Save the date: Memorial for Kamau Amen-Ra and Photo Exhibition, Friday, July 15, 5-9PM

Memorial for Kamau Amen-Ra and Photo Exhibition honoring his work.  FRIDAY, JULY 15 EASTSIDE CULTURAL CENTER,  2277 International Blvd, 5-9PM.  Bring a dish to share. - Please spread the word!

The family of Kamau Amen-Ra has given his archives to Eastside Cultural Center.

Photos by Kamau Amen-Ra

Marvin X archives

A student reflects on the Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience

Reflections of a "Human Earthquake" Victim who suffered the wild crazy ride of the Marvin X Experience and survived!

Meet Marvin X

 

I’m sure we all have those teachers from our past who have impacted our lives. Some have encouraged us to dig deep within and unleash untapped potential. Some have inspired us to think beyond our little world and reach new heights. I can’t remember, though, very many teachers who have shocked me into a dizzying stupor, made me laugh, then ultimately made me love them for their unbridled “Hootspa” (or as we were fond of saying in my hometown….“Huevos”)

Meet Marvin X

 

I believe it was the fall semester of 1982 when I walked into the first day of my English class. I was attending Kings River Community College in the small, heavily Mennonite town of Reedley, CA. Our quaint little town was your typical white-bread, very conservative, farming community. So when we all took our seats and noticed that our instructor was not your typical white, middle-aged teacher with patches on his jacket sleeves, but was in fact an african american man, staring us down, we were all a bit off of our game.

“Hello, welcome to my English class. My name is Marvin X. My legal name is Marvin Jackmon, but I don’t use that name because that was given to me by some white slave owner”! The classroom did a collective head scratching, while some more disturbed students got up and walked into the wall several times, then returned to their seats and joined the head scratching asking panically “Um…your just a sub, right??”

 

 Everyday in Marvin X’s class was like a field trip though a box of Cracker Jacks. There was always some prize waiting for our small town J.C. minds to grapple with. Mr. X always encouraged lively conversation and I took full advantage of that, because we all know that asking a thousand questions equals a passionate interest in the subject which equals a passing grade!!!!

   

The thing I love most about him was that he loved…no, he fed on tossing little “shock and awe” bombshells our way. Which was always followed by that jubilant grin and sparkle in his eye’s. He kept taunting us that some day he would share some of his poetry with us. But he warned us, “My poetry is really “street” …so I’m not sure your ready for it”.

 

Several more weeks passed, full of lively conversations, debate and complete pandemonium swirling through our young impressionable little minds. Finally, one day he came to class and announced that we were now officially ready for one of his poems. Once again, he reiterated that his poetry was pretty “street” and not for the faint of heart. We did a collective gulp and nodded our heads.

This poem is called…

(wait for it)

“Confession of a Rapist”

(Oh dear Lord!!….um…uh…OK,, I can handle this! I can be street…or at least avenue)

He looked up with that sly grin and glimmer in his eyes, then proceeded with the opening line…

“I took the P***Y”

(we’re not talking about sweet little kittens here, folks.)

   He just piloted his Enola Gay B-29 and dropped a bomb (a “P” bomb at that) amongst us citizens of Hiroshima Junior College!

   Visualize those old black & white films of Atomic bomb testing somewhere in the deserts of Nevada. The “Shock Wave” was so insanely intense, our faces were wobbling and contorting to the massive G-forces, that I’m pretty positive not one person heard another line from that poem. Outside, after class, we quickly and hastily put together an emergency Triage unit to asses the damages and re-attach any limbs or brain matter that may have needed attending to.

   Some fellow Christian students from the class were discussing the possibility of assembling a mob with torches and pitch forks, the likes of your typical Frankenstein movie. We soon realized that we were all fine. A little shaken, but fine.

   Oddly enough, there was maybe one complaint in class from a student, and he very patiently and lovingly discussed it with us. In the end, we all came through it like old trench buddies. Mr. X helped lift, perhaps rather firmly, us out of our little comfort zones.

   In the last few remaining weeks of class, we had several more great conversations and debates. One sunny day he even held class outside under a tree and we studied the book of Job from the Bible. I believe he said he loved it because it read like a screenplay. He had lots of great insight and challenged us daily.

   There are only a handful of teachers from my two and a half years of college (and no degree to show for it) that I have maybe a millisecond of memory of them. Mr. X, however, made such an impact on me that his memory is burned into the synapses of my brain. Was he shocking? Yes! However, even more, he loved reaching through to us. He made us think….really think!

Before I began writing this, I Googled him. Sure enough, there he was…

 

with that sly grin and glimmer in his eyes!

Thank you, Mr. X!


Comment Marvin X:

Let me thank all those beautiful students who attended my English class at Kings River College, 1982. I had the time of my life, but my academic career ended there, even though I received a 97% retention rate. I simply no longer desired to teach again. It is indeed ironic that my career ended not far from where my life began in Fowler, Ca., a few miles down the road from Reedley. My mother was also born in Fowler but never went to Reedley because the town was too racist. But during my brief tenure at Reedley, the students treated me royally, bringing me gifts of fruits, vegetables and herbs from their farms. Two of my greatest poems were written during this time, i.e., For the Women and Black History is World History. My students, nearly all White and/or Chicano, did research papers on Black History is World History. One of my Black students was from an Alabama town that hanged  his friend from a light post during the semester. Yes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Don't miss the discussion by Black Hollywood unChained contributors at the SF Main Library, July3, 1:30PM

Some of you know that last year, Third World Press published Black Hollywood Unchained. Edited by Ishmael Reed, the book contains a collection of critical essays by various authors around the country in reaction to Quentin Tarentino’s movie Django Unchained.

