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Friday, December 29, 2017
Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund
* to develop cooperatives and credit unions as a means for people to enhance the quality of their lives and improve their communities;
* Thirty small goat producers in a hundred mile radius of the Rural Training and Research Center, near Epes, have developed the Southeast Goat Producers Co-op (SoGoCo). This co-op which now involves 1,500 breeding goats has helped members to market goats at better prices, buy feed, medicines and supplies at cheaper cost and manage herd health in improved and effective ways. The co-op is moving forward with plans for a processing plant in future years.
Southern Alternatives in south Georgia to reorganize their operation as a regional and cooperatively owned pecan processing facility. We helped the cooperative to purchase and process pecans from its membership and other limited resource landowners with small-holdings of pecan trees for sale on a national mail order basis. 
* Fifty vegetable farmers who are members of the Indian Springs Farmers Cooperative in Petal, Mississippi sold over a million dollars of watermelons, peas, okra, greens and herbs to farmers markets in New Orleans, Jackson and Memphis; commercial food brokers serving the casino industry in Mississippi and many other buyers including churches, community organizations, food co-ops, tenant organizations in urban areas.
Marvin X: New Year's Message, 2018: Transcend Romanticism and Idealism
photo Pendarvis Harshaw
Often we dream a dream impossible, and in our starry-eyed romanticism, clouded by our rose colored glasses, we imagine a world of make believe possibilities. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream so far-fetched it reached the pathological. He thought integration was the endgame, yet it destroyed the very foundation of our self sufficiency, self determination and most certainly, our economic independence. From our own schools, cafes, restaurants, hotels, and other businesses, we now spend our money with others who will never spend their monies with us. We sit in their restaurants eating food that tastes like shit, just to feel good about ourselves, yes, feeling good while our own restaurants go out of business. Our women don their Sunday best to meet in white restaurants for Sunday Brunch, most often alone or with their sisters, eating and trying to unravel the conundrum of their lives complete with everything except the black man, their natural partner, the only one who can fully understand their centuries of suffering, trauma and unresolved grief.
Of course, our women have achieved educational and economic success and cannot understand why their warrior man has not achieved equity with them and most especially with the white man, the life long enemy of them both. So while they eat Sunday brunch alone, their shining prince is lost and turned out on the way to grandmother's house! Yes, he's doing his best to escape the police, another brother and/or sister that is out to take him to the dungeon, especially if he is a natural born warrior, yes, incorrigible and recalcitrant! Yes, he refuses to submit to the white man, black man or woman. He is an independent thinker and actor and cries freedom while his brother and woman most often are passive and conservative, locked in their survival mode, thus they fear him and the perilous agenda he has in mind that ultimately involves chopping off the head of his oppressor. As Fanon noted, what is the role of the oppressed except to replace the oppressor, to annihilate him once and for all times! Ok, revolution is to achieve state power by any means necessary, yes, liberty or death! But power, Black power in black face, not Miller Lite power, neo-colonial power, fake power, diluted, polluted, pasteurized and homogenized power! Raw uncut power to the people, not for the glory of revolutionaries to out oppress the previous regime (s).
Often times, in their futile attempt to reach the supposed humanity of the oppressor and their children, none of which are willing to give up white privilege without a fierce struggle that includes denial of any addiction to white supremacy, our children languish in dreams of Martin Luther Kingism, that ultimately become a nightmare!
It is most difficult to forgive our children for their romanticism and idealism, for persisting in their dreams of equality and equity, even apology and reparations that would be natural to human beings grounded in the natural world. Our dreamers find it difficult to imagine the 1% is quite satisfied to own as much as the 90%. And even the so called white middle class is satisfied, especially the white liberals who march with Black Lives Matter folks, then purchase the homes of Blacks who are then forced into homelessness, including living in cars and tents. And to trick the Blacks one last time, the neo-colonial whites put Black Lives Matter sings in the windows of their newly purchased homes in case the homeless hoards decide to return to adjudicate the cause of black homelessness. Yet the blacks, in the midst of their dreams becoming full blown nightmares, continue their mantras of I'm Cool, I'm Woke and I'm Kemetic, without any notion of transcending the Kemetic genius of their ancestors. Dr. Nathan Hare says they are lost in the Kingdom of Africana, wherever the fuck that is, most certainly it is not on earth, but another fantastic notion in the so-called Negroes world of make believe. At least President Donald Trump is telling his people about fake news, but we continue with our utter romanticism, idealism and psychosis, yes, a total break with reality.
And so our children want to believe in the goodness of all humans, though they are ultimately forced to realize some humans ain't humans, and this defies, most especially, their pseudo liberal academic training, simply because in the real world there are devils, beasts, snakes and other toxic creatures out to devour us all. Amiri Baraka noted, "We send our children to colleges and universities and they come home hating us and everything we're about, and they don't even know what we're about!" Dr. Wade Nobles noted, "While our young men are in prison, our young women are in academic prisons", sent there by sincere parents who only want their daughters to find mates, yet after achieving academic success with a plethora of PhDs and MBAs, must settle for a nigguh doing 25 to life or a mate outside the group or simply mate with each other. And imagine what this last point says about the future of the black nation. But in their dream state, it is what it is and it ain't no thang. But in any war and especially in America's war against North American Africans, the men must be eliminated or confined while the women are booty, i.e., the spoils of war. With black men eliminated, what choice do women have but to love each other and to configure a male/female partnership in same gender loving relationships. And those brothers unwilling to don the persona of Superman, submit to the she-man although we cannot deny the role of gay brothers in our liberation struggle. But tell me how gay/lesbian culture perpetuates our race! The sad truth is that gay brothers long ago informed me that the gay flag does not represent them, thus no matter what you are and claim to be, we are nigguhs in America and shall remain such no matter what gender and/or family configurations. None of us can escape the ultimate persona of the revolutionary, of Superman and Superwoman! We all share the burden of our ancestors to redeem our chips with the cashier of freedom. As per gender, the male is the first objective in war, again, women are booty and/or spoils of war. All others are simply additional booty. For sure, revolution only becomes possible when all sectors of society join, e.g., workers, artists, intellectuals, women, men, same gender loving people, youth, students, elders, politicians, et al.
But reality is a mother! Reality shatters the romanticism and idealism of even millennial dreams for a PC world. When they discover the pervasiveness of white supremacy, especially when they see its effects on their children, they are suddenly ready to rethink their romantic notions. One of my daughters told her sister she had become an undercover Garveyite, yes, after an education at Yale and Stanford that taught her Garvey was a damn fool! But she discovered white supremacy in the educational system of pseudo-liberal Berkeley, California, forcing her to home school her children, especially after observing the treatment of black boys!
