I
sometimes called him (to his face) and I
think — I know — that he was proud of
me, and that he loved me, too.

It was a very great apprenticeship. Saul
required a book review a week, which
meant that I had to read and write all the
time. He paid me ten or twenty dollars a
shot: Mary Greene would sometimes
coerce him into giving me a bonus. Then
he would stare at her, as though he could
not believe that she, his helper, could be
capable of such base treachery and look
at me more tragically than Julius Caesar
looked at Brutus and sigh — and give me
another five or ten dollars.

As for the books I reviewed — well, no
one, I suppose, will ever read them again.
It was after the war, and the Americans
were on one of their monotonous con-
science "trips": be kind to niggers, for
Christ's sake, be kind to Jews! A high, or
turning point of some kind was reached
when I reviewed Ross Lockridge's sunlit
and fabulously successful Raintree Coun-
ty. The review was turned in and the
author committed suicide before the
review was printed. I was very dis-
agreeably shaken by this, and Saul asked
me to write a postscript — which I did.
That same week I met the late Dwight
MacDonald, whom I admired very much
because of his magazine, Politics, who
looked at me with wonder and said that
I was "very smart." This pleased me, cer-
tainly, but it frightened me more.

But no black editor could or would have
been able to give me my head, as Saul did
then: partly because he would not have
had the power, partly because he could
not have afforded — or needed — Saul's
politics, and partly because part of the
price of the black ticket is involved —
fatally — with the dream of becoming
white.

This is not possible, partly because
white people are not white: part of the

price of the white ticket is to delude
themselves into believing that they are.
The political position of my old man, for
example, whether or not he knew it, was
dictated by his (in his case) very honorable
necessity not to break faith with the Old
World. One may add, in passing, that the
Old World, or Europe, has become
nothing less than an American supersti-
tion, which accounts, if anything can, for
an American vision of Russia so Talmudic
and self-serving that it has absolutely
nothing to do with any reality occurring
under the sun.

But the black American must find a
way to keep faith with, and to excavate,
a leality much older than Europe. Europe
has never been, and cannot be, a useful or
valid touchstone for the American ex-
perience because America is not, and
never can be, white.

My father died before Eugene died.
When my father died, Beauford helped me
to bury him and I then moved from
Harlem to the Village.

This was in 1943. We were fighting the
Second World War.

We: who was this we I

For this war was being fought, as far as
I could tell, to bring freedom to everyone
with the exception of Hagar's children
and the "yellow-bellied Japs."

This was not a matter, merely, of my
postadolescent discernment. It had been
made absolutely clear to me by the eight-
een months or so that I had been work-
ing for the Army, in New Jersey, by the
anti-Japanese posters to be foimd, then, all
over New York, and by the internment of
the Japanese.

At the same time, one was expected to
be "patriotic" and pledge allegiance to a
flag which had pledged no allegiance to
you: it risked becoming your shroud if
you didn't know how to keep your
distance and stay in your "place."

And all of this was to come back to me
much later, when Cassius Clay, a.k.a.
Muhammad Ali, refused to serve in Viet-
nam because he was a Muslim — in other
words, for religious reasons — and was
stripped of his title, while placards all over
New York trumpeted. Be true to your
faith!

I have never been able to convey the
confusion and horror and heartbreak and
contempt which every black person I then
knew felt. Oh, we dissembled and smiled
as we groaned and cursed and did our du-
ty. (And we did our duty.) The romance
of treason never occurred to us for the
brutally simple reason that you can't
betray a country you don't have. (Think
about it.) Treason draws its energy from
the conscious, deliberate betrayal of a
trust — as we were not trusted, we could
not betray. And we did not wish to be
traitors. We wished to be citizens.

We: the black people of this country,
then, with particular emphasis on those
serving in the Armed Forces. The way

blacks were treated in, and by, an
American Army spreading freedom
around the globe was the reason for the
heartbreak and contempt. Daddy's
youngest son, by his first marriage, came
home, on furlough, to help with the
funeral. When these young men came
home, in uniform, they started talking:
and one sometimes trembled, for their
sanity and for one's own. One trembled,
too, at another depth, another in-
coherence, when one wondered — as one
could not fail to wonder — what nation
they represented. My brother, describing
his life in uniform, did not seem to be
representing the America his uniform was
meant to represent — : he had never seen
the America his uniform was meant to
represent. Had anyone? Did he know, had
he met, anyone who had? Did anyone live
there? fudging from the great gulf fixed
between their conduct and their prin-
ciples, it seemed unlikely.

Was it worth his lifel

For he, certainly, on the other hand,
represented something much larger than
himself and something in him knew it:
otherwise, he would have been broken
like a match-stick and lost or have sur-
rendered the power of speech. A nation
within a nation: this thought wavered in
my mind, I think, all those years ago, but
I did not know what to make of it, it
frightened me.

We; my family, the living and the dead,
and the children coming along behind us.
This was a complex matter, for I was not
living with my family in Harlem, after all,
but "dovwi-town," in the "white world,"
in alien and mainly hostile territory. On
the other hand, for me, then, Harlem was
almost as alien and in a yet more in-
timidating way and risked being equally
hostile, although for very different
reasons. This truth cost me something in
guilt and confusion, but it was the truth.
It had something to do with my being the
son of an evangelist and having been a
child evangelist, but this is not all there
was to it — that is, guilt is not all there
was to it.

The fact that this particular child had
been born when and where he was born
had dictated certain expectations. The
child does not really know what these ex-
pectations are — does not know how real
they are — until he begins to fail,
challenge, or defeat them. When it was
clear, for example, that the pulpit, where
I had made so promising a beginning,
would not be my career, it was hoped that
I would go on to college. This was never
a very realistic hope and — perhaps
because I knew this — I don't seem to
have felt very strongly about it. In any
case, this hope was dashed by the death
of my father.

Once I had left the pulpit, I had aban-
doned or betrayed my role in the com-
munity — indeed, my departure from the
pulpit and my leaving home were almost

simultaneous. (I had abandoned the
ministry in order not to betray myself by
betraying the ministry.)

Once it became clear that I was not go-
ing to go to college, I became a kind of
two-headed monstrosity of a problem.
Without a college education, I could,
clearly, never hope to become a writer:
would never acquire the skills which
would enable me to conquer what was
thought of as an all-white world. This
meant that I would become a half-
educated handyman, a vociferous, bitter
ruin, spouting Shakespeare in the bars on
Saturday night and sleeping if off on
Sunday.

I could see this, too. I saw it all around
me. There are few things more dreadful
than dealing with a man who knows that
he is going under, in his ovwi eyes, and in
the eyes of others. Nothing can help that
man. What is left of that man flees from
what is left of human attention.

I fled. I didn't want my Mama, or the
kids, to see me like that.

And if all this seems, now, ridiculous
and theatrical apprehension on the part
of a nineteen-year-old boy, I can say only
that it didn't seem remotely ridiculous
then. A black person in this democracy
is certain to endure the unspeakable and
the unimaginable in nineteen years. It is
far from an exaggeration to state that
many, and by the deliberate will and ac-
tion of the Republic, are ruined by that
time.

White Americans cannot, in the
generality, hear this, anymore than their
European ancestors, and contemporaries,
could, or can. If I say that my best friend,
black, Eugene, who took his life at the age
of twenty-four, had been, until that mo-
ment, a survivor, I will be told that he had
"personal" problems. Indeed he did, and
one of them was trying to find a job, or
a place to live, in New York. If I point out
that there is certainly a connection be-
tween his death (when I was twenty-two)
and my departure for Paris (when / was

Photo by Roy Lewis

twenty-four) I will be condemned as
theatrical.

But I am really saying something very
simple. The will of the people, or the
State, is revealed by the State's institu-
tions. There was not, then, nor is there,
now, a single American institution which
is not a racist institution. And racist in-
stitutions — the unions, for one example,
the Church, for another, and the Army —
or the military — for yet another, are
meant to keep the nigger in his place. Yes:
we have lived through avalanches of
tokens and concessions but white power
remains white. And what it appears to
surrender with one hand it obsessively
clutches in the other.

I know that this is considered to be
heresy. Spare me, for Christ's and His
Father's sake, any further examples of
American white progress. When one ex-
amines the use of this word in this most
particular context, it translates as mean-
ing that those people who have opted for
being white congratulate themselves on
their generous ability to return to the
slave that freedom which they never had
any right to endanger, much less take
away. For this dubious effort, and still
more dubious achievement, they con-
gratulate themselves and expect to be con-
gratulated — : in the coin, furthermore,
of black gratitude, gratitude not only that
my biirden is — (slowly, but it takes time)
being made lighter but my joy that white
people are improving.

My black burden has not, however,
been made lighter in the sixty years since
my birth or the nearly forty years since
the first essay in this collection was
published and my joy, therefore, as con-
cerns the immense strides made by white
people is, to say the least, restrained.

Leaving aside my friends, the people I
love, who carmot, usefully, be described
as either black or white, they are, like life
itself, thank God, many many colors, I do
not feel, alas, that my country has any
reason for self-congratulation.

If I were still in the pulpit which some
people (and they may be right) claim I
never left, I would counsel my coun-
trymen to the self-confrontation of prayer,
the cleansing breaking of the heart which
precedes atonement. This is, of course,
impossible. Multitudes are capable of
many things, but atonement is not one of
them.

A multitude is, I suppose, by definition,
an anonymous group of people bound or
driven together by fears (I wrote "tears")
and hopes and needs which no individual
member could face or articulate alone.

On the one hand, for example, mass
conversions are notoriously transitory:
within days, the reformed — "saved" —
whore, whoremonger, thief, drunkard,
have ventilated their fears and dried their
tears and returned to their former ways.
Nor do the quite spectacularly repentant
"born again" of the present hour give up
this world to follow Jesus. No, they take
Jesus with them into the marketplace
where He is used as proof of their acumen
and as their Real Estate Broker, now, and,
as it were, forever.

But it does not demand a mass conver-
sion to persuade a mob to lynch a nigger
or stone a Jew or mutilate a sexual heretic.
It demands no conversion at all: in the
very same way that the act demands no
courage at all. That not one member of
the mob could or would accomplish the
deed alone is not merely, I think, due to
physical cowardice but to cowardice of
another order. To destroy a nigger, a kike,
a dyke, or a faggot, by one's own act alone
is to have committed a communion and,
above all, to have made a public confes-
sion more personal, more total, and more
devastating than any act of love: whereas
the orgasm of the mob is drenched in the
blood of the lamb.

A mob is not autonomous: it executes
the real will of the people who rule the
State. The slaughter in Birmingham,
Alabama, for example, was not, merely,
the action of a mob. That blood is on the
hands of the state of Alabama: which sent
those mobs into the streets to execute the
will of the State. And, though I know that
it has now become inconvenient and im-
polite to speak of the American Jew in the
same breath with which one speaks of the
American black (I hate to say I told you
so, sings the right righteous Reverend Ray
Charles, but: I told you so), I yet contend
that the mobs in the streets of Hitler's
Germany were in those streets not only
by the will of the German State, but by
the will of the western world, including
those architects of human freedom, the
British, and the presumed guardian of
Christian and human morality, the Pope.
The American Jew, if I may say so — and
I say so with love, whether or not you
believe me — makes the error of believ-
ing that his Holocaust ends in the New
World, where mine begins. My diaspora
continues, the end is not in sight, and I

certainly cannot depend on the morality
of this panic-striken consumer society to
bring me out of — : Egypt.

A mob cannot afford to doubt: that the
Jews killed Christ or that niggers want to
rape their sisters or that anyone who fails
to make it in the land of the free and the
home of the brave deserves to be wretch-
ed. But these ideas do not come from the
mob. They come from the state, which
creates and manipulates the mob. The
idea of black persons as property, for ex-
ample, does not come from the mob. It is
not a spontaneous idea. It does not come
from the people, who knew better, who
thought nothing of intermarriage until
they were penalized for it: this idea comes
from the architects of the American State.
These architects decided that the concept
of Property was more important — more
real — than the possibilities of the human
being.

In the church I come from — which is
not at all the same church to which white
Americans belong — we were coimselled,
from time to time, to do our first works
over. Though the church I come from and
the church to which most white
Americans belong are both Christian
churches, their relationship — due to
those pragmatic decisions concerning
Property made by a Christian State
sometime ago — cannot be said to in-
volve, or suggest, the fellowship of Chris-
tians. We do not, therefore, share the
same hope or speak the same language.

To do your first works over means to
reexamine everything. Go back to where
you started, or as far back as you can, ex-
amine all of it, travel your road again and
tell the truth about it. Sing or shout or
testify or keep it to yourself: but know
whence you came.

This is precisely what the generality of
white Americans caimot afford to do.
They do not know how to do it — : as I
must suppose. They come through Ellis
Island, where Giorgio becomes foe, Pap-
pavasiliu becomes Palmer, Evangelos
becomes Evans, Goldsmith becomes
Smith or Gold, and Avakian becomes
King. So, with a painless change of name,
and in the twinkling of an eye, one
becomes a white American.

Later, in the midnight hour, the miss-
ing identity aches. One can neither assess
nor overcome the storm of the middle
passage. One is mysteriously shipwrecked
forever, in the Great New World.

The slave is in another condition, as are
his heirs: I told Jesus it would be all right/
If He changed my name.

If He changed my name.

The Irish middle passage, for but one
example, was as foul as my own, and as
dishonorable on the part of those respon-
sible for it. But the Irish became white
when they got here and began rising in the
world, whereas I became black and began
sinking. The Irish, therefore and

thereafter — again, for but one example
— had absolutely no choice but to make
certain that I could not menace their safe-
ty or status or identity: and, if I came too
close, they could, with the consent of the
governed, kill me. Which means that we
can be friendly with each other anywhere
in the world, except Boston.

What a monumental achievement on
the part of those heroes who conquered
the North American wilderness!

The price the white American paid for
his ticket was to become white — : and,
in the main, nothing more than that, or,
as he was to insist, nothing less. This in-
credibly limited not to say dimwitted am-
bition has choked many a human being
to death here: and this, I contend, is
because the white American has never ac-
cepted the real reasons for his journey. I
know very well that my ancestors had no
desire to come to this place: but neither
did the ancestors of the people who
became white and who require of my cap-
tivity a song. They require of me a song
less to celebrate my captivity than to
justify their own.

[from Price of tfie Ticket: Collected Non-Fiction
1976-65, NY: St. Martin's 1985].

A Baldwin
bibliography

Go Tell It on the Mountain, novel, 1953
Notes of a Native Son, essays, 1 955
The Amen Corner, play, 1955
Giovanni's Room, novel, 1956
Nobody Knows My Name, essays, 1961
Another Country, novel, 1962
The Fire Next Time, essays, 1963
Blues for Mr. Charlie, play, 1 964
Nothing Personal, with Richard

Avedon, essays, 1964
Going to Meet the Man, short stories,

1965
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been

Gone, novel, 1968
A Rap on Race, a transcript of a

conversation with Margaret Mead,

1971
The Woman at the Well, play, 1972
No Name in the Streets, essay, 1972
One Day, When I Was Lost: A Scenario,

film script, 1972
If Beale Street Could Talk, novel,

1974
Little Man, Little Man, novel, 1976
The Devil Finds Worl(, essays, 1 976
Just Above My Head, novel, 1979
Selected Poems: Jimmy's Blues, 1983
The Price of the Ticket: Collected

Non-Fiction, 1946-1965, 1985
Evidence of Things Not Seen, essay,

1986
Harlem Quartet, novel, 1987

BLUES FOR MR. CHARLIE

My heart is heavier
tonight than it has
ever been before. I
raise my voice to
you tonight out of a
sorrow and a wonder
I have never felt
before. Not only I,
my Lord, am in this
case. Everyone under
the sound of my
voice, and many
more souls than that,
feel as I feel, and
tremble as I tremble,
and bleed as I bleed.
It is not that the
days are dark — we
have known dark
days. It is not only
that the blood runs
down and no man
helps US; it is not on-
ly that our children
are destroyed before
our eyes. It is not on-
ly that our lives,
from day to day and
every hour of each
day, are menaced by
the people among
whom you have set
us down. We have
borne all these
things, my Lord, and
we have done what
the prophets of old
could not do, we

have sung the Lord's
song in a strange
land. In a strange
land! What was the
sin committed by
our forefathers in the
time that has van-
ished on the other
side of the flood,
which has had to be
expiated by chains,
by the lash, by
hunger and thirst, by
slaughter, by fire, by
the rope, by the
knife, and for so
many generations, on
these wild shores, in
this strange land I
Our offense must
have been mighty,
our crime im-
measurable. But it is
not the past which
makes our hearts so
heavy. It is the pres-
ent. Lord, where is
our hopel Who, or
what, shall touch the
hearts of this
headlong and un-
thinking people and
turn them back from
destruction^ When
will they hear the
words of Johnl I will
not abandon the
land — this strange
land, which is my
home. But can I ask

the children forever
to sustain the cruelty
inflicted on theml I
have set my face
against the darkness,
I will not let it con-
quer me, even
though it will, I
know, one day,
destroy this body.
But, my Lord, what
of the children^
What shall I tell the
children^ I must be
with you. Lord, like
Jacob, and wrestle
with you until the
light appears — 7
will not let you go
until you give me a
sign! A sign that in
the terrible Sahara of
our time a fountain
may spring, the foun-
tain of a true morali-
ty, and bring us
closer, oh, my Lord,
to that peace on
earth desired by so
few throughout so
many ages. Let not
our suffering endure
forever. Teach us to
trust the great gift of
life and learn to love
one another and dare
to walk the earth
like men. Amen.

[from Blues for Mister Charles, NY: Dell Publishing,
1964].

JAZZ 1930's GRAND TERRACE BALLROOM

R. BEARDEN

ROMARE Bearden (1912-1988)

Another giant gone. Romare Bearden, father/brother
whose vision changed the way artists had to see things,
had to create things. The news of his passing should not
have been like a lightening bolt because I had warnings.
They said he was in the hospital, but I'm still numb and
furious about how death has come, once again, and had
the audacity to reach out its bony arms and claim one
of the generals in our cultural army. And his death
reminds me of others: John Killens, novelist supreme;
Larry Neal, poet/scholar/genius; John Kendrick, my
painting student whose art was on the dangerous cut-
ting edge.

In Boston in the mid-70s, long after I'd first seen his
bold and careful collages, I heard Bearden, Baptist
preacher, talk about how we visual artists needed longer
to perfect our craft than the musicians and dancers we
so often envy. Patience and diligence. Hard advice for
the angry among us. Later, when I saw the Brooklyn
Museum's Bearden retrospective, it was clear, despite
his fame and acclaim, that Bearden had kept on grow-
ing. His work seemed lighter, more spiritual. From his
Afro-centric North Carolina core he'd perfected a

vocabulary that both re-created our worlds and showed
its rhythms, colors, and textures to those outside it. His
art is like the musicians'— precise, perfected, tempting
those of us who are left in its shadow to try to fill the
possibilities. His dazzling achievements have made us
bold enough to dare. Bearden 's legacy is too rich for
us to exhaust, deep enough for dozens of us to mine,
wide enough to make us too wise to try to leap-frog over
it. No time for tears. Death may have snatched Romare
Bearden, but I think the Creator has a master plan which
forces us to be strong and inventive. The work is there.
Bearden calls us to keep our hands on the plow, our eyes
on the victory.

His life, his force, will be lost, but he leaves a legacy
of visual thought that is long and deep, wide and rich.
His most recent creations for me are light years ahead
of his and my time, which only means that those of us
who've committed ourselves have been dragged into
this arena and we have to then fight that much harder.
But with the legacy of Bearden 's vision, I have to smile
knowing that victory is ours.

Nelson Stevens

f«

■^j

^^^^^^1

^ ^

^r ^'?iH^H

■^

S^Hw^" '^H

^^HHHj^v^^^^^^

^A Q

^ll^

i, I

i.^

T pi*

' '" "^^H^B

K-

■■I^

^Hkg^

ill

\ _ ,:^,:

/tfli

. ,'■ 1

i "^'V^^IAk

^^H^i^ ^^^k.

Ti«^R^«5

;"'-^.r

^>,

MEMORIES

R. BEARDEN

ROMARE BEARDEN

Photo by Adger Cowans

R. BEARDEN

FRICOBRK
FRICOBRK

AFRICOBRA/FARAFINDUGU
CELEBRATIONS AND SURVIVALS

One of the most enduring and significant manifestations of the Black
Arts Movement of the sixties was the creation of Africobra/Farafindugu
with its compelling ideology. This artistic ideology springs from the ethos
of African American and Pan-African spiritual and political culture. This
aesthetic ideology seeks to impose a new visual reality on the world; and in
the process move the audience to a more profound realization of its inner
possibilities.

Art/image making, is fundamentally the working out of the mysteries
that undergrid human experience. The icon, or image, represents the
symbolic identity of both the artist and the audience to which the work is
addressed. In the case of the wonderous and awesome images of
Africobra/Farafindugu, we are speaking of images that when juxaposed
together represent the visual narrative of a Nation asserting its artistic
consciousness.

Here we enter a world where the connection between music and color
become vividly manifested. Further, we must note these artists are
attempting to stretch and extend their use of colors across the full range of

the spectrum-much like Coltrane attempting to squeeze a multiplicity of
tonal patterns and textures out of every note played on the saxophone.

In both contexts (image making and sound making), colors and notes
are essentially units of energy. The aesthetic ground for this approach to
making art seems to be rooted in the rhythmic values of African aesthetics,
what Leopold Senghor called the "vibratory shock."

These artists, many of them trained in the techniques and procedures of
Western art, have turned these very same technical procedures towards
the elucidation and expression of a unique and varied African American
attitude towards the business of making images. They present to us an
iconography bestowed on them by the pressing and always exciting
culture of the African American, in this sense, we could call them the
"visual griots" of the African American community.

The Africobra/Farafindugu was formed in Chicago in 1968, "the year of
consciousness." The movement announced itself as the African
Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (Africobra). In this aesthetic
vocabulary, the term "bad" means bold; "bad" means aesthetic integrity,
artistic and social commitment. It further means an intention to project
strong and engaging imagery; imagery that illumines the beauty and glory
of the African experience in the West.

