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...

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

A BALANCING ACT/ENACTMENT OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH…


Frederick Douglass with his second wife (seated) and her sister


THE BALANCING ACT/ENACTMENT OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH…

William Lloyd Garrison, Abolitionist and Philanthropist


A very wise woman who was my boss once said to me, “There are always two sides to every story”.  Ever since that time I have pondered the meaning and application of that truth to nearly a billion circumstances.  Many Afrocentric’s complain, and with a great deal of validity, that the black man’s contribution to civilization has been whitewashed out of the history books igniting a bold and heroic quest to re-write most of world history from a more inclusive perspective.  

Although America has always been a fusion of cultures and ethnicities' somehow the most difficult issues of race have always come down to black and white.  The struggle for civil rights, as we all know has been a fight shared by soldiers in an army of white and black social provocateurs.  If we are going to tell the story with any degree of accuracy we must begin to refocus on the movement as a whole and not isolate its heroes and heroines in effect removing them from their “Raison d’etre”! 

For example, how can you tell the story of Frederick Douglass without including John Brown and Lloyd Garrison and how can you even think about Harriet Tubman or Sojourner Truth without taking into consideration the friendship they shared with Lucretia Coffin Mott.  In the 18th and 19th centuries many black abolitionists were so intimately associated with white abolitionists, philanthropists, suffragists and humanitarians that they created a global network that has been virtually forgotten. 

Let us therefore begin the task of retelling the story of Civil Rights in America as a brilliant shared brotherhood.  Let us remember the movement and not just the shakers!

FIN


Written by: Bigdaddy Blues
Dedicated to: Rochelle Joseph, "the muse"... 

2-4-14
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