On Sunday, July 3, 1:30-3:30 pm, several of the authors will participate in a panel discussion at the San Francisco Public Library Main Branch to discuss the impact of Django Unchained as well as other Hollywood movie depictions of African-American life. Included with author presentations will be a time for questions and answers.

Along with Ishmael Reed, other participants include Halifu Osumare, Cecil Brown, Marvin X, Justin Desmangles, and myself.

If you’re in the Bay Area that weekend, hope you can make it.

Jesse Allen-Taylor

Navigating the Perilous Mental Landscape in the Crazy House Called America

Saturday, December 7, 2013

 

Watch the zombie in the car ahead of you. He may be sleep walking, sleep talking, texting or sexing--his blinker says left turn or right turn, but the light changes and the car doesn't move, just sits still on the green light, until you finally blow your horn, then, slowly, the car turns and heads down the street. You wonder what is going on and the answer is nothing, it is a zombie car with a zombie driver. Whatever you do, be courteous, don't be rude, don't go into road rage for the zombie may pull a weapon, after all, the zombie is a danger to himself and others, so be careful, don't add fuel to the fire. 

This is how we must navigate the perilous mental landscape in the last days of the devil's world. Jesus told you this is only the beginning of sorrows, there shall be pestilence, drought, famine, earthquakes in diverse places, mudslides, tsunamis, planes disappearing from the sky, jails and prisons full of those suffering poverty, drug addiction and mental illness. 

The global bandits, the blood suckers of the poor, suffer no jail or prison time. They pay a simple fine then continue in their inordinacy, as the Qur'an says. They are zombies too, so smart they outsmart themselves, thinking their wickedness shall last forever, they have enough guns and a monkey mind media that perpetuates the world of make believe that the deaf, dumb and blind inhabit as they make their daily round in the big yard, suffering their myriad addictions and afflictions and conspicuous consumption. 

As we see, there is murder in the hood and murder in the suburbs, murder in the schools, colleges, universities churches, night clubs, sports events, homes and workplaces. So hold onto your hat or hold onto the rope of Allah, whatever is your choice-- hold on Snoopy!--Marvin X

Navigating the perilous Mental Landscape in the crazy house called America

Like the earthquake in Japan, man too is in mental motion, a mind quake of the most devastating degree that is rocking his mental equilibrium to the core! 

We must be aware of the times and what must be done. A blind man named Ray Charles told us "the world is in an uproar, the danger zone is everywhere...." And so it is, ancestor Ray, there is turbulence in the land and in man, woman and children. As the earth enters another 25,000 year cycle of history with the coming New Age of high spiritual consciousness, there are many who remain deaf, dumb and blind to present and future events, even though the news is full of rapidly changing events in the global village. One would need to be in worse shape than Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder not to see the earth is in transformation, even Nature itself. The ice is melting, the sea rising, the forests burning, earthquakes and tsunamis , drought, famine, pestilence, in diverse places, just as Jesus predicted.

Apparently, many do not believe what Jesus said even when they see events he predicted before their very eyes, on the news, Twitter, Facebook, Cable TV and elsewhere. He said mother would be against child and child against mother and father. Did he not say brother would be against brother and sister against sister? And do we not see this in our social relations today.

It is crystal clear to me we are in times in which a friend is no longer a friend, a wife and husband no longer wife and husband. There is no love between them. Husbands and wives say the most horrible things to each other. Daughters and sons say the most wretched things to their parents, often when the parents are helping them.

But when the danger zone is everywhere, no one, no relationships are exempt from the turmoil sweeping the old order out and ushering in the New Era. But there is an almost organic relationship between the earth quaking and the minds of men, women and children becoming totally unbalanced.

In this time of radical change of Nature and man, those with no understanding shall become unglued, losing their fragile mental equilibrium or simply tripping out. Ultimately, they become a danger to themselves and others and must be committed, for they are not the person we knew only yesterday. Today they are a total stranger who does not know us, cannot even recognize us, yet we have known them since childhood. They could be a sibling yet they do not act like there is any blood relationship between us. We behave like total strangers.

It could be parent/child relationships that come to such a low point children will sue parents or visa versa. In short the love is gone. Amiri Baraka tells us in his play A Black Mass, "Where the souls print should be there is only a cellulose pouch of disgusting habits...."



So as we walk the streets be very careful what you say to people, for they are on edge, on the precipice, ready to strike out at the slightest perceived negative incident, or wrong word uttered.
Yes, they are ready to kill, so be aware as you make your daily round.

The political/economic atmosphere is charged with venom, but it is misplaced aggression, for no one is going after the bankers, the loan sharks, the Wall Street financiers who were casino gamblers with the wealth of the people, stealing 13 trillion dollars in the sub prime housing scam.
And yet hardly a banker is in jail, meanwhile 2.4 million mostly poor are incarcerated for petty crimes, additionally they suffer drug abuse and mental illness, not to mention lack of proper legal representation at the time of their trials. The only white man doing time is the one who stole from the rich, not the poor. Those who robbed the poor are yet receiving multimillion dollar bonuses while 30 million workers are unemployed and millions are now homeless.

It is this atmosphere that is so unsettling to the mental state of those who were already suffering stress from the general hostile environment,i.e.,  from toxic food, air, water; the media dispensing
information from the world of make believe and promoting the addiction to white supremacy conspicuous consumption.