As we enter 2018, I urge you to take off your rose-colored glasses and face reality. Surely, it is now obvious a black president cannot save us, something we should have known from the politics of Africa, the Caribbean and half a century of black elected politicians who are basically sycophants of the Democratic Party. Yes, Donald Trump is the white lash, the natural response to that toxic niggah who defiled the White House, even though it was designed and built by Africans, as was most of America. We should be happy President Trump and his white nationalism will force us, perhaps even by force of whip, to gather the energy to defy the reality of our wretched condition and make that awesome trek up the mountain from the dungeon of Toby to the Upper Room of Kunta Kinte's father's house. Yes, this trek up the mountain must finally and forever be a communal trek that transcends the myth of Sisyphus and all other myths that are not rooted in the abolitionist tradition, that do not end with a total victory of the oppressed over the oppressor. Stay Woke!
--Marvin X
12/29/17
Don't Miss The Nigga Debate
Marvin X will play the devil's advocate:
Nigger fa life!
MONDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2017
Marvin X notes on the upcoming Nigga Debate at The Qilombo
The Psycho-linguistic Crisis of the North American African
4/16/98 (c) 1998
By Marvin X
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com
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I have long wanted to discuss language problems relating to the psychology of the oppressed. Let's begin with the notion that the oppressed is a disoriented person suffering symptoms of amnesia :he is not quite sure who he is, where he is, where he came from or where he is going.
We know to a great extent he was stripped of his cultural trappings and forced to don the apparel of the so-called negro, for American slavery would not allow him to retain knowledge of his African self--it was a danger to the slave master's plan of eternal servitude. So the proud African was beaten down from Kunta Kinte to Toby, perhaps the first level in his psycho-linguistic crisis: who am I, what is my name? Once in the Americas, he was no longer Yoruba, Hausa, Ibo, Congo, Ashante but Negro, and according to Grimm's law (the consonants C,K, and G being interchangeable) he was a dead, from the Greek Necro, something dead, lifeless, without motion and spirit. Of course, he retained some of his African consciousness in the deep structure of his mind, in the bowels of his soul and he expressed it in his dance, his love life, his work habits, his songs and shouts, but basically he was a trumatized victim of kidnapping, rape and mass murder--genocide, for after all, when it was all said and done, between 50 and 100 million of his brothers and sisters were lost in the Middle Passage, the voyage between Africa and the Americas, thrown to the sharks that trailing slave ships, one of which was named Jesus, perhaps the same one whose captain had the miraculous conversion and wrote the song Amazing Grace! But changing the African into Negro was a primary problem in terms of identity which persists until today, even as we speak a new generation is now in crisis trying to decide whether they shall be called by Christian, Muslim or traditional African names, trying to decide whether they are Americans, Afro-Americans, African-Americans, Bilalians, Khemites, Sudanese, or North American Africans.
With this term I've tried to emphasize our cultural roots by making Africa the noun rather than the adjective. Also, I wanted to identify us geo-politically: we are Africans on the continent of North America, as opposed to Africans in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia or the Motherland. As such, we are unique and have created an original African Culture in North America, imitated throughout the world.
The whole world wants to talk like us, dance like us, sing like us, dress like us: we have the highest standard of living of any Africans in the world and are thus in the position of leadership even though we lack any degree of National sovereignty, are yet a defacto Nation, albeit captive and colonized, exploited 24/7 by any pimp fearless enough to enter the ghetto, and there are many from around the world, including Asians, Arabs, Jews, Africans, West Indians, and Latins. I refuse to be sympathetic to anyone exploiting North American Africans--call me anti Pan African, anti Third World, whatever, but don't pimp my people and expect me to accept it because you're from Africa or Jamaica. I wouldn't go to Jamaica and exploit Jamaicans, then have the nerve to refer to them as "you people." I would be nice and diplomatic on their turf--then talk about them when I got home.
We are often derided by our African and Caribbean brothers, sometimes called "black Americans" but often simply "Americans," said in the most derogatory manner, as if we're dirt or feces, meanwhile they are in America enjoying the benefits of our struggle with the white man. If everything is so cool in Jamaica, why did they leave their Island in the sun?
With the last statement, we enter the Pan African psycholinguistic crisis, transcending the borders of North America, and perhaps the crisis of the North American African cannot be understood except in terms of the international Pan African struggle for liberation from neo-colonialism, the last stage of imperialism. The colonized man--wherever he is, wherever he's from--is a sick man, mentally ill. And as Franz Fanon pointed out, the only way the colonized man can regain his mental health is through the act and process of revolution. Dr. Nathan Hare tells us in his introduction to my autobiography SOMETHIN' PROPER, that neither messianic religiosity nor chemical dependency will free us. We must grab the bull by the horns or slay the dragon.
I referred to an African as black brother recently. He responded, "Why do you call me that?" "What do you want me to call you," I asked. He said, "Call me gentleman." And the beat goes on. Here was a man blacker than night, ashamed of himself, preferring to be called a gentle man rather than Black man, once proud, but now whipped into gentleness, or servility, expressing clearly the mark of oppression, the mark of the beast.
The recent discussion of Ebonics was most certainly an example of the psycholinguistic crisis of North American Africans. Of course we are bilingual, with one pattern of speech used in the "slave huts" and one for the "big house." Technically, if we were able to deconstruct the language of the "slave huts" we would be in a position to deconstruct the "big house" language as well. And why shouldn't deconstruction of the Mother Tongue be the point of departure for acquiring language skills? Let's start with the child's primary language and build; teach the child that even his so-called slang, dialect or African speech patterns can be examined and explained according to the rules of grammar, the universal rules of grammar, i.e., the science of linguistics. Is there any sound, any speech pattern in any language that cannot be explained and thus respected on a scientific level?
We know that no matter what language Africans speak, whether English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, we speak it from an African speech pattern, from an African grammatical structure. Is there a genetic basis for this phenomenon, I'm not sure, but its existence appears universal throughout Pan Africa.
Nigger or Nigguh has caused the most severe psycholinguistic crisis among North American Africans. Earlier we traced its etymology to the Greek Necro, something dead, which is more befitting and functional than the Spanish Negro (black), or Niger, from the river. We became dead beings in the transformation from Africa to America, so quiet as its kept, Negro is very appropriate to call us. Of course the Honorable Eliajah Muhammad said we were so-called Negroes and therefore not truly Negroes, but temporarily under the spell of white magic--white power--which caused us to be deaf, dumb and blind to the knowledge of self and others, therefore dead. We had become the living dead, dispised and rejected around the world, even today, although the vailent struggle of the 60s put us in a more favorable light in the eyes of the world. The dead socalled Negro awakened and shook off the chains on his brain and let the world know he was no longer dead, no longer a tool and fool of the white man. He rejected being called Negro and Nigger and became Black man, the Aboriginal Asiatic Black man, ruler of the planet earth, god of the universe. For a moment, it appeared he truly believed this mythology, which was as valid as any other mythology, at least it was original and Afrocentric. But with the destruction of the black liberation movement, we can say the Negro returned, as per plan of the U.S.A.'s counter intelligence program, Cointelpro: kill the black man and bring back the Negro or shall we say the Nigger that the Master used to know, and to make sure he remains dead, introduce CRACK to make him a first class zombie, the corpse of a man.
