Richard Wright On The Black Experience In America

President Donald J. Trump and his MAGA (Make America Great Again) right wing followers should seriously ponder the following words whenever they get the urge to disparage and demonize programs that encourage DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion):

"If we [blacks] had been allowed to participate in the vital processes of America's national growth, what would have been the texture of our lives, the pattern of our traditions, the routine of our customs, the state of our arts, the code of our laws, the function of our government? Whatever others may say, we black folk say that America would have been stronger and greater!" --Richard Wright (1908-1960), from his book, 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States (Viking Press, 1941).

The 1619 Project Puts Slavery And Its Aftermath In The Spotlight

The New York Times Magazine published hundreds of thousands of extra copies of its special 1619 Project issue (August 18, 2019),which commemorated the year 1619 when the first shipload of enslaved Africans landed in the British colony of Virginia.

Unfortunately, despite its distribution at schools, libraries, and museums, I was unable to obtain a copy. It wasn't until three days ago that I found a damp copy of the issue in a Little Free Library kiosk on Saint Nicholas Avenue in Harlem. (It had been raining that day. I went home later and dried the issue on my living room radiator.)

Finding that copy was like finding a pot of gold or the holy grail. I could now read, if I chose, the magazine issue and the book it spawned, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story (One World/ Penguin Random House, 2021) side by side. (I bought the book at the now-closed Target store in East Harlem in June of this year.)

Both the magazine and the book place slavery, considered America's "original sin," at the root of inequality and injustice in every aspect of American life.

The book will no doubt be among the many books banned and demonized in places like Florida and Texas. But, as the magazine issue's introduction states: "American history cannot be told truthfully without a clear vision of how inhuman and immoral the treatment of black Americans has been. By acknowledging this shameful history, by trying hard to understand its powerful influence on the present, perhaps we can prepare ourselves for a more just future."

The 1619 Project, the brainchild of Nikole Hannah-Jones, a New York Times Magazine staff writer, is also the subject of an original series on the streaming service Hulu. I'm looking forward to seeing it if and when it becomes available as a DVD set.

There Is Definitely A Need For A Black History Month

The African-American actor Morgan Freeman is quoted in The Guardian (April 18, 2023) as telling a British publication that he considers Black History Month to be an "insult."

"You're going to relegate my history to a month?" Then he goes on to say "Black history is American history; they're completely intertwined." Freeman should be reminded that Black History Month (originally created by the historian Carter G. Woodson as Black History Week to be celebrated every February) came about because black accomplishments were excluded from American history and thought not to be important enough to be studied. Plus, it should be noted, black history is not limited to the United States. There are black people all over the world.

If blacks had been included in the study of American and world history in the first place, there would be no need for a Black History Week or Month. And with efforts by Governor Ron DeSantis to whitewash American history and dictate how it should be taught in Florida institutions of learning, black history is needed now more than ever.

As far as Freeman's objection to the term "African-American" is concerned, my answer to that is, yes, we know Africa is a continent, not a country. But since few, if any, blacks in the United States can point to a specific area of Africa as an ancestral home, we can claim the entire continent because we know it is where our forebears originated.

The Forgotten Black World War II Veterans

I had four uncles who were World War II vets. Three served in the army, one in the navy. They served at a time when the American military was racially segregated. (A group photo of Uncle John and his shipmates attests to that.)

One of my biggest regrets is that I neglected to interview my uncles about their wartime service when I had the chance. I remember the four of them sitting in Aunt Vickie and Uncle Lyn's living room on 148th Street in Harlem trading war memories. This would have been sometime in the mid-1970s, when I would have been in my twenties. I heard them talking but I showed no interest in what they were sharing. I didn't realize that what I was hearing was important family history. History that should have been recorded on paper and/or tape so the information could be passed down to future generations.

Now I have to hope to find documents like letters and telegrams among family papers that addressed those war years as well as family mementoes from that time. (Aunt Louise, for instance, saved Uncle John's navy uniform including his dark blue sailor's cap. I found these items at the bottom of an old steamer trunk in her bedroom.)

The New York Times, in its October 6, 2022 issue, ran a review of a book called Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad (Viking). The author is Matthew F. Delmont, a Dartmouth University historian.

I'm eager to read it, all 374 pages. This sorely needed book highlights the lives and accomplishments of those, one black World War II vet, himself included, described as "a forgotten group of people" relegated to the status of half Americans. I hope this book will be a step toward recognizing their role in preserving democracy in America.

Inspiring Words From FDR

"With your help and your patience and your generous goodwill, we will do what we can to mend the torn fabric of our common life."--President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Poughkeepsie, New York, November 1932. (Quoted in Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady by Susan Quinn (Penguin Press, 2016), page 30.)

Can anyone imagine Donald Trump uttering those inspiring words? I can't.

