Author: drrhonefraser

This interview intended to promote Black Classic Press and its important works, and to debunk the myth that the press promotes any literature that discriminates against race or religion.

FRASER:  Good morning Paul, I really appreciate your time in talking to me about Black Classic Press and what it means to me.  I am going to put this on my website, to let as many people know, to support you and your body of books, and to understand the value of your putting out there works that we don’t normally see in the mainstream nor in our bookstores, so thank you for your time.  You said at the 75th National Book Awards, your acceptance speech, you said ‘my mission is recovery and making Black self-narrating voices known.  You said you prefer to let those voices speak to new generations, like my own, for themselves.’  I remember meeting you, this is 2024 now, I think it was 2018 when Black Classic Press had their 40th Anniversary Celebration.

And I still have books where you signed ‘40’ in it, and its such an important example, what you said at that speech to hear those voices through your books that we don’t normally get, and there are classics for me. 

The first one is Blood in My Eye, one of the most important things that George Jackson writes in Blood in My Eye, he writes on page 125: “there is certainly no lack of evidence to prove the existence of an old and built in character assassination of programmed racism (what class controls the nation’s educational facilities, prints the newspapers and magazines that carry the little cartoons and omits or misrepresents us to death?) has always served to distract and defuse feelings of status deprivation suffered by the huge sectors just above the black one.”  There are so many other ideas that I could get into, but I just chose that one.  And my first question is can you speak to specifically, why is it important for you to reprint works like Blood in My Eye by George Jackson?

COATES:  The quote that you just read by George, even though that quote is in his words, the idea and the notion of Black people being maligned, being misrepresented, and unrepresented in media, and that is forms of communication, all forms of communication, is a longstanding fact of awareness among Black people.  We always had a sense of who we were, before our enslavement, through our enslavement, we understood our humanity, and we always have pushed back at people who attempted to depict us as other than humane.  So what George is talking about there is the tool of media being used to project people falsely as less than human.  Well, that’s the same tools that David Walker was talking about in 1829.

FRASER:  David Walker.

COATES:  In 1829, David Walker would have been saying the same thing.  Whenever we think about Black books being published from that period, especially from that period, we will always see them pushing back on the narrative of Black people being less than.  Its important for us to have that as a documented history.  To be able to look back on it, to know that it exists, and to be able to set our course for the future, because thats what in front of us now.  2025 is the same thing.

FRASER:  2025 is another year where we will see a new relevance to David Walker, those ideas, like those in George Jackson’s Blood in My Eye that you’ve reprinted.  A second of my most important Black Classic Press books include the two volume series about four years ago [actually five years ago] about the founder of African Studies at Howard University, Dr. William Leo Hansberry.  I bought Africa & Africans as well as Pillars of Ethiopian History.  What I find so important about Pillars of Ethiopian History as a Christian myself, is how Hansberry describes a Christian nation.  America prides itself on the separation of church and state, but here in your printed work by Hansberry, he’s describing a Christian nation that practices Christianity, before the overwhelming Greco-Roman colonization that [produces] most Biblical origins in Greek mainly which is filled with its own cultural baggage about supremacy and cultural dominance.  But Hansberry mentions Frumentius and Edesius. Can you speak to why reading Hansberry is important?

COATES:  Hansberry is important for a number of reasons, not just for the history, but the historiography.  That is our study, particularly of Black history.  Hansberry is a bridge between our oldest storytellers who were non-degreed and all of them being self-taught.  Hansberry comes along and he tutors under those folks, he tutors under people like Charles Seifert.  He was a contemporary of people like J.A. Rogers, and so many more.  All of these people were self-trained historians but Hansberry carries it into a another realm.  Hansberry becomes the degreed professional among these historians, so he’s able to put a caché on many of the lessons that the self-trained historians have been teaching for years.  So, he’s like a bridge and a link and a very very important link, because he goes on in academia, to develop so many African centered minds with the same line of thinking that the self-trained historians did.  So what you got in an academic classroom is the lessons that were taught by people like John G. Jackson, another contemporary of Hansberry, and before, like J.A. Rogers, and so many others of our self-trained historians that we don’t look at, we don’t understand and we do not celebrate the importance of those people like George Wells Parker, who was academically trained, but he wasn’t trained in history academically.  He actually taught himself.  And so Hansberry is that bridge, Hansberry carries the baton forward, makes significant change, and of course he’s grounded in the importance of Ethiopia and particularly dynastic Ethiopia, pre-dynastic Ethiopia and Egypt.  So he becomes very very important to our studies.