Imagine, for the first time in history, the black women lost her ass behind crack, meanwhile the white woman was at Gold's gym working on acquiring an ass, which I must admit, she has obtained. But this point takes us off course into psychosomatics. Let's stay with psycholinguistics.
In the 70s, 80s and 90s, the so-called Negro has been fighting to erase the N word from our vocabulary, particularly brothers in prison who have been the most negroid in their death dealing criminality. Perhaps in their guilt, they have been trying to purify their behavior and speech to gain self respect and dignity--if caught using the N word, they will require the user to do any number of pushups. This is very noble, but the reality is that the N word has now transcended the North American African community and is in wide use by Asian, Latin and white youth who call each other nigguh as a badge of honor. We no longer have a monopoly on our language, and this is another reason for the present crisis: our culture is forever eluding our control, consequently making us the most insecure people on earth. We have lost everything on the good ship America--for three centuries we lost complete and total control over the fruits of our labor, the primary source of security. How else does one secure the family, the women and children?
Not long ago, I heard rappers discussing their tour of Italy. Upon arriving at the airport, the first thing they heard Italian youth discussing was how many "Bitches" they had, obviously influenced by hip hop culture or shall we say specifically gansta rap--yeah, ganstas who when caught are ignorant of a preliminary hearing. But let us deconstruct the controversial term BITCH. Besides Nigger or Nigguh, no other term has caused more controversy of late, no other term has created a crisis situation among North American Africa, prompting the Million Man Marchers to vow never to use the term again. They claimed it demeaned the black woman, the mother of civilization. My personal view is that crack culture demeaned the black man and women to the extent that the term "bitch" has taken on new meaning and now refers to both male and female, and a discussion of the term cannot be limited to the feminine gender. Youth in the dope culture will quickly address a tweeking, fumbing OG as "punk bitch." For example, to a male they will say, "Punk-bitch, you better take this dope and get the fuck up outta here wit da quickness." This sentence is most indicative of the pyscholinguistic crisis because it reveals the utter destruction of filial piety (respect or duty of children to elders) in the North American African community. When adults began buying crack from children, children saw the utter weakness in the older generation and lost total respect which was expressed in verbal denunciations such as "punk bitch." In my recovery drama ONE DAY IN THE LIFE, a youth confronts the late Huey Newton and myself with the following words as we sat in a West Oakland crack house: "Yeah, you nigguhs is dope fiends, you ain't no revolutionaries, so don't say shit to me bout no program. How you gon buy dope from me and my podnas--I mean, I'm in recovery now but when I was a dealer, you couldn't come to me and tell me you some revolutionaries--you some punk-bitch nigguhs. When you get your shit together we'll have some respect fa ya, but until then, don't talk to us bout no revolution, O.G., cause if I saw ya comin on my turf, I'd make a movie out that ass, podna. Don't be no walkin contradiction ma nigguhs."
My associate, J.B. Saunders, asked me to include a word-picture of male "bitch behavior" as expressed in the crack ritual. An example of this comes from the obserevation of monkeys when the female is ready to present herself to the male. She will go to a corner of a cage or by a tree and exposed her rear end to the male, letting hm know he can come and get her or know her as the Bible says. In the crack house, the male bitch will expose his posterior in his ritual of crawling on all fours around the room, supposedly looking for crack, but mainly picking up lint and other particles, even chips of dry wall. The ultimately expression of male bitch behavior is the so-called straight guy who under desperation, i,e. , when the tweeking ritual is exhausted, will present his posterior to the dope dealer--accompanied with the words "I'll do anything for another hit," and perform homosexual acts to obtain more crack, but in his psycho-linguistic crisis he adamantly denies he is gay, all the while swallowing the dope dealer's penis and cum. The worse bitch in the world is the bitch in denial! And even that bitch will--in a moment of scandalous activity declare, "I know I'm a bitch." But why bitch? My views on the matter are prejudiced by the fact that I grew up in a house with six sisters who referred to themselves as bitches--and I must say, many times acted like bitches, if we mean behavior unbecoming a woman--such behavior being acceptable only during PMS or pregnancy! But is it demeaning to say, "That's a fine bitch!" We know words only have the power we give them, i.e., we define words. Bourgeoisie culture cannot define mass culture or the culture of the grass roots. A rich man cannot tell a poor man what to say. If a rich man comes to the poor man's community, he better talk like a poor man or he may be a dead man! Those who want to criminalize black language are in many cases people who are in the business of criminalizing black people for the benefit of the real criminals, the Masters of the Realm. Not only do you not like the way I talk, but you don't like my dress, my eating habits, my choice of drugs, they way I pray and the loud manner of my worship, how I earn a living--my hair or non-hair--actually, you don't like anything about me, in fact, you wish I were dead, if fact, you do everything you can to kill me, in fact, you have now made a new industry of confining me for life without the possibility of parole.
From a writer's perspective, a poet, much of endgame in the psycholinguistic crisis is censorship, pure and simple, a violation of First Amendment rights and human rights. I have a right to say what I want to say the way I want to say it. This is an old tired discussion we encountered thirty years ago in the Black Arts/Black Culture revolution of the 60s: shall we define ourselves or the shall the masters and their pitiful bourgeoisie imps impose their definitions, their hypocritical, perverted moral standards. If a bitch is bitch call her a bitch. If yo mama is a bitch call her a bitch. If your wife is a bitch call it, your daughters call it. The worse bitch in the world is the bitch in denial. And as I've said, men are known to be bitches too!
There was a time when we were kings and queens, in Africa and during the 60s in America, but this was B.C., before crack. With the coming of crack, we reduced ourselves beyond slavery. We returned to the auction block of the crack house, and indeed, in fact, became bitches and hoes. With crack, the sexual etiquette of North American Africans has been forever altered and whether we will again reach the level of kings and queens depends more on the success of our total liberation than our correct grammatical structure, after all, we see Asians, Arabs, Latins, come to America and get rich while speaking no English, yet we are being deluded by our leaders into believing we must speak the Kings English in order to be successful. If nothing else, the rappers have shown us they can make millions for themselves and billions for the white man utilizing three words: bitch, hoe and motherfucker. The tragic reality is that the black bourgeoisie failed to teach inner city youth proper English or anything proper for that matter, so the upper class must reap with rewards of neglect, in the form of their children as well, enraptured by rap and thus incomprehensible to the middle-class parents--as my daughter has said, "You might not like rap, but if you want to understand me, you better try to understand rap." To paraphrase Eryka Badu, the psycholinguistic crisis goes on and on......on and on.....