The Declaration Of Independence In Words And Music

I'm amazed that conservative radio talk show hosts, who are so ultra-patriotic on the air, have not discovered the Fifth Dimension's The Declaration (Bell Records, 1970) and played it on their shows.

On the recording, the Fifth Dimension, the African American pop vocal group better known for hits such as Up, Up and Away and Wedding Bell Blues, takes the words of the Declaration of Independence and sets them to music, beginning with the words "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal...."

Maybe these talk show hosts have heard the record and think the Declaration of Independence is too sacred a document to be trivialized by turning it into a song intended for airplay on Top 40 radio stations.

I think it's a wonderful "song" and maybe it, instead of The Star-Spangled Banner, should be sung at public events.

In Ben Carson's Mind, African Slaves Were Immigrants

Ben Carson, the new secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Trump administration, may need to bone up on American history, especially that part dealing with slavery.

Carson told a roomful of federal employees, presumably all of them employed at HUD, that "There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they, too, had a dream that one day their" descendants "might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land."

A Washington Post report, published in the daily free paper amNew York (March 7, 2017) noted that his comments provoked "an uproar on social media."

It seems that Carson is unaware that an immigrant is someone who chooses to leave one country to settle somewhere else.The African slaves who were brought to America didn't have that option. Therefore they were not immigrants.

A Gay American In Paris

The format of the following script was based on CBS News' American Treasury 60-second between-daytime-program spots that were broadcast in the late 1980s. They highlighted famous American men and women and Americana.

I wrote this script and one other nearly ten years ago with the then-new gay channel LOGO in mind. I don't recall if I actually submitted  them to the cable channel. I do recall talking to someone at LOGO's California offices via phone about writing such scripts.

LOGO like CBS is owned by Viacom.

American Outlooks--Program 2

Writer: Charles M. Smith

June 18, 2005

OPENING LOGO AND THEME:

            (CELEBRITY NAME):

             I'm______with American Outlooks. His book be-                                                                                    came the first of its kind by a black American author.

             Who he was, after this.

COMMERCIAL: 15 SECS:

            (CELEBRITY NAME): CONTD:

           James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room is the story of two 

           gay lovers, one American, the other Italian, in post-war

           Paris. Baldwin was advised not to publish the ground-

           breaking novel for fear that its homosexual theme 

           would ruin his career. Baldwin ignored the advice and                                                                            the book, published in 1956, became a gay American

           classic.

CLOSING LOGO: :02 SECS:                  
            Learn more about James Baldwin in your local 

            library.

Note: I had to change the formatting of the script to make it more readable on the blog.

                                                                            

Violence In America

The following letter-to-the-editor was sent via e-mail to the Metro New York newspaper on May 28, 2015:

Dear Editor:

In retired police sergeant Sal Giarratani's letter (Metro, May 27), he expressed the belief that "a culture of violence...permeates communities of color." This view is one-sided. It also ignores American history as well as the '60s saying that "Violence is as American as apple pie."

The history books are full of examples of American violence: the Hamilton-Burr duel, gunfights in the American West, gangland slayings, the massacre of Native Americans, witch-hunts, Ku Klux Klan lynchings, police violence against labor organizers, presidential assassinations, to name a few.

And if you add to that the glorification of firearms in the movies and on television and the subsequent bloodlust and carnage on screen, you will see that communities of color are not and have never been the only segment of society plagued by violence.

Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith

Note: This letter was published in the Metro New York newspaper on May 29, 2015.

Bring Back The Western

Syndicated liberal radio talk show host Ed Schultz recently discussed the spate of cop shows on television and lamented the absence of  westerns like Bonanza. Like Schultz, I watch and like some crime dramas, but I too miss westerns, one of my favorite genres. (The closest thing to the genre was Deadwood, set in 19th-century South Dakota, which I watched on DVD and thoroughly enjoyed.)

According to novelist/screenwriter Larry McMurtry (author of Lonesome Dove and other western novels), in his slim book, Hollywood: A Third Memoir (Simon & Schuster, 2010), "The expense of using livestock, horses mostly, has risen so disastrously in the last twenty years as to have--for a while--virtually killed off a once popular and very profitable genre: the Western."

Let's hope that the film and TV industries will find a way or ways to resume making westerns, a genre whose stories are inextricably linked to the western expansion of the United States.

Two Must-Read Websites

Here are two websites that I highly recommend--theroot.com, a site that deals with African-American history and culture and is a joy to read and pophistorydig.com. I recently learned about the latter site in an hour-long interview that host Brian Lamb did with the founder, Jack Doyle, on C-SPAN. If, like me, you love history, you will definitely love this site as well as theroot.com (whose editor-in-chief is historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. of Harvard University).

