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...

Thursday, November 17, 2016

A GENTLEMAN’S MUSINGS ON THE HISTORY AND IMPORTANCE OF THE WOMEN'S RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN THE EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN CULTURE

ON A TIME… A GENTLEMAN’S MUSINGS ON THE STATE OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS

What has happened to the women’s rights movement in America and why would it matter to a gentleman as compared to so many issues of the day? A man can only devote so much time to the gentlemanly arts, his toilette, his cigars, his automobile and his favorite sport. A worldly man should be equally intrigued by the world around him and he would understand that on occasion he must contemplate phenomenon other than the classic manly ones to which he is used. Enter the world of women and specifically their socio-political aspirations. After all men do share this world with women and one must agree in the past that relationship had been far from equitable to which is owed the reason for a woman’s rights movement…

Women’s suffrage is an ancient phenomenon but our age has been fortunate to have resolved millinea of struggle in only a few decades.

The 1850’s saw a miraculous surge of power not only for abolition but for women’s suffrage… Both causes found themselves married in the mid nineteenth century through a common need for exposure and patronage. The wealthy benefactors of abolition were almost always sympathetic to suffrage and so the two causes traveled the civilised world together converting indifference and massaging the faithful. At the end of the day it was all for a magnificently important humanitarian cause.

During those enchanted times mid-century luminaries such as Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Lucretia Coffin Mott and Harriet Tubman travelled in the same circles galvanized by lecture tours that travel the U.S., England, New Zealand, France and the rest of Europe. Lincoln and Douglass were similarly self-made and I do not doubt that the prospect of The Declaration of Independence was not often debated between the two gentlemen indirectly as it is almost certain that Lincoln would have read Douglass and Douglass would have read Lincoln.

During the heyday of the nineteenth-century American civil rights movement and specifically within its ranks the strict rules of Victorian society were often completely abandoned. It was a time of cultural experimentation and evolution and it’s leaders were literally re-writing the book. I do not intend to steal the importance of the movements by interjecting a bit of human nature but boys will be boys…

There was a well-managed scandal involving the Honorable and then married Frederick Douglass and his young, beautiful and unwed British secretary who traveled with him o’er land and sea. The liberal and unchapheroned minglings and lodgings, traveling and such between men and women to whom they were not wed and of women roaming the globe without a care for hearth and home certainly rustled the petticoats of Victorian society on both sides of the Atlantic.

What I find most fascinating about this time and this social laboratory was that the voices of women were being heard in ways they never had been before.

Remembering the hayday of the women’s rights movement in the 1970’s causes me to cleary visualize the National Organization of Women’s  national headquarters at 13th and Pennsylvania Ave. N.W. in Washington, D.C. it’s huge white and black banner hung wrapped around the buildings upper façade at least into the 1990’s. It was a landmark,  an incontrovertible sign that women having been disenfranchised for millenia were now on the scene as a force to be reckoned with! What on earth happened to such powerful and determined momentum?

In stark contrast to those gilded times the cause of women’s rights appears to have expired. I cannot help but ask myself this question, “Did every woman step up to the plate to change the face of history by electing the first woman president”?

At age 54 I’ve come to realize certain things really don’t matter at all and consequently they are not remembered. What matters is the image of a thing or its symbol… that is the hallmark which defines history and the figures wwho populate it more than any other varable… That being said I must confess that I had hoped to see the first woman president not necessarily because the woman who ran was any more extraordinary than any other woman… It is time… it is long overdue… let us establish the image of a woman leader because it is a symbol of a far larger purpose… The details can easily be worked out along the way. Now as it happens Hilary Clinton is an extraordinary woman but that does not appear to have moved the American people to change history…

America has seen 200 years worth of the same brand of President with a refreshing digression to elect the first Black American president. Now that we have finally broken away from the trend let us not stop what is certainly a fateful, inevitable evolution. It is time for a woman president, it is far overdue!

Who might the first woman president be and who might she have been had history been more creative? Might she have been Oprah Winfrey, Madeline Allbright, Erin Brockovitch, Shirley Chisolm or Angela Davis? Could she have been Eleanor Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, Emily Dickenson or Phyllis Wheatley? The all would have made amazing presidents but their talent to wield the reigns of the presidency was never realized. As a man of both intelligence and conscience it grieves me that my country continues to squander such obvious leadership potential. As a man I am able to say that I believe women to be my equal in every respect, that I am profoundly disappointed given the brilliant history of women’s suffrage that America was unable to rise to the occasion of greatness to elect a strong and highly capable woman to the office of President of these United States.

In the aftermath so many theories have been offered to explain the meaning of America’s political choice. I say to hell with divining a logical meaning from such a dis-unified and desperate outcome. Rather I would focus on the singular question,

“What is the state of the women’s rights movement in America today?”

And attempt to piece together a sense of direction based on quantifiable data. Could it be that after only a few decades in the workplace some women have jumped on the bandwagon forgetting that others might continue to visualize them in the traditional role of domestic homemaker deeming them unfit for certain roles?

I discussed this topic with a female friend who is also a prominent member of The League of Women Voters and she suggested that the agenda of feminism may have been too extreme for many women and as a result the movement may have failed to attract modern women who still embrace traditional female values. She believes such women could have failed to appreciate the symbolic importance of a female president as well as it’s ability to leverage ratification of critical policies relating to women’s rights that have been ignored in the past.

On a time if such an opportunity were to present itself women galvanized under common advocacy leadership would not have hesitated to contribute in the only way they could by voting for a candidate that represented their interests, their struggle and their undocumented power to serve a nation that has historically denied them the ultimate seat of the presidency. In my heart I preserve hope that during my life I will call a woman president…. It can still happen on a time…

BIGDADDY BLUES