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SUNDAY, JULY 16, 2017
transcending the psycho-linguistic crisis of north american africans
Toward the Unity of North American Africans--Unity of Language
Language unifies a people, when they speak a common language, when there is a consensus on word definitions, an agreement on what terms are sacred and what words are profane and obscene.
Chaos comes into a culture when these is no longer a consensus on language, or what we call a psycholinguistic crisis, for words define reality. Words are the vehicle we use to express our interpretation of reality. When the words lose a once agreed upon meaning, it is as though the earth shifts beneath our feet, for we are no longer able to communicate with each other. We then suffer a mental paralysis, a breakdown of the psyche because we are talking loud but saying nothing.
The words thus lose their meaning for there is no agreement. If the culture in its normal state is communal but suddenly the focus shifts to the supremacy of the individual, then we have a problem. We cannot unite for freedom when there is no agreed definition of freedom. For you, freedom is a job. For her, freedom is land and economic independence. For him, freedom is being with same gender loving people, and for her it is the same. Nothing else matters. So what items can we agree upon that defines freedom? And are we going around the corner together or do we have a divisive situation that shall lead us nowhere except to tread water in a pitiful state until we drown, since we refuse to help each other push our agenda items because we don't agree.
We started out on freedom but got diverted into things not communal but individual. Or the language was polluted by class division. The bourgeoisie culture police attempted to define the terms of reality. We wonder by what right do they assume the gate keeper role. Perhaps by being placed into leadership by the oppressor.
In the 1960s, we revolted against the language of the colonial elite, the leadership of the liberation movement shifted because a new consensus on language came into vogue, the language of black power that transcended civil rights to human rights, that shifted from integration to liberation and yes, sometimes, separation. The old language was suddenly obsolete. The term Negro was cast into the dustbin of history. The Negro psycholinguistics shifted from passivity and non violence to revolution.
The Black Arts Movement helped to cause the paradigm shift in terms of language. We revolted from the bourgeoisie socalled proper speech. In our plays, poems, essays, songs, we broke free of the conservative language. We used such terms as motherfucker, yes, bitch, devil, cracker, peckerwoood, and other terms to express our rejection of the American language in favor our our Mother tongue, the raw ghetto language so despised by our culture police, for they were rejected as well. Of course we went to the extreme when we said anyone over thirty should be killed (Bobby Seale). But the expression in grass roots language advanced the freedom mentality in our people. We suddenly realized we can say what we want, we're truly free to do so.
Of course there was reaction, from the oppressor and the colonial elite. The police attempted to ban our plays, to invade our performances, to arrest us if we showed up to perform. The bourgeoisie refused to support us with their money. All this was actually good because it inspired us to continue doing our thing, realizing we were truly independent, no longer slaves to anyone.
We were not able to return to our native language as Ngugi wa Thiango has called upon African writers to do, for we have no idea what it is, though we attempted to learn Swahili, Arabic and Yoruba. And the little we learned helped advance our black consciousness and heal our psycholinguistic crisis. Yes, these languages unified some of us. We held classes in the hood with grass roots people who wanted to transcend the English or American language we called the slave master's language, so how can we ever break free speaking this devil language. This is the language of the kidnapper, the rapist, the man and woman who lynched us, who stole our very identity and replace it with his notion of our very being. Thus, it is he and his language that is profane and obscene, and must be rejected, for it is not the language of love, it is the language of violence and madness.
We thus call for silence as the language of love, since our psycholinguistic crisis is so great it is the cause of physical, emotional and verbal violence with our mates. Almost any word we say is cause for argument. And it is the same when we gather at conferences and gatherings. We must spend an inordinate amount of time debating terms, defining what we mean by freedom, liberation, reparations, gender identity. Yes, what is a woman, what is a man. Today "black brothers" is a gay term. How did "black brother" shift from revolutionary black men to gay men? Of course language is fluid and undergoing constant change. And those with power attempt to define the terms. How else did we come upon this English/American language? It was a violent act, a long process of domination and oppression. Toby was physically abused until he renounced his holy name Kunta Kinte. Muhammad Ali reversed the process, not only by renaming himself but forcing his opponent to call out his name in the ring. Ali chanted, "What's my name, what's my name?" as he beat down his opponent, but he was calling for more than name recognition but for the recognition of his being as a free black man, the member of the Nation of Islam, a transcendence of his American slave identity.
And yet today we have a reaction by the culture police such as Bill Crosby and others who would have us claim our American identity and stop naming our children African and/or Muslim names. He doesn't tell Jose to call himself Joe. He doesn't tell the Chinese who get rich in the hood selling us their food but speaking no English/American to go learn English/American.
He don't tell the Arabs who get rich selling us swine and wine in the name of Allah, to stop speaking Arabic in the hood and speak English/America.
Clearly, Bill Crosby suffers a psycholinguistic crisis of major proportion. And he is not alone. It is again for this reason that I call for the language of silence as the language of love, until we can indeed arrive at a new consensus. The Million Man March brothers took a vow to never use the term bitch. But in the hood bitch is clearly a trans-gender term, for males are called bitches these days, especially when they come incorrect in the dope culture. The dope boys will address an adult male dope fiend as punk bitch. "Punk bitch you better take this dope and get the fuck up otter here wit da quickness 'fore I smoke yo ass."
It's possible the language shifted when adults began buying dope from children, especially during the Crack era, reversing the natural order of adults serving children, thus children lost all respect for their elders and this aspect of the psycholinguistic crisis resulted. It was being addressed with this language when I was a dope fiend that made me want to recover so that I would no longer be so verbally debased by children who had every right to talk to me in this manner because I was, as a dope fiend, in the persona of a punk bitch!
There shall be no language of love until we stop behaving like a nigguh or punk bitch. Don't tell me to stop saying motherfucker while you are in bed with your mother, son, daughter. Who is the real motherfucker up in here, me or you? I'm saying it but you doing it!
Language confusion exists when there are contradictions in behavior, especially adult behavior that the children observe. And so when we hear them on the street, at school, in the clubs, in their raps, we must ask ourselves where they got this language from, and more importantly, what is the meaning of it. They are simply trying to do as we did, give order to reality by way of language. Is it better to be silent, to say nothing since the entire language is vile, polluted and corrupted. Let us not go to an examination of the political language, double speak, evasiveness,
subterfuge. See George Orwell's Politics and the English Language. Listen to the politicians lie and attempt to deceive the world with words, yes, talking loud but saying nothing. Vote for me, I'll set you free. Change we can believe in. Change is gonna come. A chicken in every pot!