Larry Neal 1979

/1FRICOBRK
^FRICOBRK

ass

Photo by Adger Cowans

/IrKlC^OBkK : From left to right, Napolean Jones-Henderson, Adger Cowans, Wadsworth Jarrell,
Michael Harris, Nelson Stevens, Akili Ron Anderson, Jeff Donaldson, Frank Smith, Murry DePillars, James
Phillips.

HERITAGE

FRANK SMITH: /1FRICOBRK

AFRI-COBRA:
Twenty Years Later

Afri-Cobra is a group of Black artists
who are devoted to the idea that Black art
has innate creative components vi^hich are
characteristic of and due to the ethnic
group. The artists, in developing Afri-
Cobra, felt that they shared a common
philosophy and a common system of
aesthetic principles. Also, they "wanted
to create a greater role as Black artists
who were not for self but for our kind. "
— Barbara Jones Hugo '69

And so, in 1968, Afri-Cobra was born.
Afri-Cobra's art is not simply for art's
sake, but rather it is specific and func-
tional. Their goal is to express statements
on their existence as Black people. The art
is to communicate clearly to the viewers
their visual statements, which are Black,
positive, and purposeful.

There are specific guidelines regarding
the visual statements to be used in the
work of Afri-Cobra artists: visual state-
ment must be humanistic with the figure
frontal and direct, conveying strength.

pride, and straightforwardness; visual
statement must identify problems and of-
fer solutions; subject matter must be com-
pletely understood by the viewer (letter-
ing may be used to clarify this visual
statement); and visual statement must be
educative of the past, present and future.

The art of Afri-Cobra — which began
simply as COBRA, Coalition of Black
Revolutionary Artists — is based on the
elements of festive, 'Kool-aid' colors and
Black positive statements stressing a
direction in the image with lettering, lost
and found line, and shape.

COBRA members, in the earlier years,
met every two weeks to analyze and cri-
tique the progress of each member. This
gave each artist the opportunity to work
both independently and collectively with
his or her peers — to teach and to learn.

Afri-Cobra's first exhibit, entitled "Ten
in Search of a Nation," was held at The
Studio Museum in Harlem in 1970. The
ten artists exhibiting were Nelson

Stevens, Carolyn Lawrence, Wadsworth
Jarrell, Sherman Beck, Napolean Hender-
son, Gerald Williams, Jeff Donaldson, Jae
Jarrell, Omar Lama, and Barbara J. Jones.
This show was the first of its kind in that
the original work was not for sale. The
purpose of the exhibit was not for the art-
ists' individual gain, but rather it was a
unified effort to educate and inform the
public of Afri-Cobra's message.

Silk-screened prints of the work ex-
hibited were produced and sold to the
public at an affordable cost. This made the
art available to a large audience. The
original idea was for one piece from each
artist to be made into a print, but the
group lost some artists during this proc-
ess. While continuing to produce silk-
screened prints, Afri-Cobra artists focused
on the continual fall of Black education,
and the need for education which was
based on the story and accomplish-
ments of Black jjcople. These works com-
posed the second Afri-Cobra exhibit,
continued on page 77

MIXED MEDIA

AKILI RON ANDERSON: /IFRlCOBRK

We Have Seen
His Righteous Witness

by Michael Thelwell

One does not encompass in a few words — or a great many
for that matter — the extraordinary, many-faceted complexity
of the man, the presence, indeed the phenomenon known to
the world as James Baldwin.

"He had in him the elements so mixed ..."

On the one hand, so infinite a sweetness and gentleness of
spirit; an openness to, and a capacity for love so deep as to ap-
pear almost as vulnerability. On the other, a boldness: a quality
of moral courage; a fearless, passionate, militant, unrepentant
commitment to struggle and to justice that was heroic.

On the one hand, the penetrating insight of an intelligence
so brilliant, sharp and incisive as sometimes to be painful. On
the other, the warm personal generosity and profound decen-
cy of the man. The slight, almost fragile physical presence out
of which shone a greatness of soul, a radiant moral dignity that
was clearly — in the best sense of that term — regal. An
aristocracy not of birth, but of spirit.

"... that nature might stand up and say to all the world,
this was a man."

So, where to begin, friends? From which source do we take
a text this morning? hi the sanctified church out of which he
came one must — on such an occasion— take a text. Clearly we
must look to one of the many streams that flowed into his
art, nourished his vision and informed his genius. A line, then,
maybe from: a hymn, a battle hymn? "We have seen his
righteous witness ..." or, Shakespeare, a writer whose
language equalled his? "Let us sit down on the ground and
tell sad stories of the death of kings . . . ." The King James
version? "Let us now praise famous men ..." The affirma-
tion of the spiritual? "Ain 't no grave can hold my body down
..." The Blues? "Yo' was a ramblin' man, Daddy, But yo'
spirit never done lef home. " Or, we could go to the streets.
A line overheard in a Harlem bar after he had appeared on
television in confrontation with a former Attorney General
of the United States: "Whooiee, that little dude be kicking
ass. Baby! The brother sho' don't take no shit, do hef"

Any or all of those would serve.

But, I think, and not merely in deference, to Chinua, to our
respected senior brother who just spoke, I shall recourse to
the proverbial wisdom of the Ibo elders, as it were, to the
source. Our African ancestor said: "If you went to see a mask
dancing, you cannot stand in one place. " And so it was with
Jimmy. He indeed was one of the numinous presences, one
of the great masked, ancestral spirits of our time, covering so
much ground in his prophetic dance, that one had to constantly
keep moving in order to see it truly.

But those same ancestors also said, "Truth is like a goat-
skin bag, each man carries his own. " Truth and Jimmy were
friends. Indeed truth was his constant companion, they were
one and inseparable. And all of us in this room, we who have
spoken, and you who have listened each carry our own ver-
sion of this truth. Each different, each personal, each in its ovm
way true. So what I will do in the time left me is to share with
you a portion of mine ....

In the Spring of I960 1 was a freshman at Howard Universi-
ty and a member of a group of young blacks who had begun,
in the nation's capital, demonstrations against the racist social
practice of the society. It was an exciting time. We sensed that
something profound had definitely begun, but had no idea
where it would end, or what price would ultimately be exacted.
We knew that there would be a price and that someone would
have to pay it, but we were determined to "see what the end
would be."

This "militance" was not well received by the administra-
tion, or if the truth be told, a goodly number of our peers.
Among many adults there was the feeling that our defiance
would only make things worse, embarrass the race and
ultimately and inevitably provoke the angry retribution of
white America. It was for wiser that you young Negroes, as
they called us, looked to your education; stay neat, clean, polite
and respectful; suppress them Southern accents, master "prop-
er" speech and don't wear you hair in that wild "African" bush.
In this way white folk might — if we rendered ourselves
thoroughly inoffensive — gradually come to "accept" us. This
we heard daily, though some faculty offered quiet encourage-
ment and a few "radicals" like Sterling Brown did so boldly
and publicly.

One day we received an unusual invitation. It was in terms
so intriguing — and as it proved, prophetic — that I have never
forgotten the conversation.

"Mike, does the name James Baldwin mean anything to
you?"

"Yeah vaguely . . . isn't he some kind of writer . . . remind
me?" As you can see, at that time I didn't really know his
name.

"Well, my friend, he's an extraordinary writer and, a very
curious and interesting man. He's a small black man from
Harlem with this remarkable face — some would say almost
ugly — but very mobile and expressive with these big, intense
pop eyes. But once he opens his mouth, I guarantee, you will
never have heard such intelligence, such brilliance . . . And
his personal life is always so complicated, always chaotic, skirt-
ing the edge of crisis. He's giving a talk in Georgetown and
particularly asked that some of the movement kids be there."
With an invitation like that how could we not.

Baldwin was returning from twelve years of French exile
drawn back as much by the pictures of Little Rock as by two
manuscripts packed in his luggage. Within a year these
manuscripts would become the best-selling j4230tAer Country
and Nobody Knows My Name, an ironic title which would
soon be rendered utterly false.

So . . . we, a group of us, made the trek across the city into
Georgetown, then as now, the preserve of Washington's af-
fluent and powerful or of pretenders and aspirants to that
status, which at that time meant exclusively white folk.

When we entered the meeting had started. The neighborhood
was unfamiliar and we had some difficulty finding the rather
imposing house of an affluent former socialist. James Baldwin

stood in the center of the packed living room. Completely, as
it were, surroianded by white America. We were late,
somewhat tense or at least not at all at ease and trying hard
not to show it. It was, I think for most of us, our first incur-
sion into the alien territory known as social contact with white
folk. All eyes turned to the door, and we had another first: the
radiance of that legendary Baldwin smile.

He turned and seeing the young blacks (no: we weren't
blacks yet, still Negroes) the mobile, expressive face erupted
into a smile of such immediate and spontaneous charisma and
protectiveness that we were immediately at peace. "Hi," he
said, "I'm James Baldwin, and I'm so very glad you came."

The rest of the evening is not so easy to describe. Baldwin
was about thirty-five, in the flowering of his power. Even his
gestures and expressions were eloquent and he displayed a
precision and poetry of language, an elegance of mind such as
I had never seen before. He was never strident or abrasive,
gracious, indeed almost gentle with even the most obtuse and
ill-informed questions, of which there were many. But totally
clear, uncompromising, evading no question, side-stepping no
issue and never, never, never defensive or apologetic for the
race. He made believers of us.

As we watched, marvelled and cheered we could feel move-
ment, the very ground shifting beneath us. The fundamental
terms of racial discourse were permanently being transformed
and elevated before our eyes. We were receiving confirmation
of all — which in inchoate and unformed ways — we had been
feeling in our hearts, now given form and utterance in the
sparkling, lambent clarity of Baldwinian language.

"No, no my friends you are mistaken. The question is not
one of acceptance but of forgiveness. Not whether America
will accept us, but whether we can find it in our hearts to
forgive you."

Our hosts who had felt themselves to be enlightened and
sympathetic to the Negro problem felt these tremors too. Their
questions became more and more uncertain, befuddled and
therefore belligerent, as their most comforting clichXs and
complacent assumptions were one by one rendered unavailable
and permanently unserviceable. Of course all of us, indeed the
nation, have many times since heard those cadences and felt
the weight of those arguments. But to encounter them, at the
opening of that fateful decade, for the first time and in the con-
text I have tried to describe . . .

Leaving that meeting we strode through the dark city as
though in twelve-League boots. We had heard his righteous
witness. It was not merely that white racism held no further
terror for us, it was that we couldn't wait for that sucker to
raise its ugly head. We were ready. I think the word of choice
now is "empowered." That evening, I see now, was for us the
beginning of a unique relationship, involving not only the few
fortunate enough to be present, but between fames Baldwin
and our whole generation of black Americans.

About a year later when the student challenge had gathered
force and Baldwin's fame had grown, that relationship was for-
malized. We invited Baldwin, John O. Killens and Ossie Davis
onto our campus to discuss the black writer's responsibility.
Again it was a highly charged evening for the writers and for
the students.

In the small hours of morning, as the sun was rising over
the capitol, in a small student apartment to which we had ad-
journed the discussion which had raged all night there came
a moment when Baldwin summarized the meaning of the en-
counter. Speaking slowly and thoughtfully he said, as I
remember, "As a black writer, I must in some way, some very
real way, represent you, my young brothers and sisters. You
didn't bestow this responsibility ... I didn't choose it. . . But
there it is. All I can say, is that I will never betray that, . . .
never betray you. If you — all of you — will promise me that you
never will accept the reductive definitions of your existence

that this republic has ready for you ... I promise you I shall
never betray you."

He never did, betray us or himself.

And he could have so easily, because then those two im-
posters fame and celebrity came pounding and kicking on his
door. When James Baldwin burst across the cultural ftrmament
and national consciousness like a new-born comet — the
rockets red glare — the establishment's literati and media came
a-courting, seeking to immobilize him in a fulsome embrace.

"Come on Jimmy. You still can't be angry. You've made it,
you're big time now."

fimmy, they never knew who you was.

Because while their journals, magazines and airwaves prated
about his "bitter fire", "angry genius", "astounding gifts" and
"terrible eloquence" they were incapable really, of understand-
ing their source or meaning, or that these were not com-
modities, and that Jimmy would and could not permit them
to be packaged into merchandise. What they did not under-
stand was that the source of Baldwin's power came from a style
and a vision both of which were firmly and irrevocably an-
chored in the soul of black folk. The remorseless clarity of his
vision lay in a perspective on American reality forged in the
fiery crucible of the black experience. And the wisdom and
insight of that bitter and ermobling history was simply not
negotiable. And further, that magnificent prose, at its finest,
was a new perfect instrument for its expression. Because the
nuances and poetry of that style were informed by centuries
of the rich cultural expression of black America. The best of
black American cultural idiom: the blues' earthy ironies; the
spirituals' haunting power; the saucy riffs and defiant rhythms
of jazz; the awful moral cadences of King James; the gospel's
ecstatic shout and the preacher's god-intoxicated growl were
all synthesized into an instrument of remarkable beauty and
compelling power.

For the first time, and a brief moment, in the history of this
sad republic the distilled voice of 300 years of African
American experience spoke directly to the nation and com-
pelled its grudging attention. That was his power, his gift and
his burden. This is why the little romance with the literati
could not last. It was also why Baldwin's vision, loyalties and
commitments were not and could not have been for sale, rent
or lease. Why his gifts — and the responsibility which attend-
ed them — could not be subsumed or assimilated into some
smug, complacent consensus of the white literary mainstream.

Had they been, Jimmy would have died an obscenely wealthy
man, and spiritually, long before now, praised in all the wrong
places for all the wrong reasons. He would have, indeed,
betrayed himself and us. He never did. So the apparatchiks
of the literary establishment seeing that his witness could not
be suborned, turned overnight from fulsome admiration and
importunings to venom.

I will always remember a most instructive lunch in 1964.
I, then a senior in college and the author of a grand total of
three published short stories, was being courted by an agent,
an editor and a critic. "Mr. Thelwell, you really should write
a novel," they urged. Then at the end the agent gave a great
smile of accomplishment. "Good. Then that's settled. I think
the time is ripe! This country is ready for a new Negro writer.
That fames Baldwin is finished. Did you see Blues for Mr.
Charlie? Really!"

What an unholy marriage of arrogance and ignorance! But
it was profoundly eye-opening to a young Negro who might
otherwise have had his head turned. Something else I owe to
Jimmy. Of course, like Mark Twain, pronouncements of his
demise were greatly exaggerated and quite premature.

In recent years it was my honor to travel on occasion with
Jimmy to various events. Wherever we went people of my
generation — white and black — would approach him, almost

with reverence. The blacks would hug him, the whites shake
his hand. Always it was with an almost fervent sincerity, Mr.
Baldwin:

"Your work changed my life . . .when I was in college . . . ."'
"When we were in jail in South Africa we smuggled your
book . . . ."

"When I was growing up in Selma, Alabama . . . . "
"I cried and trembled the day I read . . . . "
One night in 1984 in Washington — the tale had come full
circle — a group of younger blacks, clearly a new generation
gave a reception for him. I witnessed there an outpouring, spon-
taneous, heart-felt and joyous, of love and appreciation. I asked
him, "Jimmy, how does this make you feel?"
"I feel . . . ," he said simply, "I feel blest."
So he is dead. He died with his integrity intact, his legacy
unsullied and with his honorable example as a beacon for our
guidance and inspiration. I am in no way ashamed to admit
publicly that I have tried to model my work and conduct as
a writer and a black man on that example. For our generation

of black writers — to the extent we see further than might
otherwise have been the case — it is only because we stand
huddled on the fragile but formidable shoulders of James Ar-
thur Baldwin. It was an honor and a privilege to have been his
friend.

Editors note: On November 30th, 1987, fames Baldwin,
novelist, poet, playwright and essayist died at his residence
in St. Paul de Venae, France. Since 1984, Mr. Baldwin had been
Five College Professor, then Visiting Professor in the W.E.B.
Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the Univer-
sity of Massachusetts at Amherst. On December 16th at the
University of Massachusetts, the Five College community
held a service of respect and appreciation. The following is
a selection from the remarks made by Mr. Baldwin 's friends
and colleagues.

[This piece, originally published in The Massachusetts Review,
is reprinted by permission of author]

A Brother's Love

by Maya Angelou

Speeches will be given, essays written and hefty books will be published on the various lives
of James Baldwin. Some fantasies will be broadcast and even some truths will be told. Someone
will speak of the essayist James Baldwin in his role as the biblical prophet Isaiah admonishing
his country to repent from wickedness and create within itself a clean spirit and a clean heart.
Others will examine Baldwin the playwright and novelist who burned with a righteous indigna-
tion over the paucity of kindness, the absence of love and the crippling hypocrisy he saw in
the streets of the United States and sensed in the hearts of his fellow citizens.

I will speak of James Baldwin, my friend and brother.

"A short brown man came to the door and looked at me. He had the most extraordinary eyes
I'd ever seen. When he completed his instant X-ray of my brain, lungs, liver, heart, bowels,
and spinal coltunn, he smiled and said, 'Come in,' and opened the door. He opened the door
all right. Lord! I was to hear Beauford sing later for many years 'Open the Unusual Door.'"

Thus James Baldwin describes meeting and being met by Beauford Delaney, the provocative
black American painter who was to enlarge and enrich Baldwin's life. Baldwin's description
of Delaney fitted Baldwin as well, for he, too, was small and brown and had the most extraor-
dinary eyes.

I first met Jim fleetingly in the boites of Paris when he and I and the world were young enough
to believe ourselves independently salvageable. But we became friends in the late 50's, just as
the United States was poised to make its quantum leap iato the future, as Martin Luther King,
Rosa Parks and other Southerners were girding themselves for the second Civil War in 100
years and while Malcolm X was giving voice to the anger in the streets and in the minds of
Northern black city folks.

In that riotous pulse of political fervor, James Baldwin and I met again and liked each other.
We discussed courage, human rights, God and justice. We talked about black folks and love,
about white folks and fear.

Although Jimmy was known as an accomplished playwright, few people knew that he was
a frustrated actor as well. I had a role in Jean Genet's play "The Blacks," and since Jimmy knew
Genet personally and the play in the original French, nothing could keep him from advising
me on my performance. He furnished me with my first limousine ride, set the stage for me
to write "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," encouraged me to take a course in cinematography
in Sweden and told me that I was intelligent and very brave. I knew Jim loved me when he
gave me to Gloria and Paula, Wilmer and David Baldwin and all the rest of his siblings and
when he took me to Mother Baldwin and said: "Just what you don't need, another daughter,
but here she is." I knew that he knew black women may find lovers on street corners or even
in church pews, but brothers are hard to come by and are as necessary as air and as precious
as love. James Baldwin knew that black women in this desolate world, black women in this
cruel time which has no soundness in it, have a crying need for brothers. He knew that brother's
love redeems a sister's pain. His love opened the unusual door for me and I am blessed that
James Baldwin was my brother.

Editor's note: This eulogy was delivered at the fames Arthur Baldwin memorial service held at The Cathedral Church
of St John the Divine in New York City on December 8, 1987.

JIMMY

by Amiri Baraka

irst of all, Jimmy Baldwin was not only a writer,

an international literary figure, he was man, spirit,

old and black and terrible as that first

voice-

ancestor.

As man, he came to us from the family, the human
lives, names we can call David, Gloria, Lover, George,
Samuel, Barbara, Ruth, Elizabeth, Paula .... and this
extension, is one intimate identification as he could so
casually, in that way of his, eyes and self smiling, not
much larger than that first ancestor, fragile as truth
always is, big eyes popped out like righteous monitors
of the soulful. The Africans say that big ol eyes like that
means someone can make things happen! And he did.

Between Jimmy's smile and grace, his insistent
elegance even as he damned you, even as he smote what
evil was unfortunate, breathing or otherwise, to stum-
ble his way. He was all the way live, all the way con-
scious, turned all the way up, receiving and broad-
casting, sometime so hard, what needed to, would back
up from those two television tubes poking out of his
head!

As man, he was my friend, my older brother he would
joke, not really joking. As man he was Our friend. Our
older or younger brother, we listened to him like we
would somebody in our family — whatever you might
think of what he might say. We could hear it. He was
close, as man, as human relative, we could make it some
cold seasons merely warmed by his handshake, smile
or eyes. Warmed by his voice, jocular yet instantly cut-
ting. Kind yet perfectly clear. We could make it
sometimes, just remembering his arm waved in confir-
mation or indignation, the rapid fire speech, pushing out
at the world like urgent messages for those who would
be real.

This man traveled the earth like its history and its
biographer. He reported, criticized, made beautiful,
analyzed, cojoled, lyricized, attacked, sang, made us
think, made us better, made us consciously human, or
perhaps more acidly pre-human.

He was spirit because he was living. And even past
this tragic hour when we weep he has gone away, and
why, and why we keep asking. There's mountains of evU
creatures who we would willingly bid farewell to —
Jimmy could have given you some of their names on
demand — We curse our luck, our oppressors — our age,
our weakness. Why & Why again? And why can drive
you mad, or said enough times might even make you
wise!

Yet this why in us is him as well. Jimmy was wise
from asking whys giving us his wise and his whys to
go with our own, to make them into a larger why and
a deeper Wise.

Jimmy's spirit, which will be with us as long as we
remember ourselves, is the only truth which keeps us
sane and changes our whys to wiseness. It is his spirit,
spirit of the little black first ancestor, which we feel
those of us who really felt it, we know this spirit will
be with us for 'as long as the sun shines and the water
flow.' For his is the spirit of life thrilling to its own
consciousness.

His spirit is part of our own, it is our feelings' com-
pletion. Our perceptions' extension. The edge of our ra-
tionale, the paradigm for our best use of this world.