FRASER:  Absolutely.  You mention in a previous interview, I forget where that was that  Chancellor Williams and John Henrik Clarke learned from William Leo Hansberry.

COATES:  I don’t think its possible to look at anyone after Hansberry and say that they didn’t learn from Hansberry.  I don’t think its possible.  At the same time, we’ve got to connect and keep Hansberry connected to those self trained historians that were before him because that’s who he used to hang out with in New York.  When he quit school, that was his crew.  And that becomes fertile ground for someone to do work on, and to do study on.  I know that was the case because he spent time with these people.  So this was crew.  And I know what their conversations were and I can see his conversations.  But the details of that relationship is still uncovered, and remains a realm for someone to explore.  

FRASER:  Certainly and one of those individuals who kind of suggested to me to explore is Gail Hansberry, his daughter.  And she’s been working with a more or less ad hoc readers group of Hansberry, the William Leo Hansberry Society.  They had met…this year, earlier.  You hear the storks at my grandma’s house.  I’m at my grandma’s house.  You can hear the storks, and they are calling to each other.  Its the cranes, rather.  Hansberry for me theoretically, is very important.  He makes me interested in history because the frames that we use today are just so much divided from spirituality, divided from politics.  And Hansberry reminds us, look, this whole world was shaped by a government that followed spiritual  law, that believed in it.  And so, lets not forget where we come from.  His editor Joseph Harris made an important point in the Introduction to Africa & Africans about Hansberry’s theoretical approach, I just wanted to read.  Joseph Harris wrote that Hansberry believed that Black people should pursue a Pan-Africanist approach to the writing of history. Can you speak to this and Black Classic Press? [You can purchase works by William Leo Hansberry printed by Black Classic Press here and here].  

COATES:  And that’s another reason why Hansberry would be so interesting to us.  Because his look at history is an embracing look at history.  It is not a matter of looking at, even though, he may have specialized in particular aspects of history, he understood that African history is a global history.  And that to understand that history, it has to be approached as a global history, and embraced as a global history.  Its altogether important and from a Pan African perspective, that’s the only way you can see history, you have to see it as all African, you have to see it as another, thought of it as Diasporic History, and that is seeing Black people all over the world.  This is what lends to our strength, as opposed to the way some folks want to see us, and want us to see ourselves, for example, as African Americans divorced from Africa.  They want to see us as natives of the Caribbean, divorced from Africa, divorced from African Americans.  They want to see us as Africans, West Africans, or Ghanaians, divorced from all African history except that in Ghana.  Well it works in their history for us to be divorced and separate: it works in our interest to be united.  And that’s why the great thinkers again would reach out to all African history.  Our great thinkers like David Walker [I own a copy of David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World printed by Black Classic Press.  You can buy a copy of that here], like George Wells Parker, these folks understood the importance of history.  It wasn’t that they only understood history, but they understood history as that lens to view the modern context through.  And they would use it intently, and insist that we be grounded in it, and this is the same thing with Marcus Garvey.  When you think about Marcus Garvey, you have to think about someone who is philosophically and historically placed, well centered, in our past.  In our history.  He has a good grip on it.  When we think about people like Malcolm X.  These people had good grips on our history, and consequently, they can talk about what’s happened in contemporary settings, and I think Hansberry falls into that category.  

FRASER:  The third of my most important books is Hubert Harrison’s 1917 When Africa Awakes. I remember buying it at Black and Nobel Bookstore in Philadelphia.  Now its on South Street but when I got it, it was on Broad and Erie Streets.  And he really breaks down class consciousness, he was Garvey’s former editor, he really showed Garvey that you can own your own press and make money from it.  And he was an example to so many afterwards.  Can you speak to the significance of Hubert Harrison?