Yes, silence, there are possibilities for unity if, we just be quiet. To speak is to fail the tone test, for anything we say is suspect, for we don't trust the language, the words, and most of all, we are not truthful in our expressions, in short, we have become liars too, in harmony with the ruling class and the culture police or those colonial elite gate keepers in league with the blood suckers of the poor.
Some day we shall arrive at the language of love, where we say what we mean and mean what we say, where we understand the tone test and can pass it, with the police, with a brother and with a sister, especially our mate who was going to make love with us until we said the wrong thing, even though we didn't intend to do so, something just slipped out carelessly, but we blew it. Baby's mood changed because we said the wrong word, or she took it the wrong way.
Let us strive to reach a consensus on this pitiful bastard language we speak, for these words are killing us, literally. Better to speak as little as possible until we can transcend to a language that unifies us and allows us to love each other unconditionally.
--Marvin X
12/13/10
Language unifies a people, when they speak a common language, when there is a consensus on word definitions, an agreement on what terms are sacred and what words are profane and obscene.
Chaos comes into a culture when these is no longer a consensus on language, or what we call a psycholinguistic crisis, for words define reality. Words are the vehicle we use to express our interpretation of reality. When the words lose a once agreed upon meaning, it is as though the earth shifts beneath our feet, for we are no longer able to communicate with each other. We then suffer a mental paralysis, a breakdown of the psyche because we are talking loud but saying nothing.
The words thus lose their meaning for there is no agreement. If the culture in its normal state is communal but suddenly the focus shifts to the supremacy of the individual, then we have a problem. We cannot unite for freedom when there is no agreed definition of freedom. For you, freedom is a job. For her, freedom is land and economic independence. For him, freedom is being with same gender loving people, and for her it is the same. Nothing else matters. So what items can we agree upon that defines freedom? And are we going around the corner together or do we have a divisive situation that shall lead us nowhere except to tread water in a pitiful state until we drown, since we refuse to help each other push our agenda items because we don't agree.
We started out on freedom but got diverted into things not communal but individual. Or the language was polluted by class division. The bourgeoisie culture police attempted to define the terms of reality. We wonder by what right do they assume the gate keeper role. Perhaps by being placed into leadership by the oppressor.
In the 1960s, we revolted against the language of the colonial elite, the leadership of the liberation movement shifted because a new consensus on language came into vogue, the language of black power that transcended civil rights to human rights, that shifted from integration to liberation and yes, sometimes, separation. The old language was suddenly obsolete. The term Negro was cast into the dustbin of history. The Negro psycholinguistics shifted from passivity and non violence to revolution.
The Black Arts Movement helped to cause the paradigm shift in terms of language. We revolted from the bourgeoisie socalled proper speech. In our plays, poems, essays, songs, we broke free of the conservative language. We used such terms as motherfucker, yes, bitch, devil, cracker, peckerwoood, and other terms to express our rejection of the American language in favor our our Mother tongue, the raw ghetto language so despised by our culture police, for they were rejected as well. Of course we went to the extreme when we said anyone over thirty should be killed (Bobby Seale). But the expression in grass roots language advanced the freedom mentality in our people. We suddenly realized we can say what we want, we're truly free to do so.
Of course there was reaction, from the oppressor and the colonial elite. The police attempted to ban our plays, to invade our performances, to arrest us if we showed up to perform. The bourgeoisie refused to support us with their money. All this was actually good because it inspired us to continue doing our thing, realizing we were truly independent, no longer slaves to anyone.
We were not able to return to our native language as Ngugi wa Thiango has called upon African writers to do, for we have no idea what it is, though we attempted to learn Swahili, Arabic and Yoruba. And the little we learned helped advance our black consciousness and heal our psycholinguistic crisis. Yes, these languages unified some of us. We held classes in the hood with grass roots people who wanted to transcend the English or American language we called the slave master's language, so how can we ever break free speaking this devil language. This is the language of the kidnapper, the rapist, the man and woman who lynched us, who stole our very identity and replace it with his notion of our very being. Thus, it is he and his language that is profane and obscene, and must be rejected, for it is not the language of love, it is the language of violence and madness.
We thus call for silence as the language of love, since our psycholinguistic crisis is so great it is the cause of physical, emotional and verbal violence with our mates. Almost any word we say is cause for argument. And it is the same when we gather at conferences and gatherings. We must spend an inordinate amount of time debating terms, defining what we mean by freedom, liberation, reparations, gender identity. Yes, what is a woman, what is a man. Today "black brothers" is a gay term. How did "black brother" shift from revolutionary black men to gay men? Of course language is fluid and undergoing constant change. And those with power attempt to define the terms. How else did we come upon this English/American language? It was a violent act, a long process of domination and oppression. Toby was physically abused until he renounced his holy name Kunta Kinte. Muhammad Ali reversed the process, not only by renaming himself but forcing his opponent to call out his name in the ring. Ali chanted, "What's my name, what's my name?" as he beat down his opponent, but he was calling for more than name recognition but for the recognition of his being as a free black man, the member of the Nation of Islam, a transcendence of his American slave identity.
And yet today we have a reaction by the culture police such as Bill Crosby and others who would have us claim our American identity and stop naming our children African and/or Muslim names. He doesn't tell Jose to call himself Joe. He doesn't tell the Chinese who get rich in the hood selling us their food but speaking no English/American to go learn English/American.
He don't tell the Arabs who get rich selling us swine and wine in the name of Allah, to stop speaking Arabic in the hood and speak English/America.
Clearly, Bill Crosby suffers a psycholinguistic crisis of major proportion. And he is not alone. It is again for this reason that I call for the language of silence as the language of love, until we can indeed arrive at a new consensus. The Million Man March brothers took a vow to never use the term bitch. But in the hood bitch is clearly a trans-gender term, for males are called bitches these days, especially when they come incorrect in the dope culture. The dope boys will address an adult male dope fiend as punk bitch. "Punk bitch you better take this dope and get the fuck up otter here wit da quickness 'fore I smoke yo ass."
It's possible the language shifted when adults began buying dope from children, especially during the Crack era, reversing the natural order of adults serving children, thus children lost all respect for their elders and this aspect of the psycholinguistic crisis resulted. It was being addressed with this language when I was a dope fiend that made me want to recover so that I would no longer be so verbally debased by children who had every right to talk to me in this manner because I was, as a dope fiend, in the persona of a punk bitch!
There shall be no language of love until we stop behaving like a nigguh or punk bitch. Don't tell me to stop saying motherfucker while you are in bed with your mother, son, daughter. Who is the real motherfucker up in here, me or you? I'm saying it but you doing it!
