FOR THE BROTHAS: AN INTRODUCTION

It must have been about 20 years ago when I first began thinking about creating a "Cultural Salon" as a reaction to the mundane social circles In Washington D.C. The richness of intellectual and artistic interchange had died, college friends had moved, the internet had not yet become the phenomenon it now is... I romanticised about the Salons of the mid to late 1800's in Paris, London and Berlin and the cultural dynamo of the Harlem Rennaisance. I was fortunate enough to meet a gentleman, an artist who lived and traveled with James Baldwin... Jimmy he affectionately called him, and he spoke often of their small cottage in southern France and of the many Artists, Poets and Luminaries that dropped in to chat and relax. Well, the impressionists, cubists, modernists, etc. all hung out together famously in those days and shared their ideas with one another creating a creative greenhouse in a world that was rapidly changing. I longed to have lived in those times, to have met Cassat, Rodin, Ellington, Fitzgerald, Baker, Balwin, well I did finally meet Baldwin and others purely for the joy of intellection upon the arts. This was in the late 1980's and by the mid 2000's I happened to run into a friend of mine from Hampton University who had been living in New York since he graduated in the early 90s. Well, I was surprised to hear him comment that in all of the wonder that is New York he never met anyone who ever really had anything interesting to say about art, literature, architecture, science, fashion or anything... I was so surprised to hear this since it had also been my experience. Well here I am in 2011 attempting the Virtual Salon...

Monday, January 16, 2012

A NOTE ON DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING



For those of us who lived it… The Civil Rights Era, no matter what side you were on, was enamored of one man’s energy, Dr. Martin Luther King… For those of us who followed his steps along freedoms trail it was almost a metaphor for the saga of another man of legend who also had the power to move the world… over 2,000 years ago in the troubled world of the Middle East. 


The metaphor is incontrovertible but in our time we saw that King was indeed a man and not a God… possessed of the same human passions, strengths and frailties that every one of us possesses… who are men.


What made this man so very different from you and I was his vision, his drive, the infrastructure around him that served as a support network, and the time…   


The time was a period of massive social unrest roughly 160 years after the Emancipation of Black Peoples in America, a country that nonetheless still passionately denied them any semblance of equality or dignity; A country that had gone so far as to contradict the very sacred language of the American Constitution and Declaration of Independence to deny a single race of people their basic civil liberties and rights under the law… 








In 1905 and 1906 W.E.B. Dubois galvanized an illustrious assembly of progressive Black men and women in the 1st and 2nd Niagara Movement.  They met in 1905 at Niagra Falls and again in 1906 at the HBCU Storer College in Harpers Ferry West Virginia.  My parents graduated from the historic Storer College and were married in 1953 between The Niagra Movement and The Civil Rights Era of the 1960's.  This afternoon I called them at home to share thoghts about Dr. Kings birthday after they had listened to Rev. Jerimiah Wright speak at our families historic church.

The Niagra Movement devised a manifesto openly challenging the racist policies of The American Government.  This was the first time since the glorious Abolitionist Frederick Douglas that Black peoples had organized themselves within a coherent and respectable movement to challenge racism.  The inclusion of women was an acknowledgment of the long standing cause of women’s suffrage…  which was also gaining momentum in America after what they felt was a  sore betrayal following the emancipation of Blacks after The Civil War.



Clearly The Civil Rights movement was much much larger than Dr. King himself and if one were to compare his accomplishment to those of other pioneers of civil rights such as Frederick Douglass, Nannie Helen Burroughs, W.E.B. Dubois or Booker T. Washington to name only a few his accomplishments would not generate the longer of the lists…

BUT DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING WAS THE MAN OF THE HOUR… AND THAT HOUR DEMANDED ATTENTION!




Black peoples, descendants of slaves who had made it possible for the American economy to become a major world power only 100 years after it became a nation in 1776 by submitting to servitude in a slave labor driven economy demanded their rights after nearly 400 years under the yoke of their slavemasters whip! 

















They were tired and demanded change, they had nothing In America and were therefore willing to give up their lives for the sweet cause of economic and social freedom and equality. 



You see… freeing the saves could never have been enough… to perpetually lock them out of the social and economic systems that built and drove this country was to condemn them to slavery all over again but with a different language.  Lincoln and every other White man and woman who ever contemplated the institution of slavery and the factors that would need to be in place in order to correct it understood this.  For them to deliberately place obstacles against its realization, ignore and fail to prevent their placement was a direct act of collusion with these racist policies.  The blood of Black and White men and women had been shed in good faith to correct this evil… Therefore the implementation of the racist laws that continued to disgrace The American Government from the time of the Emancipation of American slaves to the end of The Civil Rights Era was a cold and dishonorable betrayal of those who had given their lives for the cause of freedom and equality.


Black peoples faced three choices.  The first was a permanent seperation from America as proposed by Marcus Garvey. 





The second was to claim thier American Citizenship and rights from a government that has witheld them, as Frederick Douglass had advised.  The third was a vilent debacle such as the one unsucessfully played out by John Brown at Harpers Ferry October 16-18 1859.  Frederick Douglass, a close confidant of John Brown, strongly advised him against this course of action and relinquished his support of John Browns insurrection.  It is without a doubt that had Frederick Douglass not seperated himself from John Brown at this time he would have found himself embroiled in charges of treason against the Union Army of The United States of America. 





By the time Dr. Martin Luther King came on the scene it was very clear the path Black Americans desired was to claim their full Citizenship rights, privilages and protections under the laws of The United States.  Under Dr. Kings august leadership the Black and White members of The Civil Rights Movement were determined but humble knowing that the time for the realization of their cause had indeed come after many hundreds of years...








This is why the martyrdom of Dr. Martin Luther King is so very important to memorialize.  His name speaks for the hundreds of thousands of dead laying in Civil War cemeteries or whose names and remains were lost upon the battlefield.  His name speaks for the millions of slaves whose names and remains have been forgotten and lost to time… who’s bodies lay on the bottom of the ocean, where they died in the middle passage.  Men and women who died during village raids in their homeland in Africa or who perished before they ever left the shore for America lost to history now but remembered at the utterance of his name.  Although his accomplishments may not measure up to some other civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the man of the hour, his name and image galvanized the efforts of many centuries of struggle… So today we revere not only the man and his personal contribution, the giving of his life, but the spirit with which it was sacrificed… to bring together in one great flame… the tears, hopes and lives of centuries of pain and common struggle…



David. L. Vollin

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