COATES:  You know I am not the best Hubert Harrison person.  What I would say about Hubert Harrison is that he’s a leading character in that period.  When we talk about Garvey and Hubert Harrison, Garvey shares Hubert Harrison’s platform when he first spoke in Harlem.  That was one of the platforms that he shared.  That meant that Hubert Harrison was already established to so many other people before Garvey came.  Hubert Harrison would continue to be the model African scholar that people can still learn from today.  He taught classes at Columbia, even though he, this is what I’m told, had to be listed as a janitor for the classes he taught.  I know his importance to that same crew of people that I was talking about, the crew, as they evolved and as they existed when Hansberry would come along, as John Clarke would come along.  You see, [Arthur] Schomburg was a part of that crew early, early on.  Schomburg and people like John E. Bruce [Tony Martin provides a brief bio of John E. Bruce in African Fundamentalism].  That self-thinking, and self-defining knowledge crew continued up to the time that Dr. Ben [Yosef Ben-Jochannan] would come along and become one of the street scholars.  So, Harrison was always revered among those people.  

FRASER:  The fourth and last of my most important Black Classic Press books include Baltimorean poet Laini Mataka’s The Prince of Kokomo.  Who told me, who pronounced her name properly; I mispronounced it when I first said it, was Ayanna Gregory, Dick Gregory’s daughter, and I met her in DC, but we had a deeper conversation about Laini in Sankofa.  And one of her poems, Laini Mataka’s poems speaks to the use and misuse of printing which I’d like to read and get your thoughts on.  Its called “the digitized colonization of information.”  

“I will always have books

despite the fahrenheit 451

intentions of digital technology

when this brave, new world

is put into place, whose books

will be preserved & kept anew

julius lester’s “look out whitey

blk power’s gonna git yr momma?”

Please!”

Can you speak to that poem and Mataka’s body of work that you have printed besides this work?

COATES:  Sure.  I tell people all the time that we’re a historical press.  We don’t print poetry.  With the exception of Laini Mataka and E. Ethelbert Miller.  Laini and I go way back to actually my days before the press was founded.  The press grew out of a prison movement and in that prison movement we started a store called the Black book.  Laini and I go back to that period, early 1972.  I was so impressed by Laini when she was younger, that I promised when we did start the press that I would publish every book that she printed.  But whatever book she completed, I would publish it.  Its interesting because that’s almost fifty years ago, and I think we’ve managed to do about one book a decade.  She still is not as well known as many of the poets who were her contemporaries.  For example, Nikki Giovanni was a contemporary of Mataka’s, she is nowhere known near close to that.  She’s a Baltimore–D.C. treasure, and very much loved in this area, and that’s why you would have been exposed to her.  She’s one of the few poets whose voice has remained consistent throughout all of those decades.  And whose wit is just as sharp as it was four or five decades ago.  She’s someone who we love at Black Classic Press.  [You can buy the books of Laini Mataka’s poetry here]. And someone who loves us.  So her poetry is held highly for us.  

FRASER:  I was very struck by something you said about Black Classic Press coming out of a prison movement.  Can you speak to that?

COATES:  So you may be aware that our origins, my origins, my origin story goes back to the Black Panther Party.  Coming out of the Black Panther Party, when I left the Black Panther Party, there were still a number of people in Baltimore who were under charges.  Some of them had been already convicted and sentenced to life.  I left the Black Panther Party and upon leaving California, I came back to Baltimore and I committed myself to those brothers who were in jail.  And the commitment that I took was a commitment that I would never leave them.  How that commitment expressed itself was me setting up a prison movement to support them and other people who were in jail, and that was the George Jackson Prison Movement.  So you talk about George Jackson and your number one book.  Well, George Jackson for that period and that time, he was absolutely one of the most forward thinking, liberated Black men even though he was in jail.  He was killed by the time we set up the prison movement in his honor, but we couldn’t think of a better tribute than that.  George believed in reading and that’s what we were focused on, and to bring it into the jail.  We were able to do that for awhile because we had as I said a group of Panthers who were still in jail, we were outside the jail, we were the George Jackson Prison Movement.  Our first  expression was to set up a bookstore, which was the Black book, which we set up.  From that we intended and planned to set up a publishing house, which we eventually did that became Black Classic Press. The third expression was to set up a printing company, which we were not able to do until 1995 by that time the George Jackson Prison Movement had had been literally wiped out or smashed by the efforts of COINTELPRO, the efforts of the state government here in Maryland and prison officials, but we were able to still keep operating. We’re still able to get books into the jails and even today, we have a strong presence in jails around the country.