How do we move from problem to solution, from addiction to recovery, from sickness to healing?
The Buddhists say wisdom is  knowledge plus the right action. We must first understand the time and what must be done. These are perilous times, very dangerous, thus one must tip through the tulips, through the mind fields that lay before us, behind us, to the right and to the left, but most importantly, within us!

We must practice eternal vigilance and stay on guard against being deceived. There are those who wish to deceive us so that we remain victims of the slave system. They will not tell us all the institutions are exhausted, political, economic, educational, religious, marital. None of these shall continue with business as usual. They must and shall undergo radical structural change, if not simply thrown into the dustbin of history where they belonged long ago.

Those not prepared for radical change shall be blown by the wayside where they shall inhabit the lower realms of an animal existence until they die or recover from savagery and come into the era of civility and spirituality beyond religiosity.

Those who are a danger to themselves and others will need to be confined to a program of long term recovery, a rehabilitation of their disgusting habits, namely greed, ego, pride, lust, arrogance, and other deadly sins, and most importantly the inability to practice freedom, justice and equality, constitutionally unable to share the wealth and practice democracy or the consent of the governed.

The end is the beginning and the beginning is the end, or rather what goes around comes around. What we are witnessing and experiencing is not linear time but circular, for we shall continue, but only those who are able to jump out of the box of the old structures into the new.

The fearless ones, they shall be successful. Those not motivated by the illusions of the monkey mind shall be successful. We pray for the others who persist in their inordinancy, blindly wandering on, as the Qur'an says.
--Marvin X
4/7/11

The Mythology of Pussy and Dick: Oakland Police Department in moral or immoral meltdown: three chiefs in a week

Oakland Mayor Fires Interim Police Chief After 4 Days During Sex Scandal Involving Teen Girl

Anna Merlan

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf announced today that she’d fired the police department’s interim chief after just four days on the job. The department is currently being rocked by a sex scandal in which more than a dozen officers are suspected of regularly having sex with a teenage girl.Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent resigned last week, at the end of a months-long investigation into allegations made by an 18-year-old woman, who said she is a sex worker and had sex with more than 25 police officers. The woman, who has used the name “Celeste Guap” in interviews, is the daughter of a police dispatcher, according to ABC 7. She says she had sex with 14 Oakland police officers and 11 from other departments in the area, beginning when she was 16 years old.

Guap expressed mixed feelings about the officers during an interview with KPIX, saying both, “I have no negative feelings towards any of them,” but also, “Thinking back on it, I do see myself as a victim, because I do feel I was taken advantage of.”
Some reports say Guap had sex with three officers while she was underage; Courthouse News reports that Guap wrote in a May Facebook post that she only had sex with one officer while she was underage, writing, “the only officer I messed with underage is sadly gone now.” That appears to be a reference to Brendan O’Brien, an OPD officer who died by suicide in May, leaving a note saying he and other officers had sex with a teenager. O’Brien’s wife also died by suicide in the same house 15 months before.
After Whent resigned, Interim Police Chief Ben Fairow was appointed in his place; today, though, Mayor Schaaf abruptly announced his removal, saying she’d learned information that “caused me to lose confidence” in his leadership. From her statement:

With the abrupt resignation of Sean Whent last week, we sought to have seamless leadership of the Oakland Police Department and selected an individual who understood the dynamics in Oakland and who, based on his previous employment with OPD, could hit the ground running.
However, I have just received information that has caused me to lose confidence in Ben Fairow’s ability to lead the Oakland Police Department at this particular moment in time. OPD staff, members of our community and City leadership deserve to have complete trust and confidence in our Chief, especially during this critical transition.
State law prohibits me from further elaborating on the specific factors that led to this decision.
I made the decision to appoint Ben Fairow, I also own the decision to remove him. I firmly believe that when you make a mistake, you need to own it, and act quickly to correct it.
I appreciate Ben’s willingness to come to the aid of our city, and regret that his appointment was not the right decision.

So far, two police officers have been fired as a result of the scandal. They’re not being criminally charged. The Oakland Police Department continues to investigate itself for misconduct; more promisingly, the Alameda District Attorney’s Office and an independent federal monitor are also looking into Guap’s allegations.

---

Celeste Guap being interviewed by KPIX 5. Screenshot via YouTube/KPIX

Ebony Magazine sold! Be careful, "they" sold you once and may try again!

Ebony and Jet, according to Dr. E. Franklin Frazier, perpetuated the Negro bourgeoisie's world of make believe and conspicuous consumption. Of course Jet was the Negro's bible: if it wasn't in Jet it wasn't true!

 

Private-Equity Firm Buys Ebony, Jet Magazines

MJ 25 years after Thriller

Johnson Publishing sells magazines that have chronicled African-American life since 1945

• The new company Ebony Media Corporation will be chaired by Linda Johnson Rice
• Clear View Group CEO welcomes ‘great opportunity’
• Ebony Media Corp. will maintain Chicago office and half the staff

• Kierna Mayo is stepping down as editor-in-chief of Ebony
• Chicago-based Kyra Kyles, will add the title of editor-in-chief of Ebony behind her name
• Johnson Publishing will retain its Fashion Fair Cosmetics business and its historic Ebony photo archives
• 
  

“It’s a dream come true,” said Michael Gibson, co-founder and chairman of African-American-owned Clear View Group. “Growing up, we had Ebony and Jet in our household all along. You knew you made it when you made it to the cover of Ebony or Jet. It is just exciting — I pinch myself every morning.”