When we saw and heard him, he made us feel good.
He made us feel, for one thing, that we could defend
ourselves or define ourselves, that we were in the world
not merely as animate slaves, but as terrifyingly sen-
sitive measurers of what is good or evil, beautiful or ug-
ly. This is the power of his spirit. This is the bond which
created our love for him. This is the fire that terrifies
our pitiful enemies. That not only are we alive but shat-
teringly precise in our songs and our scorn. You could
not possibly think yourself righteous, murderers, when
you saw or were wrenched by our Jimmy's spirit! He was
carrying it as us, as we carry him as us.

Jimmy will be remembered, even as James, for his
word. Only the completely ignorant can doubt his
mastery of it. Jimmy Baldwin was the creator of con-
temporary American speech even before Americans
could dig that. He created it so we could speak to each
other at unimaginable intensities of feeling, so we could
make sense to each other at yet higher and higher
tempos.

But that word, arranged as* art, sparkling and gestur-
ing from the page, was also man and spirit. Nothing was
more inspiring than hearing that voice, seeing that face,
and that whip of tongue, that signification that was his
fingers, reveal and expose, raise and bring down, con-
demn or extol!

Let us hold him in our hearts and minds. Let us make
him part of our invincible black souls, the intelligence
of our transcendence. Let our black hearts grow big
world absorbing eyes like his, never closed. Let us one
day be able to celebrate him like he must be celebrated
if we are even to be truly self-determining. For Jimmy
was God's black revolutionary mouth; if there is a God,
and revolution his righteous natural expression and
elegant song, the deepest and most fundamental com-
monplace of being alive.

Editor's note: This eulogy was delivered at the lames Arthur Baldwin
memorial service held at The Cathedral Church of St. fohn the Divine
in New York City on December 8, 1987.

Photo by Edward Cohen

1924-1987

Fashion Through
an AngePs Eyes

Angel Estrada

X^ashion is a never-ending, always-
changing adventure. Designers are con-
stantly at work inventing the unique, the
different, the form of art that maintains
an aesthetic quality about all individuals.
The American woman has been the force
and source of new fashion ideas. She has
shown this ability time and time again
from the day she refused to wear the midi
and caused the bankruptcy of many
manufacturers and retailers to the day she
changed the course of history and the
women's movement by wearing pants.
Granted she could not do it alone. It was
the designers who listened and who
transformed their creativity into
workable, material forms of art. They
came out with the house dress to accom-
modate the house-ridden women of post-
World War n. And it is today's designers
who understand the "want-it-all" woman
of the modern world. She's mentally and
physically active and healthy. Her ward-
robe is no longer restricted by age, career,
or family categorizations, but only the
boundaries of her individual personality.
It's the era of the "Forty and Beautiful"
and the "Fashion Plus." No longer do you
have to be size 6, 120 lbs. to wear Dan-

skins or a Bill Blass design. The "forgot-
ten woman" of size 12 and up can feel
glamorous. This neglected beauty is now
accepted and being catered to.

New York City reflects diversity not
only in fashion but in the designers it
generates. The rising stars in the industry
range in ethnicity from Korean Cathy
Hardwick and Afro-American Isai Rankin
to Cuban Isabella Toledo. But of the new
crop, we see a Spaniard making strides in
this newest fashion era.

Inspired by the likes of Yves Saint
Laurent and the late Charles James, this
imaginative young talent is establishing
a promising career for himself. At age
twenty-nine. Angel Estrada is now work-
ing on his sixth collection. You can find
his creations in prestigious Bergdorf
Goodmans, Saks Fifth Avenue, Linda
Dresners, and a few other stores in and
out of the country. Angel has been able
to concentrate his efforts in designing,
while his partner, Anneliese Orr main-
tains the business side of the operation.

Angel came to the country 25 years ago
and lived a quiet, average childhood in
Manhattan, New York. As far back as he

can remember, he had always been in-
terested in the arts and spent most of his
time drawing. After high school he went
to the Parsons School for the Fine Arts
majoring in Fashion Illustration. After a
short time, he left school and free-lanced
for a few years,- designing clothes for
specific clients, illustrating, and basical-
ly doing anything he could get his hands
on. Introduced by mutual friends. Angel
then established a working relationship
with his four-year partner, Anneliese Orr.
As she remembers, "It was just one of
those mutual arrangements, one of those
things that happened... he was ready to put
out a collection and I was there and able
to look after the business side...". By 1984,
he put together his first spring collection.
The small company they had established
still remains in a quaint studio on
Lafayette Street.

Now, who is this man behind the cloth?
He's a mysterious, charismatic man with
a style of his own. Dressing simply and
casually himself, he has almost always
been interested in women's clothing. You
could say that his main source of inspira-
tion was his sister, Virginia Estrada, for

whom he designed his first dress. To this
day they've worked closely together and
many of the original samples are made for
her. Virginia exemplifies the modern
woman of the decade. She is a talented,
well-known sculptress in New York and
designs a jewelry collection for her
brother every season.

Angel has been able to capture the
essence of today's American woman with
his sophisticated yet sensuous style. He
designs with no particular woman in
mind, but for women in general, although
his clients are generally thin. He describes
his clientele as "Any woman who would
enjoy wearing my clothing. I have no par-
ticular image of what a woman should be.
She can be any one. She can wear heels
or flats-it doesn't matter." He lets her
decide.

Angel starts his creations by first con-
sidering combinations of fabric and col-
or. His basic silhouette stays relatively
the same — slim . Shoulders and legs are
loved at his house and are often accen-
tuated in his designs. He describes the ex-
pression of his clothing as "...sophis-
ticated in itself. The image around them
is that they are well made, sexy
clothing... very forward, but not gaudy or
overpowering." Angel is still experiment-
ing with fabric, so he has no favorite. He
loves all hues and feels they are very im-
portant to his collections. His collections
have ranged from extremely colorful, to
toned, to all black, depending on the
season and his feel for creativity at the
time. However, one thing that stays con-
sistent throughout his collections is the
quality. He feels "...to put a full garment
together from fabric to construction to
quality, to them all, quality is the most
important thing. A quality garment is
very special." Angel believes that in order
to be a successful designer, one must
work at it and be dedicated. His
philosophy is to be true to whatever you
feel about your clothing, to be honest to
yourself, and not to be worried or con-
cerned about anyone (competitors) or
anything else.

As for the future, we may see shoes,
lingerie, bathing suits~we may even see
menswear. He feels if the opportunities
arise and they are feasible, he will expand.
But for now, he is happy with the way
things are going. He is free to design how
and what he pleases and has no major
pressures upon him. His only goal at this
point is to maintain his standing and grow
slowly. And from the looks of it, his
positive following from the press, good
store' rapport, and his confident and com-
petent assistant, Anneliese, are all leading
him into a bright and prosperous future.

Susan M. Hodgkins is a graduating
Fashion Marketing major.

The Outside

by Andre M. Jones

You see the fire escapes,

outside the windows with drapes;

to block the pain—

from the outside.

And down by the railroad tracks,

over the water,

it's so polluted out there.

A drunk man walked across it last night—

and he didn't sink;

because the trash is so thick,

and you know it stinks.

It's not even a river anymore ...

just a liquid junk yard.

And on its littered shore,

abandoned getaway cars,

with the windows shot out.

Bullet holes in the doors, on cinder blocks,

with the tires stripped.

And rusty, souped up V-8's

where racers retired their Detroit thoroughbreds-

but kept their license plates . . .

and disappeared into the alleyways,

heading back to places, they call home.

Just to climb up the fire escapes,

into the windows, all covered with drapes

to keep the darkness from shining in.

To block the pain —

from the outside.

,-^-

' f ,-"»#•

^•;?5ft^

i-'^M.

r(Vjai.'.^i

COACHING EXCELLENCE

It's 5:30 and the afternoon daylight has
given way to a dark evening sky. Kalen-
keni Mtalika Banda, the University of
Massachusetts Women's soccer and track
team coach, is busy looking through his
appointment book, opening the mail piled
on top of his desk and making phone calls.

Instead of wearing a sweat suit, lanyard
and rugged turf shoes, Banda is dressed in
a sharp blue pin-stripe suit, red patterned
tie and brown leather wing-tipped shoes.
He has a bright friendly smUe, and a neat-
ly trimmed beard. As for his office, it
looks like a giant display case, chock-full
of awards, wall plaques, trophies, cer-
tificates, flags, teams photos and
videotapes.

Kalekeni Mtalika Banda is not your
average athletic coach.

Banda says he first came to the United
States with his diplomat father in 1967
and attended Mamaroneck High School
in New York. He was then sent to the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
by the Malawi Government to study
sports. As an undergraduate at UMass he
lettered in both soccer and track while
earning a B.S. degree in physical educa-
tion. He graduated in 1975 and returned

to Africa where he played semi-
professional soccer and served as
technical advisor to the executive com-
mittee of the Amateur Association of
Malawi. While there, he also gained three
years of international experience with the
Malawi Olympic Teams. In 1979, Banda
returned to UMass as an assistant
women's soccer and track coach.

During the seven years Banda has been
the head coach, UMass women's soccer
has amassed an impressive 100 wins with
only 23 losses and 10 ties. His teams have
participated in four NCAA National Final
Four Championships.

Banda himself has received numerous
coaching honors. He has won the Na-
tional Soccer Coaches Association of
America (NSCAA] New England Region
Coach-of-the-Year award in 1982 and
1985, as well as the New England
Women's Intercollegiate Soccer Associa-
tion (NEWISA) Coach-of-the-Year award
and the NSCAA Coach-of-the-Year award
for 1985. In the last 1987 season he was
named NSCAA's Woman's Coach-of-
the-Year.

In addition to soccer. Coach Banda has
also been successful as the head coach of

the women's track and field team,
building a strong contender in the New
England track scene.

Banda modestly says that he doesn't
have a real formula for his success, and
that his philosophy for winning is really
quite simple: he doesn't have one.

"Some coaches are authoritarian,
soldier-like, some say 'My way or the
highway,' and some are laissez-faire. As
for Banda, I'm teaching athletes to be bet-
ter human beings, sharing all with them
the options and customs I've been ex-
posed to."

He says winning really began for him
when he was a child in his native village
of Tonga, in Malawi, Africa. He was
educated by his family, in particular, the
elders of his village who stressed self-
knowledge, respect of authority and
tolerance for an individual's person and
culture. His philosophy is really theirs; for
Kalekeni Banda, this is the real meaning
of success.

"Success," he laughs softly, "my
background has a lot to do with my suc-
cess — it's unique. It was from my village
that I learned respect, gained respect,
because I was taught to respect myself."
continued on page 60

CIRCLE FOR ANOTHER: MESSAGE

FROM THOTH

JEFF DONALDSON: /1FR1COBRK

Equality:

By Any

Means
Necessary

Equality, is it that impossible? Why
must our people be continuously
beat for trying to lead a normal
life? Is evidence of intelligence and a
desire to excel or to simply live as we
wish so threatening to the egos of the
white world that they must continue to
persecute the Black race? Why is the
Black person — the beginner of civiliza-
tion, the creator of culture — continuously
made to feel small and useless? Why,
above all, are we made to feel afraid or
ashamed to be Black? All of these ques-
tions must be forced in the faces of the
white community and answered by the
Black race. We must ask ourselves why,
so we can be ready with a sharpened mind
for the bureaucracy that has helped to
keep us oppressed since the beginning of
our contact with the European peoples.
The New Africa House occupation served
as a sounding board for these questions.
It was a time when the Black communi-
ty, often factioned, came together as one.

It was a Friday afternoon, whose
temperature and dreary appearance
echoed the feelings in the hearts and
countenances of the students as they
trudged up the stairs of New Africa
House. Watching television the night
before, I had listened to the weatherman
discuss a storm on the horizon. Thinking
back, I doubt he knew how right he real-
ly was. The snow was not the only thing
that was going to fall. The feelings of fear,
dissatisfaction, and of being gullible in the
eyes of the administration that had sur-
faced Thursday night were heightened
and added to the newly felt desire for
militancy. As a result, we, the Third
World Students, were determined to no
longer be a chip in the wall of the dam,
but to be the hole that weakened the
structure until, inevitably, it collapsed
under the weight of a people united.

Four p.m., February 12, 1988. What was
going to happen? What had already hap-
pened? Everyone could sense the tension
of the situation, the odor of an impending
fight like rotten meat on a hot day.
Details, we needed details. Details and
facts to help us to understand what need-
ed to be done. We are all thinking human
beings. Please don't patronize and rave
about our ignorance; explain. A student
must perform as any other leader. Leaders
must satisfy the people's thirst for
knowledge or be responsible for rebellion,
which is not an ugly word if used in the
appropriate context. However, when the
need for unity is mandatory, rebellion
within the ranks is disastrous.

At first impatience, eagerness, or
perhaps both, on the faces of those who
had initiated the "revolt," caused many
to feel slighted and insignificant, thereby
causing internal conflict. The realization
that decisions had been made and

Chancellor Joseph Duffey entering Nev \

demands drawn up heightened the unrest.
Many of us thought the thirty or forty
students that had made the initial deci-
sions, eager to start the flow of progress,
were assuming power roles. The minds
and egos of an oppressed people are
volatile and ready to explode at the least
indication of being unappreciated. Look-
ing around the room, the questioning look
on people's faces was asking, "Why wasn't
this meeting devised to decide what ac-
tions should be taken? Why are we stand-
ing in an occupied building, when we
have not yet, as a body, decided it should
be such?" Questioning of the leadership
and action that had been taken ended
when the masses realized that the direct
action that was needed had been taken,
and now it had to be enforced with

.ssj!.;^

•■fv-'fA'* ^t^^v"'

fiica House.

diligence, strength, and hard work. Now
that we had New Africa House we were
definitely not going to give it back. The
real question was, "Why should we have
to take, much less give back, something
that was supposedly already ours?"

For those of us who were at the House
on a regular basis, the countless meetings,
if they served no other purpose, caused us
all to doubt the ability of two hundred
people to agree; the beads of perspiration
and the permanent expressions of frustra-
tion were clearly visible as we sat for a
third time to discuss exactly what we
wanted from the administration. Why,
when we are all working for the same end,
did it seem so often that we were work-
ing against one another? I believe strong-
ly that this seeming disunity was in fact

Photo by Roy Lewis

the opposite — it was group desire for ex-
cellence. We all knew that the wording
and context of the demands were crucial
to the success of our mission to procure
equality. That, coupled with the desire to
be counted and instrumental in some-
thing that brought national attention,
helped us to retain our unity and establish
the large following needed to command
a successful revolution.

The community support for our fight
was tremendous. People donated food and
pillows and blankets for those who had
taken up residence in New Africa House.
Their concern and support lifted our
spirits and let us know that we weren't
alone in our struggle. We eventually
found out that many of the people who
protested our allowing only Third World
students in the building really were not
supporters. If they had been, they would
have imderstood our need, as stated to the
press on numerous occasions, to organize
ourselves, to understand fully our own
needs before we could even begin to in-
clude people outside the situation. This
was not to say that we did not welcome
the support given by the white communi-
ty. However, we had to first understand
ourselves before we could begin to explain
ourselves to someone else. Education
begins with the individual, and in this
case, a people. We cannot begin to express
our gratitude to the people who kept us
fed and to the supporters who held vigils
and rallies to defeat racism. It must be
kept in mind at all times that each little
shove we give to the wall of injustice will
weal<en it and it will crumble, so that
eventually, hopefully, one day we as a
society will not return to its history of
judging by black and white.

Whether is was support for the cause
or simply the excitement of the event, the

three hundred students — mostly white—
who surroimded Chancellor Duffey when
he came to hear and negotiate the
demands, were expectant. Some were ex-
pecting and hoping that he would refuse
us and bring in the law, while others, the
sympathizers (to coin a phrase) hoped our
demand would be met and if they weren't
that we could continue to occupy the
House. Our story was all across the na-
tion and we hoped that coupled with the
plausibility of our demands, the threat of
nationwide embarrassment would add
strength to our struggle. Our pride
swelled and our persistence grew when
the Reverend Jesse Jackson called to give
his support and mentioned the possibili-
ty of a visit. And even an obviously upset
Gov. Michael Dukakis phoned and asked
the Chancellor to do his best towards giv-
ing us what we wanted. The fact that we
attracted nationwide attention on the day
of the New Hampshire Primary obvious-
ly made him feel uncomfortable.

The negotiations lasted for four hours.
The students who talked with the
Chancellor persevered through the hours
of haggling. Afterwards, the strain showed
on their faces and in their impatience. We,
the general body, waited, not always with
patience, to hear and criticize the
responses. When all had been formally
written up and distributed to us, I think
the satisfaction with the answers sur-
prised us all. Of course, there were things
we didn't like and weren't satisfied with.
But the overall positive response to our
demands caught many of us off guard.
Then the big question arose: Do we stay,
or do we leave? Do we stop fighting in the
streets and continue it in the boardroom?
Will staying here longer help our cause or
hinder it? Tempers flared, emotions ex-
continued on page 57

SQUARE ONE

JEFF DONALDSON: /IFRlCOBRk

Akhenaten:
Unique Among Pharaohs

The eighteenth Dynasty was the
time of the greatest growth for
Egypt, after a long period of foreign
domination by the Asiatic princes known
as the Hyksos. Characterized by a surge
of expansion and renewed productivity in
architecture and the arts, Egypt's civiliza-
tion rose to new heights. The pharaohs of
this time stood out as strong leaders; of
them, Akhenaten, or Amenhotep IV, was
the most unusual and the most
revolutionary.

The beginning of Akhenaten's reign is
slightly obscure. After his father
Amenhotep III died, his mother Queen
Tiye took over briefly. Akhenaten mar-
ried one of his sisters by the name of
Tadukhipa, known in Egypt as Nefertit-
ti, "the beautiful on is come." Shortly
after marriage, Nefertitti bore her hus-
band the first of six daughters.

Everyone assvuned that Amenhotep IV
would follow in the footsteps of his
predecessors and shine either at the royal
court or on the battlefield. However,
Amenhotep IV's intellectual and religious
leanings quickly became apparent. Early
in the sixth year of his reign, he shook off
the worship of Amen, the dominant god
of the time, and adopted the worship of
the Aten, or sun disk. In addition to
changing his name from Amenhotep
(meaning "Amen is satisfied") to
Akhenaten, he denounced the worship of
all gods other than the Supreme Power,
symbolized by the Aten, and had Amen's
name erased from monuments wherever
possible.

Egypt had always been a country divid-
ed. From the earliest of Neolithic times
this division was evident; the south (Up-
per Egypt) developed the famous mor-
tuary cult while the north (Lower Egypt)
focused on mercantilism and thought lit-
tle of death. Each area also had its own
deity. The sun god, in the form of the
hawk (Horus), was worshipped in the
north. To them, this bird was the lord of
the sky, appearing suddenly and vanishing
like a point of light into the heavens. A
form of the sun god was also worshipped
in the south, though as Amen-Ra, god of
Thebes, "light of the heavens." As Thebes
rose to power with its kings and became
one of the wealthiest cities in the world,
so, too, did Amen-Ra rise in divine status
until he dominated the Egyptian
pantheon.

Into this picture, then, stepped
Akhenaten, drawing great surprise with
his fervent worship of the Aten, and not
Amen-Ra as expected. Not long after
becoming pharaoh, he built the Aten a
new temple two miles north of Thebes,
at Karnak. He included there a series of
colossal statues that broke violently with
tradition: instead of depicting a trim,
athletic figure with traditional garments,
they showed Akhenaten in unconven-
tional garb and with an egg-shaped head,
elongated jaw, scrawny neck, drooping
shotilders, pot belly, and spindly legs. This
type of portrayal was an outstanding
feature of Akhenaten's rule, and il-
lustrated his motto of "Truth — warts and
all."

In the sixth year of his reign,
Akhenaten transferred the capital from
under the shadow of Amen's greatest
temples to a new site 250 miles
downriver. A city was built on the east
bank, while the ample plain on the west
side was used to grow crops to feed the
new inhabitants. The place was named
Akhet-aten, "the horizon of Aten;"
historians call it Amama after the modem
village nearby. It was at this time that the
great pharaoh changed his name from
Amenhotep to Akhenaten, a final emblem
of his rebellion.

In his new capitol, Akhenaten was free
to worship the Aten in his own way, as
carvings discovered at Amarna

demonstrate. The Aten is depicted with
rays that stretch downward towards
Akhenaten and his family; surrounding
him are his courtiers who bow humbly.
Akhenaten prayed to the Aten, and
everyone else prayed to Akhenaten. There
was no god save the one god, and the sole
way to get to him was through
Akhenaten. What he created was a form
of monotheism, the first example in the
history of religion, though it did not have
a broad enough appeal to last beyond his
reign.

Akhenaten demonstrated a tendency
toward the abstract in his sun-worship.
Though in other ages the sun was wor-
shipped in human figure as Ra or as his
emblem the hawk, Akhenaten's devotion
to the Aten was more refined and
philosophical. He revered the radiant
energy of the sun and its ability to sustain
all life by its beams. If this were a new
religion, invented to satisfy our modern
scientific outlook, we could not find a
flaw in his view of the energy of the solar
system. The rays of the sun are the means
of the sun's action — the source of all life,
power, and force in the universe.

Akhenaten's veneration of the Aten is
evident in his poetry — the most notewor-
thy of which is the "Hymn to Aten,"
taken from King Sun by Joy Collier [Lon-
don: Ward Lock Limited, 1970]. It was
simply an outpouring of ecstatic praise:

The Splendour of Aten

Thy dawning is beautiful in the hori-
zon of heaven

O living Aten, beginning of life!

When thou lisest in the eastern hori-
zon of heaven,

Thou fillest every land with thy
beauty;

For thou art beautiful, great, glittering,
high above the earth;

Thy rays, they encompass the lands,
even all thou hast made.

Thou art Ra, and thou hast carried
them all away captive;

Thou bindest them by thy love.

Though thou art afar, thy rays are on
earth;

Though thou art on high, thy foot

prints are the day.