FRASER:  One of the concerns that scholars in Black studies like myself, um you mentioned Josh Myers, but a few other scholars I’ve talked to about this, is that weird collaboration between your very important press and Howard University Press. I just wrote a book review of the biography of Margaret Walker, written by Maryemma Graham, and while she doesn’t go into it, the reader definitely infers that Howard University dropped the ball on her [Walker’s] biography. She wrote a biography of Richard Wright. And just the way that and and it’s not only that book, it’s also How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, which, for a long time I know Howard University Press was publishing, but can you just speak to what happened with that collaboration with Howard University Press and why it couldn’t last? 

COATES:  I understand what you’re saying. And let me just say that I’m finishing up Maryemma Graham, I am into the part where Margaret Walker has taken up the writing of the biography. I’m enjoying the book immensely. I’m enjoying the fact that Maryemma Graham is bringing into focus, the importance of black independent publishers like Third World Press, for example. Broadside Press. She does dimensions of them and they have got to have their place and if not in general, American history.  Black folks can’t afford to forget how black books sellers and black book publishers have been so important in moving us along. So I’m just glad that she’s taking that on. When you speak of collaboration, with Howard University Press, there are two things. I really want to be clear on this and I don’t even know that many of the people who at Howard understand this because they’re not publishing, and they haven’t been for a long time. People who set up the press were publishing people and they had a great understanding of the fundamentals of publishing. But as those people transitioned out, as the budgets for publishing evaporated—when the Press was established, there was a budget for it, and there was an expectation that if the press would publish books, it would generate money. Well, that doesn’t happen so much with the academic presses, period. Not just Howard. The academic presses that you see existing now are tied to schools with enormous endowments. You just will not find bestselling books at academic prices. That’s not happening. And unless you have a number of bestselling books, you can’t afford a press. People at Howard, I don’t think fully understood that and I don’t know if they understand it today. I know a lot of people who work at the press, a lot of people who have been affiliated with Howard would say in a minute, ‘we should have our own publishing house.’ They don’t understand. They’re talking about a multimillion dollar annual budget, if you’re talking about the press.  And the question becomes, what business are you in? Are you in the business of educating our children? Or are you in the business of publishing books? What business are you in?  Whether they understood those fundamentals or not, when the profit and loss statements get done, just like any other business, Howard has to look at those. And they got to cut to the profit side. That’s one side. The other side is there was an intended collaboration in which Black Classic Press was supposed to acquire Howard University Press in 2011. That never happened.  And in part, even though we went through all the motions of it, in part it never happened because there were elements at Howard that still held onto the notion that Howard University should have an academic press. But they had no understanding at all what that meant in terms of the fiscal responsibility. How much money, just think, Rhone, you’ve published.  Just think in terms of how many editors you have to have on board to keep a flow of books going, okay?  To keep a flow. 

FRASER:  It’s a lot of work. 

COATES:  You think about that, you know that’s just editors, you know when when you think about marketing department, when you think about all the conferences these people have to go to, you’re talking about millions and millions of dollars. They couldn’t afford that. They couldn’t afford that. So the deal with Howard in 2011 did not go down. We actually noticed them even though they had announced it, they got cold feet and they didn’t respond immediately to requests we made once we noticed that, we actually canned the deal. We sent a letter and did it publicly that said that we were backing out of the deal. Under no circumstances, did I want Black Classic Press to be a whipping boy in a decision that Howard would make to say, hey, no, we’re not going through with this because XYZ. So we did it first. We pulled the plug first. 