Exclusive photos of Michael Jackson shot in 2007 in the archives of Ebony/ Jet

It’s true after rumors ran the muck, the formal announcement was made Tuesday, Ebony and Jet magazines have been sold. After making a great run to go the distance
After a 71-years of publishing in Chicago, Johnson Publishing is leaving the publishing industry and retaining its Fashion Fair Cosmetics business and its historic Ebony photo archives, however it remains up for sale. In January 2015, Johnson Publishing put its entire photo archive up for sale, hoping to raise $40 million. The historic collection spans seven decades of African-American history, chronicling everyone from Martin Luther King Jr. to Muhammad Ali and beyond.


The Iconic Ebony, once the leading African-American lifestyle magazine and the now digital-only Jet magazine was sold to Clear View Group, an Austin, Texas-based private equity firm, for an undisclosed amount. The deal, closed in May, including the assumption of debt.

The Ultimate cool President Barack Obama

Founded by John H. Johnson in 1945 Johnson Publishing Company /JPC was a family-owned business throughout all of its history. As Black publications go it set the precedence that all aspiring Black magazine publishers sought to emulate. Ebony has documented the African-American experience since its first edition. Ebony and Jet both captured the spirit and culture of Black Americans for all the world to see and influence its perception of African Americans.

Historically, it has captured the story of  Black life in America from Emmett Till  to  Barack Obama and reported from the front lines of the civil rights movement to the rise of Black power during the 1960s through images and words keeping the nation and the world abreast of the coming of age of an oppressed people.

It has been so many things to Black people. Often it served as ambassador to the world representing African Americans at their best. It introduced Africa to its children and its children to its ancestors. It showcased the accomplishments of Blacks in sports, arts and entertainment, law, medicine, journalism, fashion, business, banking, architecture and more.

Like all printed media with the emergence of technology and the digital age coming to fore Johnson Publishing has faced declining revenue dollars as it struggled to change and advance from print to digital platforms and emerge victorious.

Martin Luther King Jr

Daughter of founder John H. Johnson, Linda Johnson Rice, chairman of Johnson Publishing will serve as chairman emeritus on the board of the new company.
“This is the next chapter in retaining the legacy that my father, John H. Johnson, built to ensure the celebration of African-Americans,” she said in a statement Tuesday.
Under the new the new publishing entity, Ebony Media Operations, will maintain the magazine’s Chicago headquarters and its New York editorial office. Many of the current staff, according to Mr. Gibson will remain in tack.
The purchase is a first of its kind for Clear View who is new to the publishing world. “We made this purchase because this is an iconic brand — it’s the most-recognized brand in the African-American community,” said Gibson, 59. “We just think this is a great opportunity for us.”
The changes include Cheryl McKissack, who has served as chief operating officer since 2013 assuming the CEO position of the new publishing entity under Clear View.
Sadly Kierna Mayo, who brought a certain timely brash to the publication is stepping down as editor-in-chief of Ebony to pursue other opportunities, according to Gibson.
Stepping into her shoes, Kyra Kyles, who has headed up digital content for Ebony and Jet since last June, will add the role of editor-in-chief of Ebony.
Both McKissick and Kyles will continue to operate from the Chicago office.
“When we make an investment, that’s what we look for — a strong team that can actually run the company,” Gibson said. “We’re not managers or experts by any stretch of imagination in the media business. What we bring to the table is very strong networking and the ability to raise financing and the ability to establish a vision for the company.”

The Greatest, Muhammad Ali

On the other side Desiree Rogers, who has CEO of Johnson Publishing since 2010, will remain on board, focusing on the cosmetics business, which represents about half of the company’s total revenue.
“The overall strategy of separating these two distinct businesses — media and cosmetics — will ensure that both iconic brands are positioned for future investment and growth,” Rogers said in a statement.
Like any smart businessman the 59-year old Gibson has vision. He recognizes that the publishing industry continues to face the future as print media revenue decreases. However Gibson said, Ebony will remain in print for the foreseeable future while recognizing the need enhance the digital side.

Ishmael Reed on the musical Hamilton: The Negro in slave master dress and it's not Halloween!

Hamilton and the Negro Whisperers: Miranda’s Consumer Fraud

by Ishmael Reed

Ishmael Reed is the author of many books including The Complete Muhammad Ali.

April 15, 2016- counterpunch.org

Among the types of black writers are the “Negro Whisperers,” whose assignment is to explain blacks to whites like the guide in the Tarzan movies, who, in the words of Adolph Reed, Jr. tells them what those drums mean. Then there’s the native who challenges the lies that come down from the colonial office. The native that is regarded by the occupiers as “dangerous.” John A. Williams, whose memorial service will be held in Teaneck, New Jersey, on May 29, didn’t have as many readers as the “Negro Whisperers” but he was so dangerous as to be placed on the FBI list of black writers to be placed in “custodial detention,” * in case of a National Emergency. (They spelled my name, “Ismael.”) He was part of a tradition of black writers dating back to the 1800s, and though these writers could be as hard on blacks as whites, this entire tradition is being dismissed by the new post race “Negro Whisperers,” as one of scorn and of “hating whitey.” Williams, and Amiri Baraka would have a field day with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical “Hamilton.” So would Gwendolyn Brooks, who could have attended all of the occupier’s dinner parties, but chose to remain in the forest with her people. (Baraka is now so beloved by The New York Times, which hated him while he was alive, that they recommended his book of poetry for a Christmas gift.)