■C^'^-fff^'

'liiJ^

Akhenaten was an intellectual, the sole
pharaoh in Egypt's history to boast that
distinction. He had advanced ideas con-
cerning women — as well he should have,
for both his mother Tiye and his wife
Nefertitti provided much of the impetus
for the change to Atenism. Akenhaten
was only eighteen at the time of the
change, yet under Tiye's guidance he
gained the strength to nationalize his
views. Nefertitti, too, supported the
revolution, and in fact her claim to the
throne legitimized Akhenaten's rule.
Egypt's matrilineal custom dictated that
he who became king did so by marrying
she whose dowry was all of Egypt; Nefer-
titti's titles indicate that she was indeed
this heir. She was "the great heiress,
princess of south and north," and
"princess of all women, the lady of both
lands." Akhenaten, unlike his
predecessors, included Nefertitti and his

Photos from King Sun by Joy Collier

children in the royal artwork, signifying
a deep appreciation and love of his family.

The art of the Amama period is its most
prominent surviving aspect. Instead of
leaving a legacy of gold and treasure,
Amarna's true wealth was in its art.
Previous rulers had appeared in their por-
traits performing solemn or heroic ac-
tions, always avoiding what was private
and intimate. Akhenaten, instead of
showing sacrifices to the gods or enemies
being conquered, preferred to depict the
intimacies of his family life: Akhenaten
kissing one of his baby daughters, Nefer-
titti with one on her lap while another
plays with her crown, two sisters caress-
ing one another. Instead of the previous
formality and stiffness, in which pharaohs
were always figures of might and majes-
ty, Amama art showed people in natural
poses and groupings, emitting a kind of
gentleness.

Akhenaten's devotion to the Aten is
evident in the sculpture he had commis-
sioned. In each one he is shown adoring
or offering gifts to the Aten, which
radiates above him. Each of the Aten's
rays ends in a hand which supports the
king and queen and their crowns. It also
gives them power and life as symbolized

continued on page 88

LADY & PRES

WADSWORTH JARRELL:/IFRlCOBRK

MOOD INDIGO

MICHAEL D. HARRIS: /1FRICOBRK

BLACK TO THE FUTURE:
Spike Lee, filmmaker

This piece is a compilation of information gotten from an interview by the author with Spike Lee on March
25, 1 988, as well information from an article in Life Magazine * (Special Spring 1 988 issue), a Village Voicei March
22, 1988 interview by Thulani Davis and Spike's book with Lisa Jones, Uplift the Race: The Construction of School
Dazet [Simon and Schuster, 1988].

I got on the A-train headed for the
Lafayette Avenue stop in Brooklyn.
Shit. I hope I don't get lost. Lived
23 years in New York, why didn't I get
to know Brooklyn any better? Asked the
token booth man which way DeKalb was.
Right, left a few blocks, then right. Or was
that left?

"Hey baby, looking for an apart-
ment?"

"Why, you got one?"
"Yeah — I was looking for someone to
share it with."

"I don't think my husband'll go for
that."
"Bet."

Works every time. Almost.
O.K. Here it is — 124. Damn, I'm ear-
ly. Ring. "Yes, who is it?"
"It's Martha."

"What do you want?" What do I
want^
"I'm here to interview Spike,"
Silence. I knew it, he changed his
mind.

"Come on up." Whew.
I walked into the spacious office that
used to be a fire station and I was greeted
at the door by a gentleman who I took for
the accountant since he immediately sat
down at a desk and started fooling with

a calculator. Two sisters were sitting at
their desks and as I looked down the
length of the office I saw Spike. He was
sitting on the stairs of a slightly raised
platform, looking at some papers.

"Be right with you."

I sat down on a futon couch that was
too deep to sit comfortably. Alright, don't
look like an idiot. I sat at the edge of the
sofa so that my feet could touch the
ground and I took out Arrow of God by
Chinua Achebe. I knew that I'd have to
go back to whatever it was I was attempt-
ing to read so I didn't even bother mark-
ing the page.

"Hi, how ya doin'?" Spike led me into

another room so that we coiold have some
privacy and the interview began.

Spike has been called "a brave, original
and prodigious talent," by the New Yoric
Times — uncompromising on the issues
and in his beliefs. Raised in a family of
creative people, constantly being exposed
to a cultural envirormient. Spike says he
chose filmmaking as his venue because it
encompasses many different artistic
elements — dance, writing, photography,
acting and dance. When he was as young
as five and six years old Spike used to visit
his father, composer and jazz musician
Bill Lee, at gigs in Greenwich Village.
Music has always been an important part
of his films, as can especially be heard on
his latest film. School Daze. "From the
start, I knew that I wanted all the idioms
of Black music in this movie, all idioms.
We've got spirituals, funk, R&>B, go-go,
jazz, "t

One of the many vmique aspects of a
Spike Lee Joint, besides using his family
in many of the productions, is his com-
mitment to employing not only Black ac-
tors but Black production people as well.
What a lot of people don't realize is that
many so-called "Black" shows or movies
do not have a concentration of people
behind the scenes. Often, the only thing
"Black" about a show is the person or peo-
ple who you actually see — but the writers,
producers and crew are almost always ex-
clusively white.

When interviewed on a news-magazine
program. West 57th St., Spike was asked
why he didn't have any white actors in
his films. "/ don't think that it's an issue.
I think it's really a stupid question. White
filmmakers never get asked when they're
going to have some Black people or other
minorities in their films. That question
never comes up. "

Quality roles for Black actors has
always been a controversial issue, from
the days of Amos 'n' Andy to the present.
The film, Hollywood Shuffle, by Robert
Townsend which came on the heels of
She's Gotta Have It, addressed this issue
of whether or not Black actors should take
the (few) roles which are available and
which are, more often than not, demean-
ing. Spike commented, "I liked his
[Robert Townsend' s] film a lot. Especial-
ly when I was auditioning for this film
[School Daze]. Talent has never been the
problem. We've always had the talent,
it's just the opportunity [that's lacking[
and for every role we had in this film,
there were five other people who didn 't
get the part who could have done it . . .

We can kick and scream about these
roles people take but when they're starv-
ing and gotta pay their rent .... They felt
that they had to make that choice."
Although Spike has provided quality roles
for Black actors, he is but one man.

Spike feels that one of the problems

concerning the quantity of positions for
Black performers is the way the industry
is set up. "The powers that be don 't seem
to want more than one black superstar
at a time. They had Michael Jackson. The
slid him out and brought in Prince. Had
Richard Pryor up there. Slid him out and
brought in Eddie Murphy. Slid him out
and brought in Bill Cosby. Maybe it's
because of the fear that they will get too
powerful."*

While his first feature film. She's Got-
ta Have It, generally received critical ac-
claim. School Daze seems to be riddled
with controversy, especially from within
the Black community. Some people
believe that many of the issues portrayed
in the film do not really exist.

Many complaints about the film are
centered around disapproval of Spike "air-
ing the dirty laundry" of the African-
American community. "That's the same
thought that Bryant Gumble had . . .
when he attacked me on the Today
Show. He said the same thing — why air
dirty laundry; why give away trade
secrets^ He hadn't even seen the film."

Some critics are concerned with the
portrayal of the Black college or univer-
sity. Historically, most Black colleges
were created by white philanthropists in
order to provide education for the sons
and daughters of former slaves (some of
whom were also their sons and
daughters). Given the connection to
"white" money it is not surprising that
many of these colleges are by nature
politically conservative. This is no secret,
yet still many protested when Spike pro-
jected this image in the film. At the same
time, the relationship the production of
School Daze had with the administration
and students in the Atlanta University
Center showed the very existence of an
air of conservatism.

While School Daze was half-way
through the shoot, the colleges of the
Atlanta University Center decided not to
let filming continue for several reasons —
mainly because they thought that School
Daze would give Blacks and Black col-
leges a bad name. Rumors were flying that
there were sex scenes being filmed in the
trailers and that one of the roles irt the
film was that of a prostitute. Surprising-
ly, or maybe not, is that the students sup-
ported the administration's actions — if
not actively, then by their overwhelming
silence and belief of the "propaganda" put
forth by the administrators. Commenting
on Atlanta University Center student
apathy Spike sees it as "the mood today —
graduate, get a job and make money."

In his book, Uplift the Race: The Con-
struction of School Daze, Spike speaks to
the issue of Black colleges: "I'm all for
Black colleges. I'm a third generation
Morehouse man and I hope my sons
choose Morehouse. But there are certain

things wrong at Black colleges and I ad-
dress some of them in School Daze. To
me, this doesn't mean that I'm putting
forth a negative portrayal of these institu-
tions. The AUG presidents were after
squeaky clean images of Black colleges.
I refuse to be caught in the "negative im-
age" trap that's set for Black artists. Yes,
Black people have been dogged in the
media from day one. We 're extrasensitive
and we have every right to be. But we
overreact when we think that every im-
age of us has to be 100 percent angelic —
Christ-like even. "

The first scene in the movie is an anti-
apartheid rally being held in front of the
Administration Building as the president
of the fictitious Mission College and a
disapproving chairman of the board watch
from an upper window. One critic, Dalton
Narine, in a Village Voice piece, thought
that with a little less "boogaloo" Lee
would have been able to resolve this
South African issue. Lee comments: "/
think that that's all we had to do — to
raise it ... . People want that stuff to be
resolved in the film; that stuff's not
resolved in real life— how's it going to be
resolved in the film^"

The portrayal of the women characters
has not exactly won Spike any praise
either — some critics labeling him a sex-
ist and misogynist. Several grievances are
about the amount of time spent on the
Gamma Rays as compared to the amount
of time spent on the JigS; the way the
camera pans up-and-down the bodies of
the Gamma Rays; how the Jigs don't seem
to do anything other than lay on the bed
and talk about guyS; how the women
seem to merely be extensions of the male
characters with whom they are involved
and just a general lack of character
development of the women. It seems,
also, that the main conflict of the color
and class issue rests on the shoulders of
the female characters — it is between the
women that most of the conflicts occur;
even though there is a scene where the
two main male and female "dark-
skinned" characters ("Rachel" played by
Kyme, and "Dap" played by Larry
Fishburne) confront the possibility that
one of the reasons "Dap" is dating
"Rachel" is because she is "one of the
darker sisters on campus."

On one hand these issues are very real
and it does seem as if women are getting
that same old sexist rap thrown on them.
However, to a certain extent, the film's
context of fraternity life could hardly
allow for much correction — especially in
the portrayals of the Gamma Rays and
their relationships with the men. "That's
the way these guys [in the Gamma Phi
Gamma fraternity} in School Daze —
that's the way a lot of these guys in frater-
nities feel about women. They just pass
them around. [People[ want to attack me
continued on page 74

NAPOLEON JONES-HENDERSON: /IFRlCOBRK

SO WE TO EXHIBITION FOR SOWETO AT UNITED NATIONS, 1979: /IFRlCOBRK

WATER SPIRITS

JAMES PHILLIPS: /IFRICOBRK

«Eddy (a homelesi
man) said to me, "J
know what you kids
must be thinking
about us, but we're
not bums — we're
alcoholics/' »

Left, David Daggett

« These pictures
were taken in the
Boston area-, some
were taken candidly.
For some, the in-
dividuals gave me
their permission.
They exemplify the
pain and plight of
the homeless. »

«I bought him a
bottle of the cheapest
whiskey I could see.
As I gave him the
bottle (similar to giv-
ing a drowning man
a glass of water), I
didn't know whether
to think if I was do-
ing something good
or bad. »

« Walking back to the car, I
had realized that some of the
homeless people weren't there
by choice. They were people
who had stumbled into a hole,
a hole that they could not
climb out of. »

Photo Essay by David Daggett

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL:

Better to Light a Candle
than Curse the Darkness

"For years I was held in a tiny
cell. My only human contact
was with my torturers ... my
only company were the
cockroaches and mice ... on
Christmas Eve the door to my
cell opened and the guard
tossed in a crumpled piece of
paper. It said, 'Take heart. The
world knows you are alive.
We're with you. Regards,
Monica, Amnesty Interna-
tional.' That letter saved my
life." — a released prisoner
from Paraguay

Tust think. Right now tliere are
I thousands of people around the world
W who are being imprisoned, tortured,
and killed solely on the basis of their col-
or, sex, ethnicity and ideology. Wecan't
always see it because human oppression
rarely ever receives the attention that it
should. But it exists, and it's a fact of life
that many face every day.

These individuals, who are victims of
persecution which often lacks legal
pretense, are termed "prisoners of con-
science" — stripped of their rights as
human beings for who they are and what
they believe.

When we stop what we're doing and
consider the atrocities and abominations
that our fellow humans suffer at the
hands of tyrannical dictators of oppressive
goverimients, we can't help but feel

anger — but we feel helpless as well. What
can be done ? As citizens of a free society,
we can protest and editorialize our opin-
ions among ourselves, but what actual
good would that do, except for maybe
venting some steam? You could redress
your grievances to the governments
themselves, but what good will one small,
albeit intelligent, voice accomplish? Not
much at all. But Amnesty International
has taken the idea of protest and turned
it into a possibility, a justifiable response
that can be shared by many of the same
voice in unison.

Twenty-five years ago two Portuguese
students sat in a tavern and toasted to
freedom. For this act their government
sentenced them to seven years' imprison-
ment. A group of people from many coun-
tries were outraged by the government's
response and were moved to action. Thus,
the beginning of Amnesty hiternational
was underway.

Amnesty International was founded in
1961 under the premise that "govern-
ments must not deny individuals their
basic human rights." Amnesty is a non-
partisan, worldwide network of
volunteers that works to end human
rights abuses everywhere. Today, the
organization has over 500,000 members,
all committed to initiating effective
measures against inhumane treatment of
other world citizens.

Amnesty works on a principle of impar-
tiality, that is, independence of all outside
interests except that of upholding the
standards of human rights. Specifically,
the organization refers to the United Na-
tions Universal Declaration of Human
Rights to justify their actions: Article
3-"Everyone has the right to life, liberty,
and the security of the person/' Article
5 -"No one shall be subjected to torture
or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treat-
ment or punishment;" and Article 9 -"No
one shall subject to arbitrary arrest, deten-
tion, or exile."

When Amnesty's London office is in-
formed through various sources, such as
newspapers, hiunanitarian organizations,
or letters from attorneys and families of
those in danger, their research depart-
ment assesses the case to determine if ac-
tion should be taken. Providing that the
individuals have neither used nor ad-
vocated violence in any way. Amnesty
will assist them in their struggle.
continued on page 88

EQUALITY BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY (cont'd from 43)

ploded and frustration set in as these ques-
tions were debated until three in the
morning. Finally, after much back and
forth argument, we decided to remain and
continue the vigilance. However, this
decision had no time to cool before debate
ensued about the amount of support we
would have if we continued. Would the
Third World community continue to sup-
port the cause, or would we have to fly
the flag of surrender? Would we actually
gain more by staying or lose some of what
we had? The possibility of jail was not an
immediate concern, for we had already
faced a bomb threat without fear. The
decision was finally made to leave the
next day. We adjourned that night,
exhausted.

Twelve noon, February 17, sunny, cold.
We stood on the steps of New Africa
House and sang the Black national an-
them. Some were disappointed and some
said we gave up the fight while others
made it clear that the struggle was just
beginning.

As we filtered off, going our separate
ways, it was impossible not to look back
on the past five days and say much of it
hadn't been fun. The meetings were
necessary, but stressful, and often brought
normally controlled tempers to a head.
However, they were sidelined often by the
spirit and fun of just being together.
Whether it was watching movies or stud-
ying, the sense of unity was overwhelm-
ing. Never had I seen so many people in
such a stressful situation treat each other
with such enormous respect. It was as if
the factionalism within our community
for five days just never existed. At least,
for a brief moment, we had acted as one.

Although there is still much work to be
done and many details to follow up with
the administration, the occupation
showed that there is strength in numbers
and that a people will not continually
allow themselves to be oppressed. The
time had come when we as students of
color could no longer stand by and allow
racial harassment go unpunished. We

have pushed hard to get what should have
rightfully been ours from the start, and we
have pushed hard to be able to live in
peace. If all this pressure has been too
light, we will push even harder until the
wall of injustice come tumbling down.
Perhaps the immortal Malcolm X said it
best: "The students all over the world are
the ones who bring about a change, and
it will, be by any means necessary."

Author's note: The preceding piece on the oc-
cupation of New Africa House from February
12-1 7 is not intended to be a blow by blow ac-
count. It was written to get a sense of perhaps
the most important aspect of the occupation:
people's emotions. It is in the mind that new
ideas and emotions are harbored and it would
be incomplete to speak of the occupation as
simply a mechanical process. It was an event
that was kept afloat by the feelings and emo-
tions of an oppressed people.

Simone Nicholson is a UMass sophomore Jour-
nalism major.

ji(l^.."3aB.

Many a time I sit and wonder why

This race so, so very hard to run

Then I say to my soul take courage

Battle to be won

Like a ship that's tossed and driven

Battered by the angry sea yeah!

Say the tide of time was raging

Don't let the fury fall on me. No, No, No

—Bob Marley, "I Know," from Confrontation (Island Records, 1983)

Professor Chinua Achebe, woild-renowned Nigerian author
of the novels Things Fall Apart, No Longer At Ease, A Man
of the People, Arrow of God and, the latest, Anthills of the
Savannah, is Visiting Professor at the University of
Massachusetts this year.

Prof Achebe, the first question I would like to ask is how
would you define African literature!-

Well, it's simply literature written by Africans. My definition
is very simple, perhaps too simple, but it is the one that makes
the best sense. Surely it cannot be things written about Africa
because somebody else can write about Africa. [Joseph] Con-
rad has written about Africa, but I would not call Heart of
Darkness part of African literature; so I would say it is
literature written by those people we know as Africans.

In Transition 18, vol.4 (1965) you wrote an article concern-
ing English and the African writer. In it you discussed that
in June of 1962, during an African writers conference, African
artists failed to define satisfactorily "African Literature. "And
you further mentioned the harsh words of a Nigerian critic.
Obi Wall, writing in Transition 10, who said: "Perhaps the
most important achievement of the conference . . . is that
African literature as now defined and understood leads
nowhere." Does one still find such critique of African
literature, even after its twenty or so years of growth!

Yes, yes. Well, as a matter of fact, there was a period of silence,
if you like, on that very issue for years. Obi Wali himself, who
was a teacher of literature and a poet, stopped writing or say-
ing anything or doing anything on this matter. And nor did
anyone else until quite recently when Ngugi wa Thiong'o of
Kenya had brought the subject back to life, with a vengeance,
by making it almost the center of dispute. He is questioning
the validity of anything which is written in European languages
qualifying as African literature, and is saying, quite clearly,
that it is not. It could be Afro-Saxon literature or whatever.
And he concluded this by himself, deciding that he would not
write in English anymore. So it [such critique] is very much
alive today.

Now, I personally think that this is an issue upon which
Ngugi or anybody else can take position and begin to act it
out. I myself do not see that it is necessary or, in fact, useful
to Africa for us to abandon communication in European
metropolitan languages for practical reasons. The practical
reasons are that these languages are the languages of Africa
today, and literature cannot ignore today. Literature cannot
see into the future. We can be thinking of a future in which
the situation is altered or modified; in which, perhaps, some
African languages become internationally spoken and written
and, perhaps, will ultimately displace the European languages,
but that's very much in the far future. For the moment
Africans must stay alive. Africans must commimicate, must
talk to one another. African countries like Nigeria must con-
tinue to talk within Nigeria; we wouldn't be able to do this
without English today. So this is a very complex problem, the
question of language, and I don't think it will go away. But
it's going to be solved, I think, over a long period of time.

In that same article you mentioned that if Europeans are
bothered by this tremendous upsurge of African literature, of
literature written by Africans in European languages, then
that is too bad. You wrote, "The price of a world language
must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds
of use. "

Yes. Yes, I said that in '65; and although it was a long time
ago, I think it is still true. Incidentally, only last week there
was a program concerning my new novel [Anthills of the

Chinua
Owner

Pholo by Garry Weas'

Savarmah] on the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), and
I noticed a tone of irritation in one of the voices discussing
the book. The central topic was concerning my use of 'pidgin'
English, a local variety of English spoken in West Africa, and
this Englishman seemed to be a little irritated. He had difficul-
ty with the pidgin sections of this novel, and the man he was
talking with rather condescendingly explained to him that the
people about whom I am writing do, in fact, speak pidgin and
that it would be inappropriate for me to represent them in any
other way. So, in other words, there are people in Britain who
are a little unhappy that the English language, which they feel
they have a kind of proprietary right over, is being used in all
kinds of ways. This, you see, is what I mean by the voice of
irritation. I also remember an Australian poet (the Australians
can be as conservative as the English, you see — they also feel

Achebe:
f Words

that this is their special tongue) who was saying that he feels
rather envious of little countries, like Denmark, which still
have control over their language and that when one Dane says
something, another Dane imderstands what he is saying. By
implication this Australian is complaining that English has
gone out of control. And I say, too bad! That's just too bad.

Professoi [Michaelj Thelwell, in preparation for this interview,
gave me several articles, most of which discuss your latest
novel, Anthills of the Savannah. In the African Guardian,
Sept. 24. 1987, Okey Ndibe writes that 'Anthills is the first
major study in African literature of the phenomenon of
military rule. " Would you please discuss this further^

Well, the story is set, very squarely, in a military regime in
Africa; so I am dealing with the leadership, the military leader-
ship, and the kind of problems created in an African country
by that sort of regime. I am also dealing with the development
of tyranny and with a new awareness after the devastation
which happens. This new awareness is based on the survivors
learning to make new links with the ordinary roots of the socie-
ty, with the ordinary people of the country. This, I think, is
the positive side of this tragedy. At the end of it all there are
the survivors, the anthills; they are the anthills and the prod-
uct which I am exploring here. The anthills survive after the
fire has burned the Savannah. There is this proverb which says
it is the anthills which survive into the next season so as to
tell the grass, the new grass, of what happened the year before.
So this is the meaning of the story,- the people survive the
tragedy, carry the misery of what happened, so that they can
instruct the new grass, the new people, and transmute ex-
perience to the future.