Language confusion exists when there are contradictions in behavior, especially adult behavior that the children observe. And so when we hear them on the street, at school, in the clubs, in their raps, we must ask ourselves where they got this language from, and more importantly, what is the meaning of it. They are simply trying to do as we did, give order to reality by way of language. Is it better to be silent, to say nothing since the entire language is vile, polluted and corrupted. Let us not go to an examination of the political language, double speak, evasiveness,
subterfuge. See George Orwell's Politics and the English Language. Listen to the politicians lie and attempt to deceive the world with words, yes, talking loud but saying nothing. Vote for me, I'll set you free. Change we can believe in. Change is gonna come. A chicken in every pot!
Yes, silence, there are possibilities for unity if, we just be quiet. To speak is to fail the tone test, for anything we say is suspect, for we don't trust the language, the words, and most of all, we are not truthful in our expressions, in short, we have become liars too, in harmony with the ruling class and the culture police or those colonial elite gate keepers in league with the blood suckers of the poor.
Some day we shall arrive at the language of love, where we say what we mean and mean what we say, where we understand the tone test and can pass it, with the police, with a brother and with a sister, especially our mate who was going to make love with us until we said the wrong thing, even though we didn't intend to do so, something just slipped out carelessly, but we blew it. Baby's mood changed because we said the wrong word, or she took it the wrong way.
Let us strive to reach a consensus on this pitiful bastard language we speak, for these words are killing us, literally. Better to speak as little as possible until we can transcend to a language that unifies us and allows us to love each other unconditionally.
12/13/10
Jul 19 at 3:31 PM
Thursday, December 28, 2017
Norman Richmond, Our man in Toronto, Canada: Otis Redding
Otis Redding and Muhammad Speaks
December 13, 2017
Otis Redding
Dec. 10, 2017, was the 50th anniversary of Redding’s transition
by Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali
When I moved from the suburbs of Toronto to downtown, I got a new postman. He always talked about how he still had his tickets to see Otis Ray Redding Jr. (Sept. 9, 1941-Dec. 10, 1967) perform at the University of Toronto’s Varsity Stadium. Redding had been penciled in to sing in Toronto after his Dec. 10 date in Madison, Wisconsin. Redding, however, never made it to the land of Drake.
He did make it to Montreal for Expo 67. He joined Percy Sledge, Arthur Conley, the Bar-Kays, Bettye Swann, the Manhattans, James Carr, Betty Harris, the Five Stair Steps and MC Sad Sam. The daily press in Montreal covered his performances.
Many of today’s artists remember Redding’s contribution to the business of music. Jay Z and Kanye West introduced the hip-hop generation to Redding in 2011 when they recorded the track, “Otis.” The dynamic duo sampled the Big O’s rendition of “Try a Little Tenderness.”
According to Wikipedia, “Jay and West performed the song at all the stops on their 2011 Watch the Throne Tour. It was also performed at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards and at the 2012 Radio 1’s Big Weekend musical festival. At the 54th Grammy Awards in 2012, ‘Otis’ was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rap Song and won a Grammy for Best Rap Performance.”
Forty-four years before that, Redding was on top – known as the most popular male vocalist on Planet Earth. Redding was so popular in England that he ended Elvis Presley’s eight-year reign as the “world’s best male vocalist” on Melody Maker’s annual pop poll in 1967.
The life and times of Redding is the subject a new book, “Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life,” by Jonathan Gould. The volume has been receiving critical acclaim by the corporate and even the so-called alternative press. Rolling Stone magazine’s headline read: “Epic New Otis Redding Biography Sheds Light on the Singer’s Life and Times.”
Gould stated in his new book that “no interview or article mentioning him (Otis Redding) ever appeared in Muhammad Speaks.” Darryl Cowherd refutes Gould. Says Cowherd: “Simply put, that’s a lie. Because I conducted an interview with Otis Redding that was published in Muhammad Speaks Sept. 23, 1966, and I have a copy of that published article to substantiate what I’m saying.”
Phil Warden, who served as Redding’s manager from 1959 until Redding’s death in 1967, spoke to Gould. Gould quotes Warden as saying, “He went through about a three month deal with a Black Muslim group that strained the relationship greatly … There was even an interview in a Black Muslim magazine that Otis was going to announce his intentions to become a Muslim.”
Nina Simone and Otis Redding at the National Association of Radio Announcers Convention, Atlanta, 1967
Thirty-six years ago, I wrote about this issue in Al Hamilton’s African weekly in Toronto, Contrast. I wrote, “The con lawyer Don Warden (today Dr. Khalid Al Mansour) pointed out on his San Francisco talk show at the time of Redding’s death that Redding was assassinated by the Mafia for daring to attempt to organize an independent, all Black music corporation with some of the major Black artists.”
Don Warden (today Dr. Khalid Al Mansour) pointed out on his San Francisco talk show at the time of Redding’s death that Redding was assassinated by the Mafia for daring to attempt to organize an independent, all Black music corporation with some of the major Black artists.
As far back as 1967, Amiri Baraka (formerly Leroi Jones) talked about Redding and his place in the African liberation movement. Baraka points out in his essay, “The Changing Same: R&B and the New Black Music” (1966), “Music is the consciousness, the expression of where we are. But then Otis Redding in interviews in Muhammad Speaks has said things … more ‘radical,’ Blacker, than many of the new musicians.”
The cultural giant Oscar Brown Jr. (October 10, 1926-May 29, 2005) was a singer, songwriter, playwright, poet, human rights activist and actor. Check his classic “Forty Acres and a Mule.” Brown pointed out to me that the state feared Africans in America controlling a Mickey Mouse Club. The controllers of the system see this as the poor attempting to seize the means of production.
Oscar Brown Jr. pointed out to me that the state feared Africans in America controlling a Mickey Mouse Club. The controllers of the system see this as the poor attempting to seize the means of production.
Redding was more than a singer; he was also a songwriter, record producer, arranger and talent scout. His style of singing gained inspiration from the gospel music that preceded the genre. Redding’s father, Otis Redding Sr., worked at Robins Air Force Base and preached on the weekends. Redding’s son Otis III followed him as a musician.
Arthur Conley was Redding’s protégé and his 1967 song “Sweet Soul Music” was written by Conley and Redding and is based on the Sam Cooke song “Yeah Man.” It reached the No. 2 spot on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Billboard R&B chart.
Otis Redding performs with his band.
J.W. Alexander, Sam Cooke’s business partner, sued both Redding and Conley for appropriating the melody. A settlement was reached in which Cooke’s name was added to the writer credits, and Otis Redding agreed to record some songs in the future from Kags Music, a Cooke-Alexander enterprise, according to Wikipedia.