Miranda, the creator of “Hamilton,” originated the sales pitch for his musical, which, according to the Times, might earn a billion dollars for its investors. During an interview conducted by Rob Weinert-Kendt, New York Times, Feb. 5, 2015. He said:

“As for the question of slavery, which is the great original sin of this country, it’s in the third line of the show. But it’s this thing that keeps getting kicked down the field. Hamilton and Burr were part of the [abolitionist] New York Manumission Society, so they were actually very progressive. But there’s only so much time you can spend on it when there’s no end result to it.”

In the show’s last song, his widow, Eliza, sings that Hamilton would have “done so much more” against slavery had he lived longer. Miranda’s is an odd assertion since even Ron Chernow, one of these historians who long for a period when powerful white men were in charge, maybe the country that Trump followers want “to take back,” says that Hamilton “may” have owned two household slaves. Miranda says that he based his musical on Ron Chernow’s book “Hamilton.” Miranda should have consulted other sources that challenge this high school notion that Hamilton was some sort of abolitionist. But that would have been a real turn off for the feel good version of the Founding Fathers, enslavers and what’s often left out, Indian exterminators, which has drawn largely white audiences, who can afford tickets that sell for as much as $700.
There would be no demand for tickets had it not been for an extraordinary bit of salesmanship from The New York Times, which had been rooting for “Hamilton” since 2012, culminating in a rave review from Ben Brantley published when it opened in August, 2015. He wrote

“I am loath to tell people to mortgage their houses and lease their children to acquire tickets to a hit Broadway show. But ‘Hamilton,’ directed by Thomas Kail and starring Mr. Miranda, might just about be worth it — at least to anyone who wants proof that the American musical is not only surviving but also evolving in ways that should allow it to thrive and transmogrify in years to come.”

I challenged the enthusiasm for a show that glorifies a man who participated in holding people against their will in my article written for CounterPunch, August 21, 2015. What was the difference between Hamilton and Ariel Castro who did the same thing, I asked. Should Castro’s face be on the ten-dollar bill? Hamilton’s defenders maintain that Hamilton was smart. So was Castro who was able to accomplish his despicable deed without being detected. In my article I quoted historians who were not as swept away by Founding Fathers chic, or Hamilton fever as much as Chernow, Miranda and writers for The New York Times. Professor Michelle Duross, of the University at Albany, State University of New York, is much more direct  and shows what happens when someone from a class, whose voice has been neglected, invades the all-white male country club of historians. Unlike Chernow, her treatment of Hamilton as a slave trader is not couched in equivocating qualifiers that are favorable to this founding father, I wrote. She takes to task the Hamilton biographies written by his awe-struck groupies:

“Alexander Hamilton’s biographers praise Hamilton for being an abolitionist, but they have overstated Hamilton’s stance on slavery.
“Historian John C. Miller insisted, ‘He [Hamilton] advocated one of the most daring invasions of property rights that was ever made– the abolition of Negro slavery.’

“Biographer Forrest McDonald maintained, ‘Hamilton was an abolitionist, and on that subject he never wavered.’”

She writes, “Hamilton’s position on slavery is more complex than his biographers’ suggest.” Some historians maintain that Hamilton’s birth on the island of Nevis and his subsequent upbringing in St. Croix instilled in him a hatred for the brutalities of slavery. Historian James Oliver Horton suggests that Hamilton’s childhood surrounded by the slave system of the West Indies “would shape Alexander’s attitudes about race and slavery for the rest of his life.’”
She writes,

“No existing documents of Hamilton’s support this claim. Hamilton never mentioned anything in his correspondence about the horrors of plantation slavery in the West Indies.
“Hamilton’s involvement in the selling of slaves suggests that his position against slavery was not absolute. Besides marrying into a slaveholding family, Hamilton conducted transactions for the purchase and transfer of slaves on behalf of his in-laws and as part of his assignment in the Continental Army.”

I cited another historian, Allan McLane Hamilton, who writes to counter the claim that Hamilton never owned slaves: “[Hamilton] never owned a negro slave… is untrue. In his books, we find that there are entries showing that he purchased them for himself and for others.” Why isn’t this entry regarded as a smoking gun? After creating the Hamilton mania, which the Times began in 2012, and which one letter writer termed the Times coverage as “Daily Worship,” the newspaper acknowledged that there was dissent. Finally. It came in Jennifer Schuesslera’s April 10, 2016 article entitled “Hamilton’ and History: Are They in Sync? ” She described the dissent. Critics, according to her, claim that “Hamilton”:

“over-glorifies the man, inflating his opposition to slavery while glossing over less attractive aspects of his politics, which were not necessarily as in tune with contemporary progressive values as audiences leaving the theater might assume.”

In a note to me she acknowledges that she read my August 21st CounterPunch piece but traced the beginning of “Hamilton” dissent to a September response by David Waldstreicher’s to remarks made by historian Joseph Adelman, who claimed that Miranda “got the history right.”

She wrote that Waldstreicher, a historian at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, “sounded an early note of skepticism on The Junto, a group blog about early American history.” (Apparently CounterPunch is a name that dare not be mentioned at the Times.) Waldstreicher wrote, “Nobody’s pointing out the pattern of exaggerating Hamilton’s (and other Federalists’) antislavery….” Exaggeration is to put it mildly; nowhere in his comments does Waldstreicher say that Hamilton actually owned slaves. Nobody pointed out that Hamilton’s antislavery has been exaggerated? (Hamilton’s mother also owned slaves and in her will, left the slaves to Hamilton and his brother.) Professors Michelle Duross and Alan McLane among others have pointed it out. Maybe he, like Miranda reads only the Good Old Boys and Girls of the American Historical Establishment.
Professor Lyra D. Monteiro’s article in the journal The Public Historian was also cited. She wrote,

“the show’s multiethnic casting obscures the almost complete lack of identifiable African-American characters, making the country’s founding seem like an all-white affair.
“It’s an amazing piece of theater, but it concerns me that people are seeing it as a piece of history.”