Last year you declined an invitation to The Second African
Writers Conference in Stockholm (April of 1 986). Could you
elaborate upon your reasons for doing so and, therefore, upon
your opinions of the existence of such a conference^

Yes. Well, let me say that I also declined the first one which,
I think, was held in 1967. Now, my reasons are very clear. I
am not opposed to conferences on African literature anywhere;
anybody can set up a conference on African literature and even
invite Africans to come and talk to them. But I resent the idea
of African writers being summoned to a European country and
being told that the purpose of this is for them to view the past
and the future of their literature. This seems to me to go
beyond the desire of everybody to find out about African
literature; this is as if you want to draw the plan for African
literature of the future, and you are going to Stockholm, under
the supervision and hospitality of the Swedes, to do it! And
I find this abhorrent; I find it unacceptable. By 1986 Africans,
if they want to view their future literature, should do it under
their own hospices and in their own forum, under their own
control. And nobody has any right, not even if they dispense
the Nobel Prize, to summon us somewhere and look over our
shoulders while we draw our plans.

Here, in 1974-75 for the Chancellor's Lecture Series, you
discussed the false image of Africa projected by colonial
literature such as Conrad's Heart of Darkness. How widely

spread is this false image of Africa in the west}

It is very, very wide. You know, I'll tell you that when I gave
that lecture here, it was a bit of a bombshell. To my amaze-
ment Conrad's Heart of Darkness probably was one of the most
widely prescribed books within the English department — I
don't know what the situation is today — and I caused some
offense in some quarters of some very conservative professors.
There was one, in particular, who really was angry and was
obliged to tell me off. But fortunately there were others, in
fact more, who said something like, "You know, we never real-
ly read or understood that book until we heard you." Now
when a professor of English says, "I never really read Conrad's
Heart of Darkness until I heard you," you know something
very, very serious is happening. In other words, it is so natural
to the West to think of Africa in these terms that they don't
even know that something false is happening. And this has
been going on for so long. It is a long period of indoctrination
in the white world that black is evil. And so [Conrad's image)
is widespread, but I think it is important that we should begin
to address ourselves, to confront it, and bring it to an end.

Colonial literature must, then, present some sort of conflict
for those Africans who study at European universities where
they are exposed to such misrepresentations of Africa.

Well, it is from this conflict that the resolution can come. It
is, in fact, good when Africans go to universities they confront
these texts. My own conversion, if I may call it that, happened
in the university. It wasn't in Europe; it happened to be in the
first university in Nigeria, the University of Ibadan. But all
my teachers were English, and they didn't teach me any
African literature, they taught me works like those of Con-
rad's. And it was my own development and the development
of other people of my own generation that began to question
this literature that we were given and to conceive of a possibili-
ty of creating an alternative story, which is really the genesis
of African literature, if you want of put it crudely. We wanted
an alternative story because the story we were given was not
satisfactory. And, really, no people can have their story told
by other people, which gets back to what I was saying about
going to Sweden to map out the development of African story.
We are telling the story of Africa, and this story has to be told
by us in our own environment.

As you know, fanheinz Jahn 's Muntu, an outline of traditional
African culture, is widely embraced among Black Americans.
What are your sentiments toward such an overwhelming ac-
ceptance of this study of Africa by this German^

[A chuckle] Well, I have to be careful here because I knew
Janheinz Jahn personally, but I had certain disagreements with
something he had written after a journey through parts of
Africa. He was the kind of man who wanted to systematize
things, to put things into pigeon holes — I think this is, perhaps,
a German kind of tendency. The Germans, I think, like to have
things neat in their minds, and they want to put things in order
to give them a set shape — so, when I came to Muntu, I came
to it with a certain ambivalence. But I think, today, I would
be inclined to say that there is really no harm in somebody
who, out of extensive reading and study and out of some
natural tendency to place things in order, presents us with
something like Muntu. We should, at least, have an open mind
and look at it and see what it is he is trying to do, because
what he's trying to do is to extract, from a multitude of African
cultures and languages, a system of unity that applies
everywhere. Now, every one of us knows that there is
something like unity in Africa; if you travel in Africa, you
know this. People say to me everywhere I go in Africa that
the story of Things Fall Apart could be a Kikuyu story or Luo

or Ndebele. So it is clear that there are certain underlying
unities in Africa. Muntu may not succeed completely in il-
lustrating this, but it is an important first step. We should not
sneer at it. And further, since Black Americans seem to have
taken to it, there is something in it which we can use.

Professoi Achebe, I am seeking, now, a link between Black
American and African artists. Langston Hughes in an essay
entitled "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, " wrote
on the perpetuation of Black culture and of the duty of the
young Black American artist: "But, to my mind, it is the du-
ty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all
from outsiders, to change through the force of his art that old
whispering T want to be white, ' hidden in the aspirations of
his people, to 'Why should I want to be whitel lama Negro—
and beautiful^'" Would you speak on your ideals as to the duty
of the younger African artist^

Well, having heard that beautiful excerpt from Langston
Hughes, I really don't want to add to it because I think it speaks
not just for the black people here but for black people
everywhere. There is that love, that hidden love of white peo-
ple, which is often present in our minds while we criticize and
attack them for what they have done to us. The aspiration to
be lil<e them or to be under their control is so deep and so of-
fending to our ultimate goals and interests that I would also
prescribe words such as Hughes'. What the excerpt is saying
is integrity. Who am !?....! am not white .... So I am black
and I belong to this place called Africa .... There are other
people there .... There are counties there .... There are needs
and aspirations there .... There is a history, even, there ....
It is a history which is older, perhaps than any other history
in the world .... Why don't we pay more attention to that
rather than what they may be doing and thinking in America
or doing and thinking in Russia or in China? All this is im-
portant; we want to know the rest of the world. But we must

not do it at a cost of ourselves, of discovering ourselves. I think
that this is a universal duty for people who are oppressed
because they must discover themselves and be themselves
before they can shake off the oppressor. You can't shake off
oppression if you are working on the side of the oppressor;
you've got to put yourself on the other side, opposed to him,
in order to relieve yourself. This is what I mean by integrity.
An artist who is copying somebody else, maybe even another
artist, is not an artist yet; he is an apprentice. He becomes an
artist when he discovers his own voice and knows who he is.
Then we have an artist.

Professor Achebe was interviewed on October 20, 1987 by Charles
H. Perry who is a junior English major at the University.

IN THE BELL OF THE HORN NELSON STEVENS

COACHING EXCELLENCE (cont'd from 40)

He pauses, and poised, touching his
fingers together, he continues. "In Africa,
when you leave home you represent your
village. Wherever I go, whatever I do, I
make my mother and father and my
village look good."

This ideology is brought to every event
or game. "The women who play for me
have to make decisions representing me."

"It's not winning that matters, it's the
time you spend training, working long
hours, sacrificing. The winners are the
people who turn bad days into good. It's
important to work harder, to seek a bet-
ter way of working. Look at yourself in
the mirror each day when you arise, and
if you don't like what you see, then you
have an obligation to yourself to do
something about it."

That desire for excellence had him
packing up his achievements and moving
across town to Amherst College, a school
one twentieth the size of UMass, with
half the athletic programs.

"I wasn't looking to move, really. I
always kept open, you know. I actually in-
terviewed by chance. I was so busy with
my work here I almost didn't apply. But,

friends said, 'Why don't you apply and
give it a shot?' they kept pressing. The job
became more and more interesting, so I
applied."

And he got that job, along with a salary
increase and a more sophisticated title.

"Well, my title will be 'head coach of
men's and women's cross-coimtry and
track and field/program coordinator,'
which is attractive." He laughs at the
slash in his title, but admits the job will
allow him more responsibility and
potential.

Banda says he is glad to have been
associated with UMass, but he's proud of
now being associated with Amherst. "It's
a privilege to be associated with Amherst,
it's second to none. It's an association that
any professional would want. UMass
strives for excellence, Amherst practices
it."

To some UMass students and faculty,
Banda's leaving for Amherst College
seems like a sellout, a slap in the face to
an institution that is constantly trying to
better its reputation of mediocrity.

Banda doesn't see it that simply; most
people in his position would certainly

have done the same thing. He has worked
hard at UMass, and is now willing to take
a promotion, along with new challenges.
It was time to move on, upward.

He thinks people are misled if they
think he is moving down a step in his
athletic recruitment. "If you have good
coaching, the athletes will come.
Amherst has high academic standards.
You can't down play excellence. NCAA
doesn't make it or break it."

Banda says many people ask him if he
will miss coaching women's soccer. "Yes
and no. Of course I enjoyed working with
the women. I have helped to prepare them
as good human beings, to teach them to
respect themselves and others. Self-
respect of body, mind, and soul is the
most important thing in life. No matter
what happens — win or lose, you are the
champion. These women will soon grad-
uate and take what they have learned to
start lives for themselves."

Mark T. Childs will be graduating in May
with a bachelor's degree in English.

INTERVIEW WITH KANDULA
SITA RAMA SASTRY

Born in the State of Andhra Pradesh, India, Kandula S.R. Sastry completed his high school and college education
in his home state. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Physics with the highest honors from Andhra Univer-
sity, Waltair, India, in 1955 and 1956, respectively. Inspired by exciting developments in fundamental physics, he
came to the United States of America and did his graduate studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, and received
the doctoral degree in Physics in 1962. He has been an active member of the faculty of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Massachusetts/Amherst, for the past 25 years. He is author of over 60 papers in his area of research,
and has taught students ranging from the freshman to the doctoral level. His recent research on the biological ef-
fects of esoteric atomic and nuclear processes have received w^orldwide acclaim.

Professor Sastry, what motivated you to
pursue a career in Physicsi

Well, when I was a student in high
school, my teachers brought to my atten-
tion a lot of exciting things about nature,
and certainly physics is a very basic
science of nature, and I got very much at-
tracted to that. My father was a physicist
and my brother and uncles were scientists
and mathematicians. So I was very much
attracted to this field. [I chose nuclear
physics because] at the time of my growth
a lot of exciting events were happening in
the field, not just nuclear energy. I am cer-
tainly not thrilled by the atomic
bomb. ... I abhor it!!! Right from the
beginning, I did not like it, and there are
many nuclear physicists who totally op-
pose it too. But, nevertheless, the funda-
mental science of nuclear physics was
very exciting. By nuclear physics I mean:
how is the atomic nucleus constituted,

^^\

"^^ "?

what are the laws that govern the motion
of protons and neutrons inside the
nucleus? — that was an unsolved puzzle
at that time which even now we don't
understand that well.

What is your area of research in nuclear
physics^

Well, I have worked on a variety of
areas. First of all, . . . Yang and Lee. At
that time, one of the most exciting things
was a field called Nuclear Beta Decay.
This is when a nucleus transforms from
one element to another. That got me ex-
cited, and I did a lot of research in that
area. Afterwards, I did research on the
mechanisms of nuclear reactions, and
after that I also studied various aspects of
how to determine the properties of ex-
cited states of nuclei. By understanding
this, we get kind of a handle as to how to
understand the box that we call the
nucleus.

More recently I [have been] in-
vestigating the biological effects of ioniz-
ing radiation. By that I mean how it
damages cells and how it damages impor-
tant DNA in cells. You know there is
cancer and ionizing radiation may cause
cancer, [however] it can also be used to
cure cancer and we have come across a
very exciting idea of utilizing some very
fundamental physics as a possible applica-
tion in the cure of cancer.

How old were you, and what were some
of your feelings during the Independence
of India movement led by Mohandas K.
Gandhi^

Well, certainly, I was a young kid. In the
year 1942, when Gandhi raised the slogan
"Quit India," I was seven years old but
still I could hear that. I remember "Quit
India" and the various struggles that went
on at that time. And it certainly inspired
us a lot, and as I grew older and went to
middle school and high school, Gandhi
was of course the towering personality
which had created an influence on us.

What are your feelings about Gandhi's
tactics toward bringing independence to
India — particularly his non-violent
techniques i

Well, I think Gandhi gave us the
guiding light. Violence is not the way to
achieve the ends, and the ends do not
justify the means, and that is what Gan-
dhi taught us. He felt very unhappy when
violence erupted as a result of his fasting
and all. All of this inculcated in many of
us a spirit of non-violence, a sense of self-
criticism and self-restraint, but also an
abiding commitment to our cause. And
certainly today, I have grown with that
and I am a pacifist, and I believe in non-
violence. Of course, the most important
contribution Gandhi made — not just to
the Third World, but to the entire world
— is the idea of fighting for your rights
in a peaceful and non-violent manner, of
non-cooperation and civd disobedience —
especially when you believe that your
rights are more than what the law [says].
Martin Luther King, fr. did the same
thing, and I admire [him] as well.

continued on page 75

PJO"— «5(^f

S&iifsS

Her voice sweet with emotion, Jane Sapp sits at her
piano rocking rhythmically from side to side to the
blues song she is singing, her hands snapping the
keys and her feet stomping on the pedals. Recently, while on
the University of Massachusetts campus, Ms. Sapp talked
about her life her work and her music.

Ms. Sapp, a gospel singer and cultural organizer is a native
of black Augusta, Georgia. She says her involvement with her
community and music started when she was a child. She ex-
plains, "My roots are in the south and in the Black communi-
ty. The Black church shaped what I do. That gave me a special
kind of grounding."

Ms. Sapp grew up hearing, learning and singing church songs
as well as popular rhythm and blues. At age nine while still
in school she began playing the piano for several church choirs,
as well as writing her own songs. By the time Jane was 12,
she was the pianist and director for two gospel choirs. As she
matured her social and musical interest became more serious.
"The most profound impact on my world view has been the
fact that I was born Black in the mid-twentieth century in the
United States."

Ms. Sapp's concern and music, however, extend beyond the
local realities of her black community, into an ecumenical con-
cern for the oppressed.

"My life has been shaped by the experience of social and
political injustice and by the courage, wisdom, struggle and
humanity of those who are the 'have-nots' of this country, of
this world. My work [and] my music, are rooted in these ex-
periences and communities."

Music is

Cultural

Power

Jane Sapp

Ms. Sapp has had a long history of working for her people,
to preserve and to keep their richness of Black culture. Her
concern with the educational and empowering resource of the
traditional 'folk' music has sent her throughout the South
documenting the life of the Black community. She has organ-
ized several Folk Roots Festivals and Family Union Days, in
addition to other programs which celebrate the strength and
vitality of local communities.

In recent years, Ms. Sapp has participated as both a field
researcher and board member in the African Diaspora Program
at the Smithsonian's Institutions Festival of American Folklife.
While working in Green County, Alabama, she also directed
the Community based cultural Education Program at Miles
College, Eugaw, where she organized a major folklife program
in black belt Alabama and Mississippi. When not making
musical appearances, Ms. Sapp says she enjoys keeping busy
at the Highlander Center, located in New Market, Tennessee.
The Highland Center is a center with a 50-year history of work-
ing with poor and disenfranchised people throughout the
South.

In addition to her accomplishments as a cultural organizer,
Ms. Sapp has been equally successful in the music world. Con-
cert appearances have taken Ms. Sapp all over the United
States. She has performed at the Vancouver Folk Music
Festival, the Hudson River Revival, the John Henry Memorial
Festival, Sisterfire, the World's Fair Folldife Center, the Village
Vanguard and the Cathedral Church of St. John of the Divine.
She has recently performed in concert with Pete Seeger at
Carnegie Hall and the People's Church in Chicago. In 1985,
her album "Take a Look at My People" won a first place In-
die Award from the National Association of Independent
Record Distributors.

Her power as a cultural organizer is only equalled by her
explosive stage performances. Her songs have a social
awareness range, from her fiery protest of oppression and ex-
ploitation, to her compassionate lullaby embracing the blues.

The performance Ms. Sapp gave at the University of
Massachusetts, commemorating national Black History
Month, was a display of her dedication to the music and
culture of her people.

With a friendly smile Ms. Sapp addressed an audience of over
two hundred people. "My roots are in the South and in the
Black community. The Black community and church are the
forces that shaped very early on in my life, born and raised
from the bottom." She then dedicated a song to all those peo-
ple "at the bottom" called, "Remember Me."

As Ms. Sapp continued singing and playing the piano she
invited her listeners to sing along, to help strengthen the
spiritual bond forming in the crowded theater. The songs in
her repertoire reflect her political beliefs and hope about the
future of the world.

Her song "Welcome Table" is a hopeful song dedicated to
the students in her workshops. I'm gonna sit at the welcome
table one of these times.

Ms. Sapp told the audience about her work with children
in Selma, Alabama. She said she was impressed by their songs
which reflected social awareness and pride for not only being
themselves, but also for being Black. "When you love yourself,
you don't have to go around doing horrible things," she add-
ed, before singing joyously. Black is so beautiful, and it is so
beautiful to be Black. She explained that the children had ex-
panded the verses to include all colors, all people in the world.

"'Jesus That's Love,'" she explained, "is like a marching-into-
battle song. To know that someone is there to help you push
ahead." It is a gutsy gospel song, fesus that's love. --God's got
his arms wrapped all around me. You know I've got Jesus
that's enough.

In concert Ms. Sapp likes to pay tribute to leaders in the
struggle to gain freedom form the evUs of racism, such as Har-
riet Tubman and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Encouraging the
crowd to clap and sing along with her, she sang a powerful
rendition of "We Shall Not Be Moved," dedicating it to the
students who occupied the New Africa House from February
12-17th, as a response to the racial climate on campus.

Ms. Sapp talked about the importance of fighting for dreams
of freedom, making them a reality. She put the great poet
Langston Hughes poem, "What Happens to a Dream De-
ferred?" into sweet music.

"We've got to remember what freedom, peace, justice real-
ly mean. I ask myself in 1988, what does freedom look like,
taste like, feel like. What does it mean to be free?"

As her performance came to a close, Ms. Sapp sang the title
track form her album "Take a Look At My People." Take a
look at my people go tell the world a new nation is coming
with strength and love to give the world a new humanity.
She said the song was written after working in South Carolina
and trying to put together a museum on Black culture and
history in the area. "I was overwhelmed by the history of Black
people in America and it occurred to me what a beautiful peo-
ple we are," she said with a smile.

As the concert ended with a jubilant "This Little Light of
Mine," Ms. Sapp told the audience, "The time is coming for
a new South, one not built on hatred and inhumanity." She
went on to say, "the order is shifting people, the cultural and
economic face of society is changing . . .search for [the] depth
and dignity of each other. Seek the truth, cut beneath rhetoric,
media hype, commercial images. I'm concerned about the lack
of information about each other, about the history and culture
that exists in different groups. Education is access to informa-
tion without a hierarchy."

Mark Thomas Childs will be graduating in May with a
bachelor's degree in English.

BLUESY KISSES WITH TABASCO SAUCE AND JIMMY REED

BY Charles Curtis Blackwell

SiriQ TO ME JIMMY

MAKE THE TABASCO SAUCE ROLL

AnOTHER ORDER OF MECKBOriES

WITH GREASE AHD GRAVY

AFiD OriE MORE JIMMY REED

THAT'S THE WAY I FEEL

WHEPi I AM BLUE

MISSiriG YOU

ME MOAFiin', AMD JIMMY GROArilN'

MEMPHIS TO MISSISSIPPI

MOAFl THE MORriiri'

PLAY FOR ME BABY, KISS ME MAYBE

THE TELEPHONE RANG, INTERRUPTED

MY COnCEriTRATIOri

THREW MY MOAniriG OFF

RUBBING WOMAN'S THIGH

MY HAND ON IT

AS THE TWO OF US KISS

SHE MOANED

AND JIMMY MOANED FOR ME

<. ,J ■ ■ »>ly>'.v . '."■1 .■■ -v • . ■ fr " ^ \,< '

- 'Jtw!}';" - .■ '■■ > . -•^-. '■>"■■ ■:

ANNIVERSARY

by Nccncy Morejon

I had already cut ten roses for Virmia

when I crossed the bantustdn*

drowsy

with the undulating trill

of the roosters.

It was our first anniversary.

I was stopped.

I was questioned.

And I showed my pass.

The white morning light

was growing and growing

flooding the marketplace.

I walked breathlessly

all the way to the city.

A merchant runs after a female servant

offering her a crumpled dollar.

It was our first anniversary.

I was stopped.

I was questioned.

And I showed my pass.

Cars were going down.

Trucks were going up.

My heart was overflowing

on to the avenue. ''

The sun, even stionger,

like a frozen egg yoke.

I was stopped.

I was questioned.

And I showed my pass.

I arrived at Vinnia's bantuston

past six in the afternoon.

Looking and longing for her

I searched.

Vinnia, have you doubted me?

I left my bantuston early

but I was stopped.

I was questionned.

I showed my pass.

I ticiveled through a maze to arrive here,

I told her; lowering my head

like a Unei who has been chastened.

Her expression was a mixture

of affUction and impatience.

Vinnia, so beautiful in front of her bantustdn

but my roses had already withered.

It was our first anniversary.

Translated by Mirtha N. Quintanales

Nancy Morejon is a Cuban Nationalist poet.

OYA'S MEDITATION

NELSON STEVENS: /1FRICOBRK

R'^?*.

'•• Ac

j^.vr-:

I AM m
BECAUSE
WE ARE:

Nelson Stevens

Art teaches. It tells us where we have been and where we
are going — a visual chronicle of a people's history. But what
is this entity called "art?" Does it hold the same value and
function for all people? If you know anything about traditional
African culture you know that art and community are in-
separable. Art is not a separate entity — "for its own sake" —
as it is in western culture. There is an organic tie, a reciprocal
relationship, between the artist and society. The artist creates
for the society to which he belongs, even if it is a future society.
It is from this tradition that Nelson Stevens comes and it is
in this vein that he works.

Nelson's art is a reflection of elements both physical and
spiritual which have their grounding in the African-American
experience. His rhythmical, multi-layered reassemblage of
form and color can be likened to the quality of syncretism in-
herent is most aspects of our African- American culture. When
we were brought over here, we were forced to give up our
African culture and adopt a wholly different system of
philosophy. But our captors were not entirely successful in
destroying all that was African and much of what today is con-
sidered "American" is really African-Amehcan — religion,
language, dance and music — a blend of two opposing systems
into one.