Redding was at the height of his popularity when he joined the ancestors in 1968. In 1967, Redding won over the “Flower Power” crowd at the Monterey Pop Festival.
Historian Alice Echols followed the Big O’s career. Echols pointed out, “Redding had been wowing Black audiences for years. But few … in Monterey’s overwhelmingly white audience had ever seen him perform.”
He had such hits as “The Dock of the Bay,” “Try a Little Tenderness,” “These Arms of Mine,” “FA-FA-FA-FA-FA (Sad Song)” and “I Can’t Turn You Loose.” I can remember when Los Angeles Police Chief William H. Parker died on Saturday, July 16, 1966. When it was announced that Parker had passed, “I Can’t Turn You Loose” was on the radio. We turned the volume up and partied to the break of dawn.
Martin Luther King Jr. calls for the resignation of LAPD Chief William H. Parker for the police repression of the 1965 Watts Rebellion at a press conference in Los Angeles City Hall on Aug. 19, 1965. Mayor Sam Yorty hides his face in his hand. – Photo: Larry Sharkey, LA Times
Unlike today, when African artists dominate the pop charts, it wasn’t true in the pre-Black Power ‘60s. Echols continues, “For example, Redding’s absolutely perfect 1965 album, ‘Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul,’ was the best-selling R&B album in the country but only peaked as the 75th bestselling album overall.”
Karla Redding-Andrews, Otis’ daughter, told Consequence of Sound that by 1967 her father had begun building a relationship with white audiences by playing at fraternity parties at white colleges. But, “Europe was a whole other animal.
“They worshipped him over there! The Beatles sent a limo for him and the band when they arrived at the airport, and The Rolling Stones … still talk about Otis and what a huge influence he was on them.
“Monterey Pop opened him up to a whole new audience. These young hippie kids, not to mention all the industry folks and press who also attended the event, took him to a whole new level of star.”
With all due respect to Redding’s daughter Karla, she was only a child when her father passed. He was a “Star in the Ghetto” long before the Beatles sent the limo to the London airport.
Africans in North America, especially in so-called “chitlin’ circuit,” who supported him before he “crossed over,” were the first firm supporters of Redding. As I stated earlier, we turned the volume up and partied to the break of dawn and danced to the music of the Big O.
Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali produces Diasporic Music, a radio show for https://blackpower96.org/, and writes the column Diasporic Music for the Burning Spear Newspaper monthly. He grew up in Los Angeles, leaving after refusing to fight in Vietnam because he felt that, like the Vietnamese, Africans in the United States were colonial subjects. Moving to Toronto, where he co-founded the Afro American Progressive Association and the Toronto Chapter of the Black Music Association, he won the Toronto Arts Award in 1992. Richmond began his career in journalism at the African Canadian weekly Contrast and went on to be published in the Toronto Star, Toronto Globe & Mail, National Post, the Jackson Advocate, Share, the Islander, the Black American, Pan African News Wire, Black Agenda Report, San Francisco Bay View and, internationally, the United Nations, the Jamaican Gleaner, the Nation (Barbados) and Pambazuka News. Learn more at https://normanotisrichmond.wordpress.com/ and email him at norman.o.richmond@gmail.com.
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
New Year's Day, the most dreaded day in the life of North American Africans caught in the American slave system--we should boycott New Year's Day in honor of our ancestors!
On Dec. 31, 1862, African Ancestors prayed all night until the morning of January 1, 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. Of course, slavery was not over, technically; however, Lincoln's Proclamation freed captives who could get away to freedom until the war ended and the 13-15th Amendments (collectively known as the Civil War Amendments) became law in January and December 1865. The 13th Amendment crafted new language to preserve slavery, a conditional freedom, the 14th granted black folks citizenship and the 15th gave black men the right to vote. None of these rights were inalienable or guaranteed. We never had "equal protection (or due process) under state or federal laws" (5th and 14th Amendment).
January 1 was known as the Jubilee or Freedom Day, celebrated by our African Ancestors.
Just as Maafa Commemoration San Francisco Bay Area Tweeted for the Ancestors Nov. 22-24; we are proposing that black people meditate, pray, gather and strategize for our people's liberty, Dec. 31-January 1. January 1 will be another Tweet for African Ancestors of the Middle Passage. There is a song and a dance for Jubilee. We will post it on Facebook.com/maafa-bayarea
Peace and Blessings,
January 1 was known as the Jubilee or Freedom Day, celebrated by our African Ancestors.
Just as Maafa Commemoration San Francisco Bay Area Tweeted for the Ancestors Nov. 22-24; we are proposing that black people meditate, pray, gather and strategize for our people's liberty, Dec. 31-January 1. January 1 will be another Tweet for African Ancestors of the Middle Passage. There is a song and a dance for Jubilee. We will post it on Facebook.com/maafa-bayarea
Peace and Blessings,
reply by marvin x
ASA, how can we celebrate freedom while yet in slavery and on the auction block, traded on the stock exchange which itself evolved from the African Village Wall Slave Auction? Rev. Cecil Williams said, "Wall Street is still an auction block!" Three million slaves under the US Constitution and the rest of us want to imagine we are free! If three million Jews were in concentration camps, would the others run around singing Jubilee?
--Marvin X
Chapter 3: The Slaves' New Year's Day.
Dr. Flint owned a fine residence in town, several farms, and about fifty slaves, besides hiring a number by the year.
Hiring-day at the south takes place on the 1st of January. On the 2d, the slaves are expected to go to their new masters. On a farm, they work until the corn and cotton are laid. They then have two holidays. Some masters give them a good dinner under the trees. This over, they work until Christmas eve. If no heavy charges are meantime brought against them, they are given four or five holidays, whichever the master or overseer may think proper. Then comes New Year's eve; and they gather together their little alls, or more properly speaking, their little nothings, and wait anxiously for the dawning of day. At the appointed hour the grounds are thronged with men, women, and children, waiting, like criminals, to hear their doom pronounced. The slave is sure to know who is the most humane, or cruel master, within forty miles of him.
It is easy to find out, on that day, who clothes and feeds his slaves well; for he is surrounded by a crowd, begging, "Please, massa, hire me this year. I will work very hard, massa."
If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during the year. Should he chance to change his mind, thinking it justifiable to violate an extorted promise, woe unto him if he is caught! The whip is used till the blood flows at his feet; and his stiffened limbs are put in chains, to be dragged in the field for days and days!
If he lives until the next year, perhaps the same man will hire him again, without even giving him an opportunity of going to the hiring-ground. After those for hire are disposed of, those for sale are called up.