“The founders,” she added, “really didn’t want to create the country we actually live in today.”
Ms. Monteiro also read my Counter Punch article and quoted from it in Salon and the Huffington Post. “And one of the points Ishmael Reed made that I loved is that for Elizabeth Schuyler to be a Kim Kardashian of her era involved several slaves preparing her to be so gorgeous at that ball where Hamilton met her. “

Historian Annette Gordon-Reed was quoted in the article as sharing “some of Ms. Monteiro’s qualms, even as she loved the musical and listened to the cast album every day.”
“Imagine ‘Hamilton’ with white actors,” she wrote. “Would the rosy view of the founding era grate?” Good question. Would an all white cast portraying Idi Amin and his cronies in a Broadway musical earn billions for the investors? One letter writer defended Miranda’s taking liberties with history. She cited Shakespeare. Well suppose that you had Jewish actors playing Hitler and his Generals and there appeared a scene in which Hitler pleaded, without success that the Jews be spared. That he was some sort of Philo Semitic.

Defending the show Chernow wrote: “This show is the best advertisement for racial diversity in Broadway history and it is sad that it is being attacked on racial grounds.” Chernow, who is reaping huge profits from the show, is not concerned about the fraudulent representation of Alexander Hamilton? Mr. Miranda, who began the mania, was not available for comment. If I’d misrepresented Hamilton as a “progressive,” I’d be hiding too. Ms. Gordon-Reed further commented that while Hamilton publicly criticized Jefferson’s views on the biological inferiority of blacks, his record from the 1790s until his death in 1804 includes little to no action against slavery. “Hamilton the ardent lifelong abolitionist,” she said, is “an idea of who we would like Hamilton to be.” And so the debate among those members of the Historical Establishment, some of whom are Pulitzer Prize winners, has come down to an argument as to whether Hamilton was abolitionist or not abolitionist enough. This tepid response amounts to a cover-up of the kind that John A. Williams, John O. Killens, Chester Himes and Gwendolyn Brooks and Amiri Baraka would have challenged.

This latest attempt to whitewash a founding father for money, is preceded by a farce called, “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” which lionizes Andrew Jackson, the Eichmann of American extermination policy. Another Establishment historian, Jon Meacham, cast Jackson as some sort of Rock and Roll star. This musical was also praised by Ben Brantley.
Rihanna Yazzie, a playwright who helped organize a protest of the Minneapolis production, said the musical “reinforces stereotypes” and left her feeling “assaulted.”

“The truth is that Andrew Jackson was not a rock star and his campaign against tribal people—known so briefly in American history textbooks as the Indian Removal Act—is not a farcical backdrop to some emotive, brooding celebrity,” Yazzie wrote in an open letter. “Can you imagine a show wherein Hitler was portrayed as a justified, sexy rock star?” The danger of something like “Hamilton” is that school children will be seduced into believing that Hamilton was some kind of “progressive” using Miranda’s words.” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has created a curriculum for 20,000 low-income New York City public school students who will be able to see the musical, in a program funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and subsidized by the show.” I wrote the Rockefeller Foundation on April 12, 2016, proposing that if they must send these kids black and Latino to see “Hamilton” on the grounds that he was a “progressive,” and an “abolitionist” that they might organize a panel during which those who make such a claim defend it against historians who say that he was a slave trader. They could have the panel before or after the show.They didn’t answer.
It’s also a disappointment that Miranda persuaded the treasury to keep Hamilton on the ten-dollar bill, a man who held slaves, instead of replacing him with Harriet Tubman, who freed slaves.
Such views of Yazzie and mine are smothered by millions of dollars in publicity of those who want to pamper the white ticket buying audience. Finally I asked the writer Jennifer Schuessler why there was no mention of Hamilton as a slave trader in her piece. She said that she didn’t have enough space to include this fact.

“@jennyschuessler
Apr 11
@ishmaelreed Thanks. Of course read your earlier [Counterpunch] piece. No room in story to get into issue of Ham and slave selling, etc., alas.”

Such a revelation would be an embarrassment for the show’s main booster, The New York Times; would expose Miranda as not being forthcoming about Hamilton’s true history in order to make money, and also be bad for the box office.
To paraphrase the slogan used by these brave young souls, Black Lives Never Mattered, Indian lives even less.
Notes.

*  F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature:  by William J. Maxwell, Jan 4, 2015

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“Hamilton: the Musical:” Black Actors Dress Up like Slave Traders…and It’s Not Halloween

Lin-Manuel Miranda (center) wrote the lyrics, composed the music, and stars as Hamilton.

by Ishmael Reed

August 21, 2015- counterpunch.org

Establishment historians write best sellers in which some of the cruel actions of the Founding Fathers are smudged over if not ignored altogether. They’re guilty of a cover-up.
This is the case with Alexander Hamilton whose life has been scrubbed with a kind of historical Ajax until it sparkles. His reputation has been shored up as an abolitionist and someone who was opposed to slavery. Not true.