Consider a comparison between western and African music.
Traditionally, in western music the elements are arranged in
a hierarchical structure. For instance, while a western piece
of music might contain multiple rhythms, these rhythms are
employed one at a time; as. opposed to African music, which
has several different rhythms going simultaneously, each one
given an equitable level of importance. And if you listen to
rock-n-roll there is no mistaking the influence of African music
on this genre which so many still regard as an "American"
phenomenon.

Music has always been a vital element in Nelson's work —
both in the process of creation and in the final product. Anyone
who knows Nelson also knows that the man just love John
Coltrane. His love of music is communicated through his
work. He has done paintings of Coltrane, Stevie Wonder, Duke
Ellington, Miles Davis, Max Roach, Louis Armstrong and Bob
Marley. An admirer once said that if a deaf person were to look
at one of Nelson's pieces, that person would know what music
sounded like.

Two other elemental themes in Nelson's work are: woman
and creation and heroes/transformers. He speaks about his
work. It seems that my representational work can be divid-
ed into three main categories: one being the Creation series,
having to do with the pelvic bone, dealing with Oya and
Yemaya and the creation of the world, and the adoration of
women through that series. The Ogun series — this is all
Yoiuba — having to do with the god of metal and iron. It's
about music, musicians and the colors that flow when I want
to represent the music I deal with. The music . . . sometimes
gets representational. Duke Ellington's part of that, as well
as Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong and several devotees of

the music — that which nourishes us. The music series is really
about nourishment from Ogun. The third series I call the
Transformers, those people who have gone before us who have
made a bigger space for the rest of us. I got a chance down
at Tuskegee to really explore that one in depth. Starting with
Cinque, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells,
Frederick Douglass, Dr. [W.E.B.j Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, con-
tinuing on to deal with [Paul] Robeson, Martin Luther King
[and] Malcolm X. The Bob Marley series is part of that, as well
as the Stevie Wonder, as well as the [esse [ackson. It's my
way of giving tribute to those who have found the power and
the will to give voice to the rest of us, and inspire.

Nelson says that he always had an interest in art. The first
place that I remember living was in a five-story apartment
building, and we used to draw on the sidewalk outside the
building. I was too young to go down the street too far, or
up the street too far. I must have been 5, 6 or 7 . We'd draw
on the sidewalk with these colored chalks and go up on the
roof and look down and see what they were like. And the gtls
would come and erase our stuff and put hopscotch.

His parents' reactions to his artistic desires when he was
young were different. My mother wanted me to pursue art to
the point that she enrolled me in classes at the Brooklyn
Museum on Saturdays which I would sometimes cut to go
to Ebbet's Field to see [ackie Robinson. And she encouraged
me to go to the Museum of Modern Art because [they] had
lessons; and I took lessons over there. His father exposed him
to the realities of living an artistic life by taking him to Green-
wich Village when he had to go there for work. Although the
conditions he saw for artists were rough. Nelson saw it as an
interesting way of life.

At first Nelson went into the advertising industry but
thought that he was too pure for it, so he decided to go into
teaching. He taught elementary, junior high and high school
in Ohio.

While working at the Cleveland Museum of Art Nelson
made a conscious decision to be a serious artist. When I started
dealing with the painters themselves as opposed to interpreta-
tions of their work, then I could see clearly that there was
something different than the conversations that were about
their work. And when I could get to that point I decided to
really seriously get in and start.

While in his early 20s he met other Black artists who were
in the same situation of lacking real studio space in which to
create — most of them would just roll back the rugs in their
apartments. They rented a store front together for $100 per
month ($10 each!) and established the Creative Workshop. /
picked up all of the techniques of everybody that worked
there. We had people from the post office: people who taught

continued on page 85

IN THE BELL OF THE HORN #7 nelson STEVENS

CANDANCE

MURRY DePILLARS

: /IFRICOBRK

ASCENDING SPIRIT SERIES

ADGER W. COWANS: /IFRlCOBRK

Dr. Johnnetta Cole:
FIRST LADY

"Good afternoon, Spelman College. "
"Hello, extension 201 please."
"President's Office, may I help youi"
"Hi. This is Rio Gabriel calling again,
from DRUM Magazine. Is Dr. Cole
available?"

"No, I'm sorry. She just returned from
Washington and she's in conference. May
I take a messaged"

This is how the exchange between the
appointment secretary and I had been oc-
curring for five days in a row.

"No, that's okay. Um, could you ask

her to call me as soon as possible please?"

"/ don 't know when that will be. Miss

Gabriel. Dr. Cole is very busy this week.

Hold on for one moment. "

I figured that I would be put off once
again and that I would never get to talk
to the newly-appointed President of
Spelman College. I was just about to give
up completely when a strong, amiable
voice returned to the phone.

"Rioi"

"Yes ..." ,^

"This is Dr. Cole. Unfortunately, I
won't be able to speak with you at this
time. "

My heart sunk. "That's oka—."

"Can you call me tonight atmyhomei
I'll be up until one o'clock. That way we
can spend as much time as you 'd like on
this interview. "

Dr. Cole and I spoke for about twenty
minutes to half an hour. She was very
direct and to the point — this was not a
woman to put up with any B.S. She
thought very carefully about my ques-
tions before she responded. If I could have
seen her, I was sure she would have been
making a lot of hand gestures for em-
phasis. Here was a woman who was in
one of the most prestigious positions at
an equally prestigious institution; and she
had given me her home phone number
and spoken to me as though we were old
friends.

Her voice is steady and compassionate.
Perhaps it is due to the experience of
growing up as a Black woman in the Jim
Crow South of the 1940s. Perhaps it was
leaving her home of Jacksonville, Florida
at age 15 as an early-entrance student to
Fisk University, that gave way to this
voice. Nevertheless, I knew I was speak-
ing to a voice that possessed a great
amount of knowledge.

After one year at Fisk, Dr. Cole trans-
ferred to Overland College where she was
'turned on' to anthropology — a word she

says she could scarcely spell. From
Overland, she went to Northwestern
University where she completed Master's
and Ph.D. degrees in Anthropology.

At this point in the conversation I was
beginning to grasp why this was a voice
of knowledge. The reasoning was simple.
This woman was the sum total not only
of the experience of growing up as a Black
woman in white America, but also of
three university degrees and years of field
work in West Africa.

"At a very, very exciting and disturb-
ing period in our history — it was the
60s — I became very, very involved in the
Black Studies Movement as what I would
call the intellectual arm of the Black
Power Movement."

As part of this arm. Dr. Cole taught for
seven years at Washington State Univer-
sity. At that time she was married with
two sons. It was from there that she was
recruited to come to the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst. After her thir-
teen years at UMass she went to Hunter
College, and it was from the Hunter Col-
lege position that she was selected to the
presidency of Spelman College in Atlanta.

Her Years at UMass/Amherst

"I would not describe my years at
UMass as years that were [racially]
tension-free. I went there in 1970 [and]
stayed for thirteen years. I would describe
it as, in many ways, very typical of
predominantly white campuses during
the 70s. In other ways, I would describe
UMass as atypically sensitive to some of
its own problems. And I guess I even have
a hypothesis that suggests that a certain
amount of sensitivity to the problem
simply opens one up to more of the prob-
lem. But it was a period of very intense
organizing and activity — even though it
was the seventies and not the sixties.

"I was a part, initially, of a very exciting
department: The W.E.B. Du Bois Depart-
ment of Afro-American Studies. I felt
myself very much at the core of what was
going on in terms of the Black communi-
ty in Amherst."

Her Experience at Spelman

"I some ways, and you'll have to forgive
the metaphor, it's like the difference be-
tween night and day. In other ways, there
are very striking similarities. That is to
say, there is a certain culture of intellec-
tual life. And that is not immune to race

and ethnicity and nationality; but it does
have a certain core to it. And I think that
exists at Spelman, no less than at UMass,
Amherst, no less than at Harvard, no less
than at Howard. And so there are ways in
which things [at Spelman] are very similar
[to UMass]. You talk about libraries; you
engage in ideas; you have something
called a faculty; there's a student union
or a student center. So all of the trappings,
and in some ways a great deal of the belief
system, is there.

"But there are also ways in which
[Spelman] is so strikingly different. For
me, at this moment, it means I am in a
setting where the majority of the people
look like me; where race and gender are
not defined in terms of 'the other.' In fact,
I am in the majority. It is, very often, a
startling experience. And it is amazing
how one adjusts to it, and how good it
feels.

"It is rather reminiscent for me of be-
ing a young graduate student, going off to
Liberia, and for the first time then, from
1960 to 1962, living in a society that was
overwhelmingly a society made up of
Black folks. Here I am now in a setting,
where it is a school which predominant-
ly for Black women. There are some
things that happen in a setting like this.
And I think what's important is not so
much how I experience it as a professor,
but what happens to students.

"When these young women walk into
a classroom and do not have to begin by
proving that they can do math even
though they are women; or that they can
tackle and conquer chemistry, even
though they are Black. . . . They don't
even have to go through that. They just
get right to it. The assumption of their
teachers, and indeed their own assump-
tions, is that they are more than capable
of an engagement of whatever there is
there, intellectually.

"So I think for young, and not so young
Black women, Spelman is an extraor-
dinarily nurturing, affirming experience."

Racism/Conflicts at Spelman

"I don't use that word [racism] loosely.
To me it has a very definitive meaning
which is not applicable when one talks
about color conflicts in Black com-
munities. Yes, there's some of that here.
I know of no place in America where it
doesn't exist. It is a function of how we
got here and how we came to be of dif-
ferent color. It is not an invention, in an
interesting way, from the memory of
Black folk. It is an invention of a system
of slavery and one of the consequences of
all of that is that there are associations
made between color of skin, form of hair,
and status.

"But what has shocked me is not what
one might say is the presence, if you want
to use the terms of Sprite Lee, of the Wan-

nabees. What has surprised me is the very
solid presence on this campus of the total
range of colors of Black women.

"There's a myth that say that somehow
Spelman is a school run by very light-
skinned, very wealthy women who are
constantly oppressing the dark-skinned,
poor ones. That simply has no relevance
on the campus. Historically, Spelman has
in fact represented the range of Black
America. And when one looks at the pic-
tures, as I like to do, of women in the early
days of Spelman, one sees a really strong
presence of African-looking women — if by
that you mean women of darker pigmen-
tation. At the same time I am in no way
suggesting that conflicts are absent; I am
in no way suggesting that the phenom-
enon of color-coding is not present in
some belief-system at Spelman, just as it
is present all over our country."

'Iwas very privileged
to have spent some
small moments with
James Baldwin."

Comments on Spike Lee's movie.
School Daze

"I think that this is an important film.
And I think the importance of it, is in
many ways, a frightening statement.
What I mean by that is, it is one of the
very, very, very, very few films made by
a Black filmmaker in America in 1988;
and that is a serious indictment. Because
it is a film, which sits almost exclusively
in its own category, it is a film which is
being subjected to unheard of debates and
discussions. Jit is, in that sense] very
reminiscent, to me, of The Color Purple.

"So the first thing I want to say about
School Daze is that I think we ought to
spend a lot more time asking why Spike
Lee is one of the few Black filmmakers in
all of America. The point that flows from
that is that because it is a 'rarity,' the ma-
jority of us come to the film expecting it
to be all things to all people. I don't think
that Spike Lee would even suggest that
this is a film which indeed reveals the
total complexity of Black America. It is
a particular slice of a particular segment
of a particular weekend as a metaphor,
perhaps, of a larger reality. The film, it
seems to me, in many ways is very
creative. There are parts which I don't par-
ticularly like, but then, I don't particular-
ly like these parts in any of the modern
films. I have difficulty moving in and out
of a kind of musical comedy and a serious,
almost tragic mode. Maybe that's because
I'm fifty-one and not thirty or twenty. But
I do think that there are issues there that

are extremely important for us to discuss
and to understand and they're issues of
race, of gender, and of class."

"Were I the filmmaker, it would be a
different film. Were I the filmmaker, the
images of women, I am convinced, would
be very different from the images of
women that Spike Lee portrays. And so
at the same time that I have to understand
that it is his film, that it is his image, I
think that we are all operating under the
responsibility to push ourselves to unders-
tand the other reality; to pose the ques-
tion from the perspective of, if one is man,
the perspective of a woman, if one is
Black, if one is not. It is in that tension
of the double vision that I think we often
get some of the most interesting art.
Otherwise it comes out to me as a very,
very profoundly male film.

"It's the film of a very outstanding
thirty-year-old filmmaker, and I thinlc
everybody ought to be interested in that
kind of art. I think it's going to be, for
many white Americans, difficult to under-
stand what that film says for them; and
yet, on another level it seems to me, that
the film does raise questions which are far
beyond Black America. I think there are
questions there of gender and power; and
one can blink one's eyes and one can pro-
duce different scenes in one's imaginagion
and it is not about Black students, men
and women of Mission College. It is about
the power of men as excercised over
women, and they don't have to be Black."

On the passing of author James Baldwin,
and painter, Romaie Beaiden

"I was very privileged to have spent
some small moments with James
Baldwin. Small in the sense of the dura-
tion of these moments, enormous, in the
sense of the gift that man inevitably gave
when you were in his presence. I think
there is a huge void in the lives of all of
those who want some justice sometimes,
because Jimmy Baldwin is no longer
among us calling for it.

"[To talk of Romare Bearden] is to talk
again, of one of the cultural forces in the
lives of millions of Americans — of
millions of people of the Americas — of
millions of people in the world. It in-
evitably poses a question then, who will
carry it on — which I ought to take the
privilege of turning around to ask you.
What are you and the Black students at
a place like the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst doing? To ask
what you are doing, tells me in some way
what your relationship [is] to a Jimmy
Baldwin."

Rio Gabriel is a UMass junior Communica-
tions and Film major from Toronto, Canada

^•^*\\A ^it

,il

^««H »»f(»*«iHHi%

TJ^*

HKMi IKVHi^lHV

1
1

111^^,

mfim*mmMM

%^^.

i'*"W ^«<»'

j^a:

L^N^-^ — '.*r i

7^/

■

ari

<v^<*^

,4r-^5

j;i III iii >Hr f, ^ii\ \ i£i

Stained Glass Window

AKILI RON ANDERSON: /IFRlCOBRK

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

''Today we are still
challenged to be
dissatisfied. Let us be
dissatisfied until every
man can have food
and material
necessities for his
body, culture and
education for his
mind, freedom and
human dignity for his
spirit. Let us be
dissatisfied until the
empty stomachs of
Mississippi are filled
and the idle industries
of Appalachia are re-
vitalized. ... Let us
be dissatisfied until
our brothers of the
Third World, Asia,
Africa and Latin
America — will no
longer be the victims
of imperialist exploita-
tion, but will be lifted
from the long night of
poverty, illiteracy and
disease. Let us be
dissatisfied until this
pending cosmic elegy
will be transformed
into a creative psah
of peace and 'justice
will roll down like
waters from a mighty
stream.' "

'As much as I deplore
violence, there is one
evil that is worse than
violence, and that's
cowardice. ... A man
who won't die for
something is not fit to
live.

"The ultimate
measure of a man is
not where he stands
in moments of comfort
and convenience, but
where he stands at
times of challenge and
controversy.

"If you can't fly,
run. If you can't run,
walk. If you can't
walk, crawl. But by
all means keep mov-
ing."

"Our destiny is bound
up with the destiny of
America — we built ii
for two centuries
without wages; we
made cotton king; we
built our homes and
homes for our masters
and suffered injustice
and humiliation. But
out of a bottomless
vitality we continued
to live and grow. If
the inexpressible
cruelties of slavery
could not extinguish
our existence, the op-
position we face now
will surely fail. We
feel that we are the
conscience of America
— we are its troubled
soul."

SPIKE LEE (cont'd from 51)

as being sexist for portraying that, but I
don't think I'm sexist."

The biggest issue concerns the conflict
which arises between "light-skinned"
(Wannabees) and "dark-skinned"
(Jigaboos) Blacks. In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois
stated that "the problem of the twentieth
century is the problem of the color line."
What School Daze attempts is to show
how this problem has succeeded not on-
ly in dividing society in general, but also
in causing division within the Black com-
munity; and how we have to wake up to
the "cosmetic and synthetic differences
that have been put on us and that have
kept us apart to this very day . . . ."f

The Wannabees, as Lee terms them,
wear blue contact lenses and straighten
and color their hair, while the Jigaboos
have "natchel" 'dos and don't wear make
up. There is a song and dance number that
takes place in "Madame Re-Re's" beauty
salon which epitomizes the dispute
through the lyrics of Bill Lee's "Straight
and Nappy." "Don't you wish you had
hair like this, then the boys would give
you a kiss .... You got so much grease
up there, tell me, dear, is that a weave you
wear .... My hair is straight you see . .
. . But your soul's as crooked as can be."t

It is common knowledge that African-
Americans come in all shades — even
white. "You know, this whole class/color
thing, that came from slavery, when the

mulatto class developed from the massa
sneaking into the slave quarters and
them getting the preferential jobs being
the house niggers [is] still evident to-
day, "i Historically speaking, favor was/is
accorded by larger society to those who
were/are lighter in complexion, or put
another way, as close to the "wonderful
white" as possible. The issue of assimila-
tion in America is one of political,
economic, psychological, and cultural sur-
vival, so it shouldn't be a surprise that this
criteria for judgment should infiltrate the
Black community.

Critics of School Daze lament over the
fact that they feel that SpU<e "overdoes it"
with the message, and further claim that
the problem does not exist within the
African- American community. As far as
overdoing it is concemed, SpUte's rapping
on the issue is just as incessant as our
years "asleep" are long. The denial of the
color and assimilation issue is proof
positive that some of us are still sleeping.
Seeing the movie with a predominantly
Black audience throws denial right out of
the window as you hear the disapproving
reaction to the "dark-skinned" sisters in
the film. "People try to tell me that there
is no dark-skinned/light-skinned thing
and then you go to audiences and you see
the way that the men act towards the
Gamma Rays and then the way they act
toward the Jigs." Comments such as

Photo by Adger Cowans

"Don't kiss that thang!" — referring to
"Rachel" — are actually made.

Conflict also arose among the cast
members. Albeit instigated by Spike's
separation of the Jigaboos and Wannabees
to different hotels — the Bees with the
guys in a fancier hotel than where the Jigs
and Spike and the crew stayed — the inten-
sity of the friction could not have oc-
curred without preconceived attitudes on
the part of some of the actors. In Uplift
the Race, there are accounts by several ac-
tors about the atmosphere of tension in
the production. There is one account by
Tisha Campbell ("Jane Toussaint") in
which she describes her feelings about
playing the lead Wannabee character.
"There was one time when I honestly felt
that I was this character. We were film-
ing the Greek Show and I knew that I was
she, and I began to hate the Gamma Rays,
the Jigs, and hate myself. It was one of the
Gammas who actually came up with the
rhyme about the Jigaboos that the Gam-
ma Rays shouted in the Greek Show . .
. . To me, both rhymes felt uncalled for.
I looked over towards them (the Jigs)
when we had finished chanting. There
must have been this expression on my
face of anger mixed with hurt. Tracey
Robinson (ensemble Jig) called my name,
not 'Jane' but Tisha. I looked, blinked my
eyes, and looked again, and she said, 'We
know you're a Jig, we know you're a Jig.'

I guess she was trying to get me out of it
because I was sinking."

Lack of unity is exactly what Spike is
speaking about and he is speaking direct-
ly to the Black audience. "This film was
made for black people. I'm not going to
lie and say, well, I hope I get the
widest — everybody wants as many peo-
ple as they can to see their works. But my
number-one concern is that black people
see this film. And knowing how white
people always try to be hip, I know
they're going to come see it too. We had
a large young white following with She's
Gotta Have It, and I expect more of the
same kind of thing with School Daze. But
I make films primarily for Black people

Whether or not a consensus is reached
on the work of Spilce Lee is not really an
issue. The fact that he has engaged us in
a dialogue about several issues pertaining
to the African-American experience
which can longer be hidden behind kitch-
en doors, is testament to his genuine con-
cern for the furthering and survival of
Black culture in white American society.

"I'm not saying that I have the answer
to all the wrongs in the world or want the
burden on me of being a spokesman for
black people. I just try to present the stuff
in my films

"What I feel is a lack of unity among
black people today. A lot has to do with
racism. When you're oppressed you start
to hate yourself. It's like when they

brought slaves over from Africa. The
slave traders knew for sure not to have
a whole ship of slaves who spoke the
same language. If that happened, there
would have been a mutiny, an uprising.
We need to let people know this lack of
unity is something that needs to be
fixed."*

We don't all have to say the same thing,
but we should strive to at least speak the
same language. In the words of the im-
mortal Bob Marley, "None but ourselves,
can free our minds."

Martha Grier-Deen is a junior Afro-
American Studies major originally from
New York City.

SASTRY (cont'd from 61)

During Gandhi's movement, did you ever
participate in the marches, rallies and
other forms of protest!

Yes, I did. We were all high school
children at that time, but we still used to
go and march and wave the flags and wave
the slogans like "Quit India," "Immediate
Independence for India," and "Self Rule."
I was sad that Gandhi was assassinated —
particularly the way it happened. When
I was in ninth grade, I believe, that was
a very sad and unique experience. But I
did participate as a student in college, as
well as in political rallies that were aimed
at bringing redress of injustice to people
in different ways. As I said, I was kind of
inspired by Gandhi and I did have a single
opportunity to see a glimpse of him, and
that in itself was a memorable experience.

Are you an American citizen!

No, I am not. I am what is called a per-
manent resident. I suppose I should have
taken American citizenship, nevertheless,
I never took that step. Philosophically, I
have some problems with it. At the time
when I could have taken it, we had these
problems with the Vietnam War and the
Nixon- Watergate business, and that kind
of turned me off in some sense. I worked
for the community, I identify myself with
the community and the interest of the
community where I live. On the other
hand, I tell myself I am Indian, my ideas
are Indian, and in fact, for that matter, I
have an international perspective. I am
proud of being Indian [and] I am proud of
being here in a multicultural society.