O, you happy free women, contrast your New Year's day with that of the poor bond-woman! With you it is a pleasant season, and the light of the day is blessed. Friendly wishes meet you every where, and gifts are showered upon you. Even hearts that have been estranged from you soften at this season, and lips that have been silent echo back, "I wish you a happy New Year." Children bring their little offerings, and raise their rosy lips for a caress. They are your own, and no hand but that of death can take them from you.
But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns. She may be an ignorant creature, degraded by the system that has brutalized her from childhood; but she has a mother's instincts, and is capable of feeling a mother's agonies.
On one of these sale days, I saw a mother lead seven children to the auction-block. She knew that someof them would be taken from her; but they took all. The children were sold to a slave-trader, and their mother was brought by a man in her own town. Before night her children were all far away. She begged the trader to tell her where he intended to take them; this he refused to do. How could he, when he knew he would sell them, one by one, wherever he could command the highest price? I met that mother in the street, and her wild, haggard face lives to-day in my mind. She wrung her hands in anguish, and exclaimed, "Gone! All gone! Why don't God kill me?" I had no words wherewith to comfort her. Instances of this kind are of daily, yea, of hourly occurrence.
Slaveholders have a method, peculiar to their institution, of getting rid of old slaves, whose lives have been worn out in their service. I knew an old woman, who for seventy years faithfully served her master. She had become almost helpless, from hard labor and disease. Her owners moved to Alabama, and the old black woman was left to be sold to any body who would give twenty dollars for her.
The Slave Experience of the Holidays
The prosperity and relaxed discipline associated with Christmas often enabled slaves to interact in ways that they could not during the rest of the year. They customarily received material goods from their masters: perhaps the slave's yearly allotment of clothing, an edible delicacy, or a present above and beyond what he or she needed to survive and work on the plantation. For this reason, among others, slaves frequently married during the Christmas season. When Dice, a female slave in Nina Hill Robinson's Aunt Dice, came to her master "one Christmas eve, and asked his consent to her marriage with Caesar," her master allowed the ceremony, and a "great feast was spread" (pp. 24-25). Dice and Caesar were married in "the mistress's own parlor . . . before the white minister" (pp. 25-26). More than any other time of year, Christmas provided slaves with the latitude and prosperity that made a formal wedding possible.
On the plantation, the transfer of Christmas gifts from master to slave was often accompanied by a curious ritual. On Christmas day, "it was always customary in those days to catch peoples Christmas gifts and they would give you something." Slaves and children would lie in wait for those with the means to provide presents and capture them, crying 'Christmas gift' and refusing to release their prisoners until they received a gift in return (p. 22). This ironic annual inversion of power occasionally allowed slaves to acquire real power. Henry, a slave whose tragic life and death is recounted in Martha Griffith Browne's Autobiography of a Female Slave, saved "Christmas gifts in money" to buy his freedom (p. 311).
Some slaves saw Christmas as an opportunity to escape. They took advantage of relaxed work schedules and the holiday travels of slaveholders, who were too far away to stop them. While some slaveholders presumably treated the holiday as any other workday, numerous authors record a variety of holiday traditions, including the suspension of work for celebration and family visits. Because many slaves had spouses, children, and family who were owned by different masters and who lived on other properties, slaves often requested passes to travel and visit family during this time. Some slaves used the passes to explain their presence on the road and delay the discovery of their escape through their masters' expectation that they would soon return from their "family visit." Jermain Loguen plotted a Christmas escape, stockpiling supplies and waiting for travel passes, knowing the cover of the holidays was essential for success: "Lord speed the day!--freedom begins with the holidays!" (p. 262). These plans turned out to be wise, as Loguen and his companions are almost caught crossing a river into Ohio, but were left alone because the white men thought they were free men "who have been to Kentucky to spend the Holidays with their friends" (p. 303).
Harriet Tubman helped her brothers escape at Christmas. Their master intended to sell them after Christmas but was delayed by the holiday. The brothers were expected to spend the day with their elderly mother but met Tubman in secret. She helped them travel north, gaining a head start on the master who did not discover their disappearance until the end of the holidays. Likewise, William and Ellen Crafts escaped together at Christmastime. They took advantage of passes that were clearly meant for temporary use. Ellen "obtained a pass from her mistress, allowing her to be away for a few days. The cabinet-maker with whom I worked gave me a similar paper, but said that he needed my services very much, and wished me to return as soon as the time granted was up. I thanked him kindly; but somehow I have not been able to make it convenient to return yet; and, as the free air of good old England agrees so well with my wife and our dear little ones, as well as with myself, it is not at all likely we shall return at present to the 'peculiar institution' of chains and stripes" (pp. 303-304).
Christmas could represent not only physical freedom, but spiritual freedom, as well as the hope for better things to come. The main protagonist of Martha Griffin Browne's Autobiography of a Female Slave, Ann, found little positive value in the slaveholder's version of Christmas—equating it with "all sorts of culinary preparations" and extensive house cleaning rituals—but she saw the possibility for a better future in the story of the life of Christ: "This same Jesus, whom the civilized world now worship as their Lord, was once lowly, outcast, and despised; born of the most hated people of the world . . . laid in the manger of a stable at Bethlehem . . . this Jesus is worshipped now" (p. 203, 47-48). For Ann, Christmas symbolized the birth of the very hope she used to survive her captivity.
Not all enslaved African Americans viewed the holidays as a time of celebration and hope. Rather, Christmas served only to highlight their lack of freedom. As a young boy, Louis Hughes was bought in December and introduced to his new household on Christmas Eve "as a Christmas gift to the madam" (p. 13). When Peter Bruner tried to claim a Christmas gift from his master, "he took me and threw me in the tan vat and nearly drowned me. Every time I made an attempt to get out he would kick me back in again until I was almost dead" (p. 22).
Frederick Douglass described the period of respite that was granted to slaves every year between Christmas and New Year's Day as a psychological tool of the oppressor. In his 1845 Narrative, Douglass wrote that slaves celebrated the winter holidays by engaging in activities such as "playing ball, wrestling, running foot-races, fiddling, dancing, and drinking whiskey" (p. 75). He took particular umbrage at the latter practice, which was often encouraged by slave owners through various tactics. "One plan [was] to make bets on their slaves, as to who can drink the most whiskey without getting drunk; and in this way they succeed in getting whole multitudes to drink to excess" (p. 75). In My Bondage and My Freedom, Douglass concluded that "[a]ll the license allowed [during the holidays] appears to have no other object than to disgust the slaves with their temporary freedom, and to make them as glad to return to their work, as they were to leave it" (p. 255). While there is no doubt that many enjoyed these holidays, Douglass acutely discerned that they were granted not merely in a spirit of charity or conviviality, but also to appease those who yearned for freedom, ultimately serving the ulterior motives of slave owners.
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