Alexander Hamilton married into the Schuylers, a slaveholding family, and participated in the bartering of slaves. One of “Hamilton’s” actors, Renee Elise Goldsberry (“The Color Purple”), who visited the Schuyler home, said the Schuyler sisters, “were the Kardashians” of 1780 — superstars, but with dignity and grace.”^[1] Maybe they were able to maintain “dignity and grace” because they had 27 slaves serve them. Black women whose labor assignments left them little time to preen. Is this actor disregarding, callously, that the sisters thrived on the labor of enslaved women? No, she probably attended the same schools that I attended. A curriculum that endowed slave traders and Indian exterminators with the status of deities.

Even Ron Chernow, author of Alexander Hamilton, upon which the musical “Hamilton” is based, admits (kinda), reluctantly, that Hamilton and his wife may, [his italics], have owned two household slaves and may have negotiated the sale of slaves on behalf of his in-laws, the Schuylers. Chernow says that Hamilton may have negotiated these sales, “reluctantly?” How does he know this?

Like other founding fathers, Hamilton found slavery, an “evil,” yet was a slave trader. The creepy Thomas Jefferson also appears in “Hamilton.” He was even a bigger hypocrite in his
blaming King George for the slave trade, a contention that was deleted from the final version of the Declaration of Independence.

“Jefferson railed against King George III for creating and sustaining the slave trade, describing it as ‘a cruel war against human nature.’”^[2] Was Lin-Manuel Miranda, who designed this show, aware that Thomas Jefferson’s solution to the Native American problem was “extermination?” He told his Secretary of War, General Henry Dearborn (who was the primary government official responsible for Indian affairs): “if we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down until that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi.”^[3]

Similarly, Andrew Jackson found slavery, “barbaric,” yet owned slaves. He might have been the founder of the false police report. “He concocted stories if discipline crippled or killed a slave. Of a beaten woman, he wrote to a partner in one such cover-up: ‘You may say to Dr. Hogg, that her lament was occasioned by a stroke from Betty [another slave], or jumping over a rope, in which her feet became entangled, and she fell.”’ ^[4]The same 1 percent establishment critics, who gave Andrew Jackson a pass, are praising “Hamilton.” One writer even hailed Jackson as a Rock and Roll star.
Professor Michelle Duross, of the University at Albany, State University of New York, is much more direct and shows what happens when someone from a class, whose voice has been neglected, invades the all-white male country club of historians. Unlike Chernow, her treatment of Hamilton as a slave trader is not couched in equivocating qualifiers that are favorable to this founding father. She takes to task the Hamilton biographies written by his awe-struck groupies:

“Alexander Hamilton’s biographers praise Hamilton for being an abolitionist, but they have overstated Hamilton’s stance on slavery.
“Historian John C. Miller insisted, ‘He [Hamilton] advocated one of the most daring invasions of property rights that was ever made– the abolition of Negro slavery.’
“Biographer Forest McDonald maintained, ‘Hamilton was an abolitionist, and on that subject he never wavered.’”

She writes, “Hamilton’s position on slavery is more complex than his biographers’ suggest.” Some historians maintain that Hamilton’s birth on the island of Nevis and his subsequent upbringing in St. Croix instilled in him a hatred for the brutalities of slavery. Historian James Oliver Horton suggests that Hamilton’s childhood surrounded by the slave system of the West Indies “would shape Alexander’s attitudes about race and slavery for the rest of his life.’”
She writes,

“No existing documents of Hamilton’s support this claim. Hamilton never mentioned anything in his correspondence about the horrors of plantation slavery in the West Indies.
“Hamilton’s involvement in the selling of slaves suggests that his position against slavery was not absolute. Besides marrying into a slaveholding family, Hamilton conducted transactions for the purchase and transfer of slaves on behalf of his in-laws and as part of his assignment in the Continental Army.”^[5]

Another historian, Alan McLane Hamilton writes to counter the claim that Hamilton never owned slaves: “[Hamilton] never owned a negro slave… is untrue. In his books, we find that there are entries showing that he purchased them for himself and for others.”^[6]
In the musical, black actors play Washington and other founding fathers. Are they aware that George Washington is known for creating strategies for returning runaways? That he was into search and destroy when campaigning against Native American resistance fighters.
“By 1779, George Washington had already earned the famous moniker ‘Father of His Country.’ Among the Iroquois he was known as Conotocarious, or ‘Town Destroyer.’” ^[7]
Historians, who serve as lackeys for famous, wealthy white men term him a “merciful slave master.” An oxymoron.

“Washington authorized the ‘total destruction and devastation’ of the Iroquois settlements across upstate New York so ‘that country may not merely be overrun but destroyed.’ Under Washington’s orders forty Iroquois villages to ashes, and left homeless many of the Indians, hundreds of whom died of exposure during the following frigid winter.
“Chief Cornplanter, who headed the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois, stressed the durability of ‘Town Destroyer’ as the commander-in-chief’s nickname. ‘And to this day when that name is heard,’ the chief said, ‘our women look behind them and turn pale, and our children cling close to the necks of their mothers. To this day, ‘Town Destroyer’ is still used as an Iroquois name for the president of the United States.”^[8]

Slave trading usually involved sex trafficking, where the planters

turned their plantations into enforced and involuntary harems, an enterprise that fugitive slave writer, William Wells Brown, found disgusting. George Washington’s Sally Hemings, according to black oral tradition, was a slave named Venus. Fifty percent of the slaves at Arlington, where Robert E. Lee lived with the granddaughter of Martha Washington, were “bi-racial.”^[9]

So what’s the difference between Ariel Castro who kept three women against their will and Alexander Hamilton and other founding fathers? His groupies argue that despite his flaws–they don’t include the slavet-rading parts–he was smart. Well so was Ariel Castro. He was able to evade detection by even members of his family. For years. Moreover did he work these women from sun up to sun down without paying them? Maybe Broadway will do a musical about his life.