What do you think is the biggest problem
currently facing India}

The problems of India exist primarily
because the injustices perceived are real
amongst various components of India.
The South versus the North, the Telligus

versus the Tamils, the SUths versus the
Punjabis, the Moslems versus the Hindus.
If we can abate these problems, I thinlc In-
dia can progress a lot. Some people think
that India cannot feed its millions, and
that is not really true. The Green Revolu-
tion has shown that India can feed its peo-
ple. I think the real problem is the con-
flict of interest, and the fights that go on
from time to time.

Presently, there is a lot of violence and
hatred toward Sikhs, Moslems and non-
Hindus in India. Where do you feel that
some of this is stemming from!

Well, human beings are human beings,
and they often get emotionally upset
because of certain wrongdoings — inten-
tionally or unintentionally done — by the
majority community. These injustices,
when they are not redressed in an
equitable manner, build up — you may
have tranquility and order, but it is like
a powder keg. Something very trivial can
ignite it. Once again, I feel that it is
parochialism, regionalism and so on. I
think these are some of the problems of
India, as well as elsewhere in the world;
I mean, we are imperfect human beings.

What are your feelings toward the present
Gandhi regime!

Well, I wish I could tell you, but I do
not live there. I think the problems of Ra-
jiv Gandhi is that his hands are full of
problems. If he can get the Hindu-Sikh
problem reasonably settled ... I have great
respect for the Sikhs. Sikhs are as great
patriots as anybody else in India. If he can
resolve that problem, perhaps the coun-
try can move in more creative directions.
Apparently, he is a very capable person,
but individual capability is not the only
thing. There are millions of people in In-
dia, and people can be very easily excited.

often by very trivial things.

What is your evaluation of Martin Luther
King, fr. and the Civil Rights Movement!
I think that [Blacks] really did the thing
that they should have done. Injustice was
prevalent and they stood up to that. They
brought attention to the national con-
science and that really had a major impact
on the progress of civil rights in this coun-
try. I think it is a magnificent contribu-
tion of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his
associates.

Have you had any experiences with op-
pression in the U.S. and what has been
the progress in race relations in your
view!

I [have] not personally experienced any
discrimination. On the other hand, I am
aware of people who did experience such
problems. I think the U.S. has come a long
way in one sense and still not quite [far
enough| in another. I also think that the
commitment from people toward this
cause has been declining compared to the
60s and 70s.

What is your suggestion for those of us
who are facing oppression!

First of all, be yourself. You have to
have the strength of your convictions, and
if you don't then you won't be able to
fight for your beliefs. This must not be
self-centered, but in a way it is a sense of
idealism wherein you believe that the
rights of the other person such as free
speech, free assembly and so on, are as im-
portant as your rights. You should be able
to fight for the rights of others so that
your rights are maintained — so it is a
sensitivity and commitment to seeing
that the other person is of the same
human kind as you are. When this realiza-
tion is permeated, I think we will have a
wonderfully multicultural society.
continued on page 86

I AM BECAUSE WE ARE (cont'd from 67)

school, such as I was doing; people who weie working on
degrees in art, as well as people who were professional artists
. . . and I gradually understood the concepts that each one
of the other nine people had and I guess they picked up mine
and it was a really great experience.

Nelson's artistic career coincided with the Black Arts Move-
ment of the 1960s. This was a time when Black artists strove
to define their own aesthetic as something very separate from
the European aesthetic which was always regarded as the
"norm" for critical analysis, but which did not jibe with the
experience of African-Americans in its entirety. The late, great
writer and literary critic, Larry Neal, summed it up best when
he said, "... [When] we speak of an aesthetic, we mean more
than the process of malting art, of telling stories, of writing
poems, of performing plays. We also mean the destruction of
the white thing . . . the destruction of the white way of look-
ing at the world. When artists . . . assert that Black art must
speak to the lives and the psyche of Black People, they are not
speaking of "protest" art . . . they are speaking of an art that
addresses itself directly to Black people; an art that speaks to
us in terms of our feelings and ideas about the world; an art
that validates the positive aspects of our lifestyle . . . that
makes us understand our condition and each other in a more
profound manner; that unites us, exposing us to our painful
weaknesses and strengths; and finally, an art that posits for
us the Vision of a Liberated Future." ["Black Art and Black
Literature," Ebony Magazine, Aug. 1969, 54-56.] The influence
this emerging ideology had on Nelson was to become quite
apparent in his work.

After he left Cleveland, Nelson started graduate study in art
at Kent State University. / seriously enrolled in school after
[Martin Luther] King was assassinated in '68 — April 4th — and
I graduated in '69. All through that process at Kent State, I
was trying to prove to the professors and the people in the
Art Department that there was such a thing as Black art. I
remember researching the Mexican muralists; Cuban painters
like Ralfredo Lamm; South American painters like Matta, and
trying to find out alternative views about what art was about.
That was the same time that I was researching the Wall of
Respect in Chicago and running into great resistance because
they felt . . . that there was no prejudiar in art; that . . . prej-
udice existed but it certainly could not exist within the world
of art. 1 remember very distinctly having very heated
arguments with my professors at that time as to what art was
about, because their major tenet was that art was for the sake
of art and I was developing a position that said that art was
for the sake of people — we were diametrically opposed. For-
tunately I could paint well enough so that I was able to
graduate, and graduate with honors. Even the school at that
point saw fit to purchase several pieces of my art and that
was good .... [While] I was working on my graduate project,
someone had stolen about half of the paintings from my studio
that I was supposed to exhibit. This was about one month
before the exhibit and I had let the faculty members, with
whom I was at war, know that [even though] that had hap-
pened, I was still going to have the exhibit. And one night
three or four of them came down to the graduate studio where
I was painting and Larry [Neal] was painting on a wall in my
studiO; he was making v& vt and ju ju signs. His book. Black
Boogaloo [1968], had just been published and he was reading
poems. When they came in he just disappeared for a moment,
or was very quiet. They started asking me all these questions
about what I thought about African art, American art and
Black art , and for three hours Larry started talking to them
about Aristotle, PlatO; about call and response from the
Greeks [of the Greek choirsf, from the Africans . ... He
displayed such a wide range of aesthetic, historical, literary
information that night — to the astonishment of these
professors— that I think by extension they thought that I knew

everything he did. I wish I had it on tape, it was the history
of man and their position in it. It was awesome. I did some
great painting that night. It was awe-inspiring. And I generally
think that everybody's got just about the same thing going
for them. But not that night.

After graduating from Kent State, Nelson went immediate-
ly to Chicago and hooked up with Africobra — an African-
American artistic collective. He had already met one of the
artists in the group, Jeff Donaldson, and was able to make it
to the group's second or third meeting. As compared to the
Creative Workshop in Cleveland, Africobra very definitely had
a political as well as artistic orientation. Africobra was the
same kind of communal spirit [as the Creative Workshop]
with a political ideology, an ideology that dealt with an alter-
native system — that system being an Afrocentric system as
opposed to a Eurocentric system.

One of the main facets of Africobra, which still exists to-
day, is their use of the Black 'folk' community as inspiration
in creating work which is reflective of the Black aesthetic. Also
prevalent in the work of Africobra members is the way in
which they avoid empty spaces "exemplified in their compact
and complex compositions with competing design pat-
terns," — again, relative to African aetheticism. [Beyond 1984:
Contemporary Perspectives on American Art, eds. Paul W.
Richelson and S.W. Payne, Trisolini Gallery of Ohio Univer-
sity, 1985]

One of Nelson's main areas of creative expression has been
in murals. Aside from the aforementioned Wall of Respect in
Chicago, Nelson has worked on over 40 murals. His first was
painted in Boston in 1973 in conjunction with United Con-
struction Workers and Dana Chandler, entitled Work to Unify
African People.

When he first began teaching at UMass in the early to mid-
seventies, he organized groups of students to paint several
murals in the Springfield area, some of which are still in ex-
istence. They would go to Springfield each day of the week
in the summer to paint. There were many more Black art ma-
jors at the time and they would get a stipend and credit for
their participation Ln the program. [This was when funds were
still being generated by "liberal" philanthropic organizations
in order to further Black culture.]

Nelson thinks that his best work is the mural he painted
on the occasion of Tuskegee's 100th anniversary, entitled
Centennial Vision. The piece that I've put the most blood,
sweat, pain and perspiration into — and a little bit of genius,
I think— is down at Tuskegee. It's called Centennial Vision
and it speaks of the first one hundred years of Booker T.
Washington's concepts about Tuskegee Institute, which is
now Tuskegee University .... 7 think I got everything in on
than one that I wanted to get in. If I had to stand behind one
piece that would be it.

Included in the mural are such historical figures as: Booker
T. Washington, Cinque, Sojourner Truth, Mary McCloud
Bethune, W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, George Washington
Carver, Dr. Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Harriet Tubman,
Paul Robeson and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Toni Cade Bambara had a few words to say about the mural:
"The Tuskegee Centennial Mural to celebrate the Institute
and it's mission, presented artist Nelson with an especial
challenge— how to collaborate with one hundred years of
history. 'I AM BECAUSE WE ARE' draws us into the 12x26
mural. A statement that hallmarks Black practice in art,
literature, music and dance — private expression derived from
group mores rendered for public ends, the blend of the collec-
tive history and the interpreting eye, the melding of the
worker's craft and the processes of the community that sup-
ports, sustains, and offers up its lore for transmutation by the
artist." [Vision— Tuskegee Institute: Nelson Stevens, 1980, p.4]

continued on page 85

AFRI-COBRA: (cont'd from 31)

"Afri-Cobra H," held in the fall of 1971,
also at The Studio Museum.

After this exhibit, many of the artists
moved from Chicago and Afri-Cobra was
forced to change. Today, the bi-weekly
meetings are no longer held. The group,
however, remains in contact tri-annually,
though communicating across the coun-
try makes for a much slower development
pace.

Afri-Cobra, though having undergone
many changes since its origination, re-
mains today one of the most significant,
enduring, and successful manifestations
of the Black Arts Movement of the sixties.

THE ARTISTS

Robert Farris Thompson, in his book.
Flash of the Spirit, conducts an "investiga-
tion of the visual and philosophic streams
of creativity and imagination that link
Black persons of the western hemisphere
. . . and of Europe and Asia to Mother
Africa."

Thompson's claim is that many aspects
of various sub-Saharan cultures, including
the Yoruba of Nigeria and the Republic
of Benin, the Bakongo of Zaire, Cabinda,
and Angola, the Fon and Ewe of the
Republic of Benin and Togo, the Mande
of Mali, and the Ejagham of Southeastern
Nigeria and Southwestern Cameroon,
have carried over into art and philosophy
of the people of the New World.

Afri-Cobra artists agree. When asked if
they felt personally affected by these
cultures, the artists responded in various
ways.

Frank Smith, painter, answered, "Yes,
I respond to their pattern and energy. "

"Black experiences are everyone's ex-
periences," explained Adger Cowans.
"The entire world was originally Black.
Everyone is African. " For this reason, he
claims, the streams of creativity of the
Yoruba, Mande, Ejagham, and other
cultures are in our heritage. Afri-Cobra
artists feel innately influenced by Mother
Africa, and the public responds.

"In my view the history to the west
begins in Africa, specifically in Egypt,"
said Smith. "The Greeks went to Africa
to be educated, so how can we talk about
Greco-Roman being the source of
anything} That is an intermediate period
which looks back to Africa. Everything
from traditional to abstract to symbolic
art are all within a single culture. Like
the begirmings of man himself I feel that
all art goes back to Africa where [civiliza-
tionj began. "

"However, " adds Cowans, "life ex-
perience is the one. Only if you Ve been
in direct contact [with these cultures] do
you fully recognize the influence."

Cowan's statement is echoed by
Wadsworth Jarrell, painter-photographer.

"Through my years of experience and
observation of people, I have found that
African people are the forerunners, in-
novators, creators . . . the awesomeness
of African sculpture and the rhythmic
patterns used in African weaving have
been a profound influence on me . . .
African people are my motivation. "

When asked whether there was such an
entity as Black Art, Frank Smith respond-
ed, "My usual answer to that is what is
white art, and that brings us back to
what is art. I would say that real Black
art will be the visual equivalent of Black
music and I think that is what those of
us in Afri-Cobra have been trying to pro-
duce. It's an image of jazz. As far as defin-
ing what that image is it is going to be
largely improvised. I think it will be the
art of the 20th century. I think that we
will find a forest of material in African
art. Most modern art source material is
in African art and in fazz music. That is
one of the things that I have been trying
to do with my work. "

"I feel that art in general celebrates
culture," says Akili Ron Anderson.
"Cultural dynamics bind together people
of a common ethnic background, race,
land mass, and aspiration. Art is that
which speaks of a historical context, a
sense of destiny, continuum, and a world
view. It is more than a chronicle of
history or a matter-of-factness. It has to
do with the imagination. It has to do
with what is seen and what is felt about
that particular culture. It is a dynamic
that becomes more than real. I won 't say
surreal because that has to do with a cer-
tain style, but it is bigger than life. It has
to do with all those things, and it has a
spiritual context. It excites people. It
makes people happy to be who they are.
It also reflects the need to pull ourselves
up from oppression. We're as great as any
other civilization. The body of work
should celebrate that as a whole. This is
what all art should do for all cultures.
African-American art should certainly do
no less than that. It has done that over
the years in many different ways."

Jeff Donaldson was asked to comment
on European imitation of Black art. "They
also have that right. They have been so
close that we share a common heritage.
They are just not able to do it as well as
we do. It is also true on the other side of
the coin."

Afri-Cobra artists cited a range of in-
fluences as having had an impact on their
philosophies and art. Many writers were
mentioned. Frank Smith included writers
James Phillips, Bob Stull and Charles
Searles. Adger Cowans feels influenced by
the biographies of Louis Armstrong, Bfllie
Holiday, and others and also by the works
of J.A. Rodgers. Cowans also names "jazz"
music as a major influence. His col-

leagues. Smith and Donaldson, also had
a word to say about Black music.

"It is like a language, " says Smith, "a
lifestyle, it is more than music — it is an
improvised way of dealing with life. This
is what we as a people have had to do:
constantly adapt, adjust and deal with
our environment by improvisation. It is
the way we play music, it is also the way
we produce art. When I approach the im-
age, I approach it in much the same way.
I have a central structure in mind
perhaps, but I work totally improvisa-
tionally. I don't use preliminary draw-
ings, no sketches. I don 't have any color
scheme in mind unless that is what the
conditions call for. When I'm working for
myself I just do it. "

"Yes, I like for my work to achieve the
same level of intensity associated with
Black music, " says Donaldson. "Not just
'jazz, 'butaU Black music. One of the ma-
jor attractions that jazz has for the visual
artist is that here is a continuum that one
can trace directly back to Africa through
our history in this country. We can 't do
that with the visual art because we were
forbidden during our captivity [to create
it.j We can take cues from the music to
try and find a direct line to our heritage. "

Other artists were also cited as influen-
tial. James Phillips and Jeff Donaldson
named Romare Bearden, the great
African- American artist/collagist as one.
A point which is interesting to note is
that nearly all of them named other Afri-
Cobra members as their major influences.
It is an obvious conclusion that the criti-
que and analysis sessions held in the ear-
ly years of Afri-Cobra were most
beneficial to the artists.

The artists appeared to be a bit thrown
by the question, "Is there another artist
or art form that parallels what you are all
about?"

The most common response was yes,
that many artists have similarities. This
is so, they responded, because "[We] do
not make art .... I am not the creator,
but the instrument of the creator."
[Napolean Henderson]

"God, great creator, made everything, "
agrees Cowans. "The artist is moved by
the spirit. He is the translator. For this
reason, you've got to keep your channel
clean and open to receive his message. "

Cowans continues, "Many artists
parallel my work. There is nothing new
under the sun. Everything has been done
already." All art is reiteration of visual
statements that have already been made.
"However, it is all original for our time. "

Henderson summarizes, "My work, in
its essence, is spiritual — meaningful. I am
the creator's instrument, endowed with
his knowledge. "

continued on page 86

Interviewed by Nelson Stevens and Barry
Brooks.

Edited by Skip Meade.

''. . . what people
are the taste
makers^'

. . . There is a tendency for power struc-
tures to attempt to establish the ideology
upon which is based the culture's Art and
Music. Rembrandt's picture "Night-
watchman" is said to help establish the
standard of quality for Western culture's
art. But when works like the "Night-
watchman" are pointed to, members of
the power structure are merely pointing
to themselves. This is what is happening
with the music of today. Those people
who support the symphony orchestras
like to hear Beethoven, Mozart, etc., so
that is what the orchestra plays. They are
reinforcing their own self-image. They are
establishing the ideas of what is quality,
what is unique, and what are the ingre-
dients of real Art. A power structure con-
trols what people like because those in
the power structure are the taste makers.

". . . Hawkins was
an intellectual
improvisationist. ''

... In none of the education I got in the
institutions and schools of music did we
ever deal with Coleman Hawkins, Charlie
Parker, or Louis Armstrong. The classes
in those institutions dealt with
Beethoven, Bach, the various periods of
classical music, etc. If that is the educa-
tion young people are getting, that is what
they know about.

For instance, while I was living in New
Jersey, a school teacher who lived down
the street found out that I was a musician.
She said she would like an African musi-
cian to address her class. After I helped
her with that, I asked her if she knew who
Charlie Parker was. She did not know.
You see, young people are not being
educated to the music from their roots.
They have no intellectual connection to
the music. Young people are not respon-
sible for anything that they don't know
about.

In an average school a music student

Y
U
S
E
F

may take a class in symphonic tone. In
the class you examine and go through a
symphony. Since the symphony is writ-
ten, it enters your eyes as well as ears.
Then the class's attention may be directed
to where in the work a dominant theme
might be played, then where the subor-
dinate themes are played. In the class, the
student's attention is directed to the
details of each transition. In fact, the
structure of the transition is examined
and the development of each section is
shown. When students come out of that
class, they are thinking that the composer
was a great man, which he was for what
he did.

However, this is not done for the music
of Coleman Hawkins. Hawkins superim-
posed changes on music. He superim-
posed changes which can be examined
very closely just as if we were to examine
a work by Beethoven. But this is not done.

If classes would examine Hawkins they
would come to an intellectual under-
standing of Coleman Hawkins as the
musician he really was. In "Jazz,"
Hawkins was one of the first intellectual
improvisationists.

Music students don't know that and
this is an example of how teaching has a
lot to do with what people thinl< or don't
think.

. nurture to
blossom and de-
velop. ''

... I remember years ago when I was
standing outside of Birdland and John Col-
trane was playing inside. There was
another young sax player with me but he
would not go in and listen to Coltrane. He
was holding his ground. You understand
that it goes back to knowing yourself. If
something is going to destroy you, you
stay away from it. I listened to Coltrane
and Griffin. Yea, I listened to anyone
because when I listen, I listen to hear the
SPIRIT, not the element of the music. I
listen to the spirit of the person, not the
intervolic elements.

I do not listen to capture technical
elements for myself. I listen to the spirit,
the intensity of the music. The spirit and
the intensity are the 'persona', and, if I
hear another person coming through the
music to me because of the persona's in-
fluence, then it makes me stride to ex-
press my own. I think God has given us
all that we need. There is no need to im-
itate anybody. Each person is .a unique
part of God's creation. All we need to do
is nurture our spirit for it to blossom and
to develop.

Photo by Nelson Stevens

. . . When I listen to my symphony, a great
deal of my life comes back. Only it comes
back in many different ways. I believe
that all of the ways it comes back are
positive because life is a positive force.
But not all of our experiences in life are
positive experiences; we learn from our
experiences. That part of living is hard-
ship. And after hardship comes ease. That
is what music is all about: tension and
release. When you hear something that
sounds dissonant that could be tension.
Life itself becomes tense at times.
However, there would be no challenge in
life without some tension.
. . . Even in my symphony you will hear
a Blues feeling. There are different types
of Blues. There is sadness and festive like
Charlie Parker. There is determination
like "Now is the time!",- explanatory lil<e
metropolitan Blues.

L
A
T
E
E
F

''Sometimes I am
moved to tears.

. . . After I was introduced to some of the
classical composers, I thought that I
would like to write symphonies as well.
That is one reason I furthered my educa-

tion in academe. When I finished, I was
capable of writing a symphony named
"Tahara." It was a thrill to create a work
for 80 musicians. It is a thrill to hear the
sound of your own expression coming
back at you.

Of course the greatest experience is
when the ideas come to you, and you
write them down. When I hear a sym-
phony orchestra playing my composition,
I am listening to the creative thoughts; I
am reliving their creation. In my thoughts
I hear the music I heard when I wrote it
down.

When I compose, I feel the musical idea
that must be put on paper. I also have to
reject those ideas that don't feel right. At
other times you, as the composer, hear
many things going at once. "Tahira" was
conceived for my "Jazz" quartet. The
symphony's second movement was writ-
ten for my wife. Sitting and listening to
this symphonic work sometimes touches
me. It touches me to be able to transfer
a deep feeling to paper. It touches me to
be able to relive ideas that I had at the mo-
ment when they were captured on paper.
At those times I am reliving my life
through hearing my music, and it is then
that sometimes I am moved to tears.

SYMPHONY No.1

r TAHIRA")

by
YUSEF A. LATEEF

MOVEMENT NO. 2

INSTRUMENTATION

2 OBOES
2 CLARINETS in bI"
2 BASSOONS
4 HORNS inF

2 TRUMPETS in b''

3 TROMBONES
TUBA
CYMBALS
SNARE DRUM
BASS DRUM
TRIANGLE
CHIMES
TIMPANI
VIOLINS 1,2
VIOLA

VIOLONCELLO
CONTRA BASS

Score in Concert

i'luien SHiti.

TE.

YUSEF

&fl.l

fMicft stm. X.