The Social Justice Hall Of Fame

The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame by Peter Dreier (Nation Books, 2012) is so engaging, it is hard to put down. (I had the book on reserve at the public library for six months before a copy became available. It was worth the wait. I will probably end up buying my own copy.) Each profile is a brief summary of the life and contributions of individuals dedicated to bringing about progressive social change. These profiles are a great introduction and stepping stone to further study of each progressive person in the book. Among the luminaries profiled are Louis Brandeis, Harvey Milk, Eleanor Roosevelt, W. E. B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, Fiorello LaGuardia, Clarence Darrow, Pete Seeger, and Bayard Rustin.

While going through some of the profiles, I found a factual error in the profile of sociologist C. Wright Mills, author of  The Power Elite. Dreier writes that "In 1952, two left-wing writers, William Gaines and Harvey Kurtzman, launched MAD, a comics magazine of political and social satire that became an instant sensation with the baby-boom generation." The baby-boom generation, which began in 1946, would have been too young to have appreciated MAD. The people more likely to have been its first readers were those born twenty years earlier.

"Each of these 100 profiles can be read separately," writes Dreier, in the introduction, "but it will be quickly apparent that every individual was part of a mosaic of movements for social justice.  ...So it should not be surprising," he continues, "that many of these 100 individuals knew each other, were members of many of the same organizations, and participated in many of the same events."

Dreier admits that "[n]o single list of 100 people can come close to capturing all the figures who deserve a place in the century's Social Justice Hall of Fame."

It will be interesting to see if Dreier puts out a book called The Social Justice Hall of Shame as a companion volume.

A Tale Of Two Presidents

The following is a letter I wrote to Bayard Rustin on December 7, 1977.

Bayard Rustin, Executive Director
A. Philip Randolph Institute
260 Park Avenue South
New York, NY 10010

Dear Mr. Rustin:

Shortly after LBJ's death, you and A. Philip Randolph issued a joint statement to the press linking the late 36th president's name with that of the 16th president's.

I quote: "With the exception of Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves, no single President contributed as much to the cause of racial equality as Lyndon Johnson." Then both of you enumerated some of Johnson's contributions: "...the civil rights act of 1964, the voting rights act, open housing, and innumerable pieces of liberal legislation that were a part of the Great Society."

I agree that the emancipation of the slaves by Lincoln was a monumental and praiseworthy act, however, if we compare the overall contributions each made to the civil rights cause, Johnson's record glows like an incandescent light bulb. Lincoln freed the slaves, but he did not work diligently to see that they were provided with education, jobs, and housing. According to the noted historian John Hope Franklin, "Lincoln hoped that the Proclamation would provide the basis for a new attitude and policy for Negroes." In other words, Lincoln was relying on the state governments to be benevolent enough to take care of these newly-emancipated individuals, who had not been prepared for freedom. I think Lyndon Johnson said it best when he said, "You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying  'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe you have been completely fair."

John Hope Franklin points out in his essay on the Emancipation Proclamation that "...he had come to the conclusion that in order to save the Union he must emancipate some of the slaves." Also, "There was no emancipation in the border states, with which the abolitionists had so little patience. Parts of states under Union control were excepted...." But slaves in these areas refused to recognize the exceptions. The Emancipation Proclamation was not all that it appeared to be.

Can you imagine Lyndon Johnson, a champion of the underdog all his life, saying as did  Abraham Lincoln in 1858 (a short time before he became president): "I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races...." He added, "...and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." To me, this is nothing more than racist demagoguery and tarnishes Lincoln's image as the Great Emancipator. To say Lincoln, by virtue of the fact that he freed the slaves, is the greatest civil rights president in American history is as wrong as a left shoe on a right foot. That title belongs to Lyndon Baines Johnson, our 36th president from the Lone Star State of Texas.

I would be very happy to hear what comments you and/or Mr. Randolph have regarding this letter.

Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith

Note: No response was received from Bayard Rustin or A. Philip Randolph.

Surgery Without Anesthesia

While browsing through a copy of Daniel J. Boorstein's Hidden History (Vintage Books), I came across this passage: "...the enterprising dentist William T. G. Morton introduced ether as an anesthetic. Surgeons had long performed amputations by wielding their saws on screaming patients." Reading that passage made me glad I live in the more medically and technologically advanced 21st century.

New York: The Novel

I just started reading New York: The Novel, an 862-page historical novel by Edward Rutherfurd (Doubleday, 2009) that spans several centuries (1600s to the present). Rutherfurd beautifully interweaves fictional and historical characters, places, and events. For a history lover like me, it's a truly hard-to-put-down tome. The book brings history to life unlike a textbook.

I can't wait to get to the section that features the cross dressing English governor Lord Cornbury.

Advertising's Persuasions

Keep this in mind when watching Mad Men: "The growth of national advertising (and the prosperity that fueled it) fostered a very specific sense of Americanism and patriotism--wholesome, moral, aspirational and conformist--a sliced white-bread and apple-pie view of the world. Those who did not fit this mold, or could not afford to, were branded as outcasts."--Lucy Moore, Anything Goes: A Biography of the Roaring Twenties (Overlook Press).