Already, the same 1 percent critics who drooled over “Bloody Bloody, Andrew” about Andrew Jackson, the Eichmann of American Native American policy, are already embracing “Hamilton.” They must be as ignorant as the black and Latino actors who have lent their talents to “Hamilton.”

Maybe that’s why the establishment critics leave out the slave parts. The idea that Black Lives Matter is an improvement over their slavery status, where blacks were treated as objects to be bought and sold, worked, beaten, killed and fucked. Though ignorant hateful people say that the Civil War was fought to uphold “states rights,” the slaveholders of the south, who kept Africans against their will, as a result of their free labor, were the richest white people in the world.^[10] Maybe the country clubs of historians and Beltway critics still feel that way about African captives.

And why would President Obama lend his prestige to this thing? First he welcomes black pathology pimp, David Simon, to the White House, where he endorsed “The Wire,” a show in which black children are singled out as degenerate drug peddlers, when all of the heroin seems to be stashed in Vermont and other states with few blacks among their population. He honors this hustler even after Prof. Karl Alexander, who did an actual study of Simon’s black Baltimore neighborhoods, found Simon’s presentation to be “one sided” as he put it, politely.

Is this the president’s view of traditional African Americans? Criminals. People who sang and danced their way through slavery under the watchful eye of merciful slave masters? He went to Harvard. Didn’t he take courses from Martin Kilson? Doesn’t the president know that Thomas Jefferson’s proposal for the Native American problem was extermination?

Now The New York Times has appointed Simon the chief interpreter of the black experience. The honorary Head-Negro-In-Charge. Al Jolson without the black face. He’s doing a miniseries about Martin Luther King, Jr. He’s already lined up a couple of black writers to be in on the project, who will be there to defend the thing if black people become upset. It’s being sponsored by Oprah Winfrey who gave a green light to Precious, the worst black movie ever made. I can understand why some young black Americans are leaving the country. I met some of them in Paris.

Now I have seen everything. Can you imagine Jewish actors in Berlin’s theaters taking roles of Goering? Goebbels? Eichmann? Hitler?

When I brought up the subject of Hamilton’s slaveholding in a Times’ comment section, a white man accused me of political correctness. If Hamilton had negotiated the sale of white people, do you think that an audience would be paying $400 per ticket to see a musical based upon his life? No, his reputation would be as tarnished as that of his assassin Aaron Burr.

Benjamin Franklin wrote a satire, called “Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim on the Slave Trade,”^[11] in which he dealt with his contemporaries’ justifications for slavery only he, in order to spotlight the defenders’ hypocrisy, put these same arguments in the voice of a fictional Muslim, who justified the enslavement of white Christian slaves.

And here is the final insult: “The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History is working with the producers on an effort to make it possible for large numbers of New York City schoolchildren to see the show.”

This is the best argument I know for the establishment of more Afro-Centric schools and Hispanic schools in order to balance the curriculum promoted by Euro-Centric schools, in which perpetrators of genocide and slave holders are honored. Was school integration a mistake? Were these the brainwashing schools attended by the Latino and Black actors who are performing in this thing?

The best argument that I know for the advocacy of such schools came from a Jewish professor who attended Hebrew School before public schools. When a public school teacher praised the Crusades, she was able to point out that the Crusaders set up pogroms.

In the heady times during the slave revolt of the 1960s, the rebels boasted about how they were using the enemy’s language and how they were “stealing his language.” Now things have been turned upside down. Now the masters, the producers of this profit hungry production, which has already made 30 million dollars, are using the slave’s language: Rock and Roll, Rap and Hip Hop to romanticize the careers of kidnappers, and murderers. People, who, like Jefferson, beat and fucked his slaves and spied on their fucking.

The very clever salesman for this project is Lin-Manuel Miranda. He compares Hamilton, a man who engaged in cruel practices against those who had been kidnapped from their ancestral homes, with that of a slave, Tupac Shakur. He is making profits for his investors with glib appeals such as this one. The first week’s box office take was $1,153,386.

Amiri Baraka, the master of irony, your voice is missed.
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Notes.

^[1] “Actresses in ‘Hamilton’ Take a Trip to a Family Home for a History Lesson” James Barron, New York Times, July 13,2015
^[2] “Letter From Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec.6, 1813.”
^[3] www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h33.html
^[4] Nixon’s Piano, Presidents And Racial Politics From Washington To Clinton Kenneth O’Reilly, The Free Press, New York, 1995

^[5] http://www.earlyamerica.com/early-america-review/volume-15/hamilton-and-slavery/

^[6] THE INTIMATE LIFE OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON;  Allan McLane Hamilton

^[7] http://www.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2008/06/27/town-destroyer-versus-the-iroquois-indians

^[8] ibid.

^[9]Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters, Elizabeth Brown Pryor.

^[10] The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. Kindle Edition by Edward E. Baptist.

^[11]“ Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim on the Slave Trade.” Pow Wow,Charting the Fault Lines in the American Experience-Short Fiction from Then to Now, edited by Ishmael Reed with Carla Blank, Da Capo Press, 2009, New York.