LATEEF

rhns

(Mm Sim. TL.

YUSEF

<A»)(£rt Sim. or

LATEEF

YUSEF

DISCOGRAPHY

— Prestige Records
Albums:

1. Eastern Sounds

2. Into Something

3. The Sounds of Yusef Lateef

4. Other Sounds

5. Cry-Tender

— Savoy Records
Albums:

1. Jazz and the Sounds of Nature

2. Prayer to the East

3. Jazz Moods

4. Jazz for Thinkers

5. The Fabric of Jazz

6. Stable Mates

7. The Dreamer

— Riverside Records & Impulse

Records
Albums:

1. Three Faces of Yusef Lateef

2. The Centaur and the Phenox

3. 1984

4. Psychicemotus

5. A Flat, G Flat and C

6. The Golden Flute

— Verve Records
Album:

1. Before Dawn

— Argo Records
Album:

1. Lateef at Cranbrook

— Atlantic Records
Albums:

1. The Complete Yusef Lateef

2. The Blue Yusef Lateef

3. Yusef Lateef's Detroit

4. The Diverse Yusef Lateef

5. The Gentle Giant

6. Hush in' Thunder

7. Part of the Search

8. Ten Years Hence

9. Suite Sixteen

10. The Doctor is In and Out

— C.T.I. Records
Albums:

1. Autophysiopsychic

2. In a Temple Garden

— C.N.C.S. Records
Album:

1. Hikima

— Landmark Records
Album:

1. Yusef Lateef in Nigeria

LATEEF

. the musician
and his Creator.

. . . Each of us as an individual has two
parts. We are two things. On the one
hand, we are able to experience things. In
other words, we experience feelings and
our reactions to things in the outside
world. But we are more than just housed
in this protoplasm. Just being a mass of
protoplasm is not being human. We have
that other part of ourselves which is our
thinking. We have to nurture these two
parts. How do we nurture what we call
the immaterial self? Basically, the im-
material self is nurtured by love of God.
It follows that if you love God, then you
love God's creations.

If I have a deep feeling for God, then I
can become capable of expressing these
deep feelings with whatever I do. This
allows me to appreciate someone else
who is trying to do the same thing. What
I listen to, when I listen to "Jazz," or a
vocal musician, is this: I listen to the
depth of expression of the relationship
between the musician and his knowledge
of the Creation, and the Creator. Why did
John Coltrane write something called
"Love Supreme"? Playing "Jazz" music is
more than an intellectual exercise.

John Coltrane used to say that one
thing that was hard for him was to know
when to end. I guess as long as there is
life there is no ending. That is the way I
interpret the idea. It was because Coltrane
found it hard to end that he used to play
so long. He was reaching for a depth of
awareness of the spirituality of the Lord.
Life itself is a phenomenon. Life is an ex-
pression of Creation.

I AM BECAUSE WE ARE (cont'd from 76)

Nelson's commitment to aesthetic integrity is prevalent
throughout his work. He recognizes the importance of preserv-
ing African-American culture and is concerned about the cur-
rent scene as regards to a younger generation of Black artists.
/ think I'm very fortunate to have gone through the 60s and
been involved in that period of time. I think it 's a httle harder
now— I think its more difficult. I don't think that there are
as many artists in their 30s and 20s as there are perhaps in
their 40s who have gone through that period of time. I think
many of the doors that were open then — although we didn't
believe that they were open and we were trying to open them
as much as possible — have not stayed open. They haven 't even
stayed open for the group that I belong to. I look through my
resumX at the amounts of talks I was giving during a par-
ticular part of time and those talks aren't requested any longer
from anyone. It's not that they're not requested from me;
they're not requested from anyone; [because of] the Reagan
cuts . . . on the arts groups; the kinds of cuts to the National
Endowment for the Humanities and Arts. [These groups have]
all had a great impact on putting people in significant posi-
tions. I go to conferences and conventions and ... 7 don 't see
another generation or two behind, coming in and picking up.
I think the consequences of it are very bad. I'm not heartened
by it. I think that unless our culture is recorded, promoted
and written about and understood, it can wither and die —
kind of like a 'Raisin in the Sun' concept. From that stand-
point it doesn't hearten me at all. 'What does hearten me is
to see, at these conferences, two and three people — not the
same numbers that used to be — ]who are] really bright, real-
ly intelligent, really committed to expressing their talents.

Concerning Nelson's own artistic future he'd like his next
focus to be on creating art to be displayed on billboards. The
idea that excites me now is taking billboards, which are
located — according to marketing people— in strategic places,
and putting pure art on [them]. This can be done. It's not a
brand new idea, but it's an idea I'm going to start putting my
energies behind. And I know many artists who would like
the opportunity to deal with the billboard concept. That's not
the stumbling block; the stumbling block at this point is get-
ting advertisers who own the billboards to deal with this con-
cept . . . and give up the space.

Nelson's involvement as faculty advisor to DRUM Magazine
has also been one of his many professional accomplishments.
He has been advisor since 1977 and if you ask any student who
has worked on the magazine as to whether or not it could fly
without Nelson's input you would get a resounding NO! The
rapport and respect that he has for the students with which
he works is unique to a professor-student relationship. His
ability to step out of the picture far enough to let us learn by
doing is a quality which has earned him respect in return. One
student, Pancho Morris, who has had Nelson as a professor
and who has been with DRUM for a couple of years, com-
ments, "Nelson, through his artistic sensibilities, has given
me an appreciation for the arts — especially Black art — that I
never had before. The patience and care that he illustrates both
within and outside of the classroom makes him the type of
professor that students treasure and respect."

I I

Nelson Stevens' career has spanned over two decades and
throughout he has maintained an integrity and commitment
to the preservation of the Black aesthetic which encompasses
all social and cultural and political aspects of our experience
in this strange land. I thinic that his good friend Larry Neal
expressed it best when he wrote about Nelson's quintessen-
tial Centennial Vision.

"Here in this self-contained visual universe all of the con-
trary voices coalesce into a comprehensive artistic vision. As
rendered here all of the images strongly exude a sense of vitali-

BIRD FLIGHT

Nelson Stevens

ty and purpose. They all seem blessed as their faces appear to
be illumined by light from some mysterious source. For the
movement from darkness (ignorance) to light (intelligence) is
a reoccurring pattern in Afro-American historical narratives.
The mural is 'narrative' in that it is impossible to encounter
it without 'reading' something into it. Hence for me, the mural
is an epic saga on Afro- American leadership.

"So, and when the stories of the mural are recounted; and
when the various mythologies have been stated and counter-
stated, it will be obvious to all that though the mural is in-
spired by the 'idea Tuskegee,' it finally reaches beyond that
specific will of a great people who, like the Biblical Joseph,
managed to prevail in an alien land."

And when stories about Nelson Stevens, artist, are retold,
they will be about more than just one man's particular vision.
They will be about the collective survival of African- American
culture.

Martha Grier-Deen is a junior Afro-American Studies major
originally from New York City.

Ai'RI-COBRA: (cont'd from 77)

Barbara Jones Hugo explained the func-
tional value of the art of Afri-Cobra. "Afri-
Cobia will not only state our problems
and solutions," she said, "but also our
emotions, ouijoys, our love, oui attitude,
OUT character .... Art can be a liberating
force .... Afri-Cobra's visual imagery
should bring us together and uplift us as
a people."

Adds Adger Cowans, "I like to think
that my art raises the spiritual level of
[the viewer's] visual consciousness
through the eyes." Both he and Smith
agree that the gratification is found when
the viewer appreciates the beauty of their
work, and consequently "feels better. "

Hugo voiced the overall consensus of
the group. "In all of my work I am con-
cerned with messages to my people
because they must and will survive to
create a new world. "

Another question posed to the artists
was an inquiry into what they feel Afri-
Cobra has given them, and vice versa.

In reference to meeting the artists of
Afri-Cobra, Cowans said, "/ felt we were
in concert. We were kindred spirits. Afri-
Cobra has been beneficial to me, and I
have been beneficial to it. It has been
reciprocal. "

Frank Smith feels that his greatest con-
tribution to Afri-Cobra has been his at-
tempts at providing stability. "/ have
gained a lot of confidence from the group,
a lot of reinforcement. "

"Personally, " said James Phillips, "my
use of color and my . . . style is my
unique contribution to the group."

Added Jarrell, "The impact of Afri-
Cobra with me has been very [powerful]
in terms of growth towards Black
aesthetics. Each member has had an in-
fluence on one another, and it has given
me the energy to keep creating."

Akili Ron Anderson sums it up. "Afri-
Cobra has become a working philosophy.
It goes beyond supporting. It has become
an example for other people to follow. It

is self-perpetuating at this point. Afri-
Cobra, over its 20-year history, has
become an institution without walls,
because it does work. I hope that other
people will look at Afri-Cobra not
necessarily as something to emulate, but
it will become a cell that ]will divide as]
other people take a small group and do
the same thing with a group artists of
their own. It is not a matter of having a
great big organization. It is having that
group of people of similar interests, then
building up from there. That is what I am
hopeful for — that we could be a part of
something much bigger. "

Kara M. Banks is a UMass student and
Desmond T. Dorsett is a junior COINS
major from New York City.

SASTRY (cont'd from 75)

What is your position on the recent racial
attack on campus, and how did you
think the administrators dealt with the
issued

First of all, these incidences are perhaps
indicators of the deeper problem of a lack
of appropriate education. What many of
these students need [is] training starting
from grade one. Education should be in
such a way that it will open and broaden
the minds of people. Hopefully this will
allow them to grow in a multicultural
society. Certainly, at the University one
should make an attempt to broaden the
general education of students. This educa-
tion should be extended to the faculty,
staff, police officers, administrators and
everybody in the community.

Speaking of the administration itself,
they are as human as anybody else, and
they don't have the magic solutions to the
problems. Oftentimes, they are put on the
spot and they are expected to react quick-

ly, and they don't know how to act, and
in fact in many of these instances that
have happened, the Administration was
inept in handling these problems — and
oftentimes they acted with hindsight
rather than foresight.

What do you suggest that we, as a stu-
dent body, should aim to do to correct
these situations^

As a student body I guess we all have
to decide that each individual should
make a commitment to one's self, to a
code of personal behavior which does not
give any room for sexism, or racism or
any prejudice against religious beliefs.
Once an individual makes a commitment
then when something [happens], that in-
dividual should go and say to the of-
fenders "Look, you are not right."
Students as a collective body? I don't
know. I think some of these com-
mitments must be made at the individual

level. For example. If two people are sit-
ting somewhere and they make a racial
slur or offense against someone, and if I
proceed to just get up and walk away, I
have failed in my responsibility. I should
ask them, "Look, my friend, why are you
saying that?," and question their injustice,
to let them know that there are people
who won't tolerate this kind of behav-
ior. ... I think we have to learn to re-
dedicate ourselves to the fight against
prejudice. This fight against prejudice and
ignorance and lack of vinderstanding is not
going to be a quick one to be won. It is
going to take a considerable amount of
time. But we can mitigate the problems,
and slowly improve ourselves, provided
that everybody makes this commitment
today and tomorrow and every day.

Professor Sastry was interviewed by
Victor Alexander who is a junior
Biochemistry major.

Dark Beauty

by Victor Alexander

The jungle night was misty and filled with the fragrance of jasmine.

A voice searched for me in the surrounding darkness.

1 walked toward the edge of the moonlit forest, and I peered outward.

There 1 saw her, bathing in the mists of dusk which then transformed

into jewels of dew onto her shiny ebony skin.

Each drop shone as a diamond sparkling in brilliance as if from the

crown of Solomon.

She felt my presence, and turned; she captivated me with her gaze.

Her eyes were radiant, they were brighter than the early morning trek of

Venus through the heavens. —

She beckoned me, and then she kissed me.

Her lips were sweet as honey, and her embrace sent burning flames of

passion which shook and shattered the foundations of my being, and

the innermost parts of my mind. i

As 1 touched her hair, 1 felt the strength of the Mile, full flowing, life

giving and the daughter of a Qreat Civilization.

She held and caressed me, and doused me with her sweet essence.

And there she was: MY DARK BEAUTY

CANE

by Lori Robinson

The sun set behind the barn, leav-
ing the sky ablaze with orange
and blue hues. It was an inter-
esting sky because the clouds that appeared
closest to the sun were deep orange, a little
farther up they were lighter, rosy, then they
were light blue. The underside of the upper-
most clouds reflected the orange of the sun.
The sky looked bumpy, like crushed ice in
a multi-colored glass. An older man walked
into the barn, propped open the door, hung
his tools and descended into the cavernous
darkness. He stood black against the fiery
sky.

Cane Pittman stood on his porch watching
his animal brother. "Where's yo' woman lil'
frien? Is you as lon'ly as me?" He became
somber as the sky darkened and he heard
the creak of the barn door. The tiny animal's
eyes took on the glow of the night and it
scampered down the other side of the
building. Cane watched his father emerge
from the barn. His perspiration-laden plaid
shirt clung to his broad body. He had been
working harder since his wife's death. "I
wunda ifn' he lon'ly as me," the younger
asked himself. The two men were almost
identical. History had repeated itself. The
older man was a prediction of the younger's
future, almost six feet tall, thick-middled,
broad-shouldered, square-jawed and white-
haired. His hair was his most notable feature,
even though his nose was distinctly
Blackfoot. The snow-white wool which
covered his head, contrasted with his ebony
face. He looked up and met the questioning
gaze of his son, "You think I'll eva git mar-
ried. Papa?"

"In due time son, when de right woman
come 'long."

"How I know ifn' she de right one?"

"You know son, you know."

The porch was swallowed by the young
man's presence, he stared into the darkness
thoughtlessly. Everyone in the town thought
him to be strange, although they did not
know why. In fact, many feared him. As a
child, he played in the woods by himself at
night, which may have aroused the fears of
some. The majority of the population was
older, the children or grandchildren of
slaves, and they had very strong
superstitious backgrounds.

He did not cry when he was born, as a mat-
ter of fact, he didn't even cry at his baptism.
"That boy's gonna be a preacha," the minister
of the church predicted heartily, as his
stomach rolled with laughter. Cane never
became one. Nevertheless, as a small child
he was very much in tune with older peo-
ple. As a baby he slept when everyone else
slept and woke up with everyone else. He
never took naps. His infancy was dedicated
to observation, his chocolate brown eyes
followed everything.

"She shore is pretty, fact she beautiful. Got
a nice shape too, yeah real nice," he said, as
his eyes followed the very comely figure of
a young lady approaching him from the out-
skirts of town. Her hair was pulled into a
bun, her nose, straight, "Indian" he thought.
Her skin was the color of fine brandy, her
eyes almond-shaped and -sized, he could not
distinguish their color from the distance but
he knew they were light brown because he
saw her every Tuesday at the supply store.
He knew who she was but never ventured
to speak to her. "Hi you doin' t'nite, brown
sugar," he whispered with a Cheshire cat
grin.

"She cert'nly can walk, though," he
mused, "jes look at dem hips, I kin hear dat
music. Damn, she got some legs. Humph,
sho'nuf baby, Lord, I hopes I kin jes hoi' on
an' be still a minute. Gots to gatha ma'self
up, so's I kin talk to dis lov'ly brown thang,"
he thought with a smile.

"Good evenin' ma'am."

"Evenin' suh," she replied in a throaty
voice, her head bowed.

"An'how you doin' on dis fine evenin'? "

"I'm jes fine, thankye."

'"Scuse me fo' sayin' so ma'am, but you is
fine arready. What I wants ta know is how
you is doin?"

'Well den, I guess I'm doin' good."

"Humph. 'Scuse me. Ahem." He cleared his
throat, licked his lips and dried his now
perspiring palms. "What's yo' name?"

"Fern," she said, her eyelids lowered, her
mouth closing to a grin, and her head slightly
leaning to one side.

"Fern, I'm Cane an' I like yo' smile." He
smiled sweetly.

"I knows who you is Mistuh Cane an' you
knowed who I is, don' nuthin' go on in dis
town out'n ev'ybody knowin' 'bout it."

"Yeah, I knows who you is, but seem sor-
ta rude me jes rollin' up on ya, t'out no
kinda innaduction. "

"Well, I really gotta be goin'. I glad we
talked . . ."

"Well, does ya mind ifn i 'company you
home? Afta all, it is mighty dark an' I jes
couldn't sleep wunderin' ifn' you wuz safe."

"I don' think dat sich a good idea. My papa
don' lak his girls walkin' home wid no man
dat ain't p'sented hisself. He ol' fashun, dis
whole town be talkin' 'bout us fo' mornin'
anyhow. 'Sides, I be safe walkin' by myself,
I bin doin' it fo' awhile now. Ain't much futha
fgo."

""I know but, let me walk wid ya haf way,"
he said as he moved from his post on the
porch to come to the road to join her. "He
wood'n know ifn I only goes part way, an'
dats not d'ceivin' him 'cause I jes happen to
be goin' dat way my ownsef. 'Sides, I walk

wid ya part way an' den I'll waks behin' ya
de rest of de way and ya gets home an' I
keeps on goin' an' I be able to sleep 'cause
ya home. Tell you de truf, I wants to know
'xactly whures you lives, so I kin be shur
when I comes to tak ya fo' ice cream."

""Don' ya think ya should waits an' ax my
papa first?"

'"Course, 'course I wait. 'Til tommorra
when I comes by."

"Okay, Mistuh Cane."

""Jes call me Cane," he said smiling, as he
thought to himself, ""Shore feels good walkin'
an' talkin' to dis girl. One thin fo' so, she ain't
lak dem others dat let ev'ythin' pass. Dis one
don' take no stuff, dat's what ev'yone tole me,
when I axed how come she ain't got no man.
She pretty nuff to have de whole town afta
her, negro an' white. She right spry to be
so small."

By simply watching her walk, he could feel
the power of this woman over him. ""Her skin
look lak de way I feels when I drinks bran-
dy. It burn but it warm me all over, make
me tingly-lak," he shuddered. She had en-
chanted him. "She must know," he thought.
They walked towards her home in silence.

The air buzzed with the sounds of mos-
quitoes, the chirping of crickets and occa-
sional human noises. The moon, round and
majestic, illuminated the sky. It was perfectly
round, and pale, it looked as though a hole
had been punched into the black blanket that
covered the sky. Only the light of the moon
and that which spilled from the windows
and doors of the houses lit the dirt streets.
Because the weather was so warm, people
sat on their porches, talked, played guitars,
sang, or just rocked idly to pass the time.
They watched Cane and Fern pass. Although
they noticed, no one dared to comment. It
wasn't necessary. It was a beautiful night,
an unusual night.

"Dis a mighty pretty night."

""Yeah, it is."

""'Taint as pretty as you. Dem stars ain't haf
as bright as you' smile an' dat moon, dat ol'
moon don' move nowhures near as graceful
as you does."

"Thankye, but you ain't oughta be sayin'
all dem things."

"But deys all true and I'll tellya some mo'."

His ears rang as he walked beside her

and he reveled in the conflicting warm and

cold feelings that spread through his body.

He wanted to hold her hand.

He thought to himself, "dis the first time
we talked an' I hooked. She got me actio' fun-
ny; she gotta know. She don' seem in'rested
though, an' she ain't the game-playin', hard-
to-gets type. She remin' me o' de night:
mysterious."
"Whure wuz ya comin' from?"

continued on page 94

AKHENATEN (cont'd from 47)

by the ankh, also held in an outstretched
hand. Akhenaten's belief that every liv-
ing thing ovkred its existence to the Aten
is clearly shown.

Another unusual feature of the Amar-
na period was the existence of a standard-
ized system of writing — cuneiform —
which was used for all official com-
munications and diplomatic cor-
respondences. Trade was rampant be-
tween the upper levels of Egyptian socie-
ty and their counterparts in other
kingdoms. It is a tribute to Akhenaten's
success that the priests and scribes of
many cultures experienced such produc-
tive contact. Akhenaten emphasized
peace and refused to expand Egypt's
borders through conquest, preferring in-
stead the sweet bounty of truth and
diplomacy. Unfortunately, the in-
novativeness of the Amarna period did
not last beyond Akhenaten's reign;
culture and religion reverted to their
former state once he died.

Akhenaten distinguished himself
through his doctrine of monotheism, the
first of its kind in the world. Under his
reign, peace was made with the neighbor-
ing kingdoms, and both trade and art
flourished. Sadly, most of the products of

his genius did not persist beyond his
death; Egypt returned to her former
religion and the capital was reinstated at
Thebes. Akhenaten's successor,
Tutankhaten, was ruled by the clergy and
nobility and was told to change his name
to Tutankhamen in deference to Amen-
Ra. Thus, Egyptian culture came full cir-
cle and tried to forget "the radical."

The decline of Atenism can be traced
to several factors, among them unrest
within the royal family. If Akhenaten did
not carry on the military tradition,
Egypt's more ambitious neighbors did. A
war in Syria cut off most trade routes with
the east, reducing prosperity. Standards of
living fell, and morale was low. The very
couple who were supposed to symbolize
the unity and strength of the Aten were
in a state of flux. Queen Tiye had brought
two more of her sons to the royal court,
among them a young boy named
Smenkhare. "The king was a lover of
beauty and the delicate and lovely boy, so
like Nefertitti in looks, must have made
an impression on Akhenaten ..." [Col-
lier, 1970] Later, Nefertitti and the king
had a parting of ways, and Nefertitti left
Akhenaten. "And the courtiers were
forced to witness the king's strange

behavior as, month by month, Akhenat-
en, magnetized by Smenkhare and gripped
by a passion that was not religious,
heaped honor and glory on his co-regent
and neglected his queen." [Collier, 1970]
Akhenaten has been described as a
humanitarian and a lover of truth, beau-
ty and peace. Though throughout most of
his reign Egypt prospered, there came a
time when standards of living declined,
along with the king's adherence to the
very principles he endorsed. Akhenaten's
legacy, however, consists of a rich collec-
tion of art and poetry, and the foundations
of the monotheistic religions of the world
that developed later: Judaism, Christiani-
ty, and Islam.