FRASER:  I understand that very clearly. Thank you for making that clear. Recently, Zionist entities in a weird way kind of inspired me to just remind all of my readers, about the value of your press. I noticed particularly the Jewish Forward periodical, tried to question the value of your printing, claiming that because you chose to reprint works like The Jewish Onslaught by Tony Martin, you promote anti-Semitism, making that argument. As a literate and degreed scholar in the field of Black Studies, I, Rhone, find this charge outrageously baseless and racist.  Baseless because nowhere in any of the books you have printed, Paul, are there any ideas that promote discrimination against readers because of their religion, Jewish or otherwise? And I find the charge very racist. I was appalled that this was even being brought up last month when you were rightfully awarded by the National Book Foundation. It’s racist because the unfounded and publicized charges, like those against Kyrie Irving and Kanye of anti-Semitism, I’m noticing that trend, and Jesse Jackson, it’s used to uniquely smear the reputations of specifically black men. And, you know, it was just outrageous that people don’t understand your value and would dare fabricate a claim like that. Can you speak to how the National Book Foundation rightfully ignored that and this so-called attack?

COATES:  It became obvious when they did it that it wasn’t about me. You know, they were trying to score points and put points on the board in an attack against my son Ta-Nehisi, who had just released his book The Message, and what their desire was, was to create a counter narrative, a counter argument that was going on while he was talking about Palestine, while he was talking about apartheid in Israel.  They wanted a counter conversation to go on.  And they especially wanted a blow up where the folks who were honoring me, the National Book Foundation would come out on their side of the argument. The problem with that was most of these people knew me, but they also are publishers.  And they’re clear. They’re very clear in their own work that you publish books because they have important arguments in them. You don’t publish books because they’re your arguments. There’s a distinction between that.   

FRASER:  Important arguments that need to be heard and debated publicly. That’s right. 

COATES:  And you don’t have to agree. Like I don’t agree with everything I published, but whenever I publish, I look for it to have some basis, some relevance, some importance to somebody because all of those conversations are what give us a world conversation. You know, the moment you start isolating or a group comes in and starts isolating a conversation as not being favorable to them, the moment that’s done, you’re taking a huge chunk out of the conversation, especially if it’s in the case, like Tony Martin, you are talking about your lived experience. The Jewish Onslaught is a great memoir, as far as I’m concerned. And so when you go to sanction…that book, you’re taking away a voice. Now, the interesting thing is, in those articles, one of the guys who was writing those articles and trying to convince the National Book Foundation to not give me that award.  One of the things he had to admit was that the major publishers are still publishing Mein Kampf! 

FRASER:  That’s right. You had to admit that. So he’s not attacking them. 

COATES:  What they said is that Mein Kampf is okay to publish because there’s an Introduction to it and that Introduction uses context. 

FRASER:  We’re not allowed context. Black people are not allowed context. 

COATES:  It just doesn’t make sense.  Tony Martin has never killed anybody. Let alone anyone from the state of Israel, let alone any of those professors, at Wellesley, you see, he didn’t do that, but here you have Hitler who’s responsible for [murdering] supposed a six million Jews. I don’t know. I mean six million Jews and, you give him a pass? No, something’s not right there. And what’s not right there was their defeated attempt to just make a case that wasn’t there and again to drag Tony Martin, who rightly and thankfully to you, you’ve done the first real celebration and examination of his work. His life and needs to be examined. He was a brave scholar, a brilliant scholar, and he brought a lot of stuff to the table when he wrote, including The Jewish Onslaught. Certainly. 

FRASER:  Something you said really struck me. I just wanted this to be my last question. Any idea in particular you mentioned there are certain ideas about authors that you do not agree with, but that you, the publisher, knew, was an idea that needed to be heard?  Can you give an example of that in any of the books you published, that something you knew personally you didn’t agree with, but you thought this is a conversation that needs to be out there? 

You can purchase the edited collection about Frances Cress Welsing called The Osiris Papers here.

COATES:  Well, I have to be honest. I don’t agree with everything that Frances Cress Welsing said. Okay, okay. I don’t agree with everything she said. However, Frances was a friend and she was one of the most important voices that I can think of of this century, and largely because Frances didn’t ask you to agree with her. She didn’t ask me to agree with her. She said, ‘look, I have a theory’ and if someone says they have a theory, there is room for you to put up your theories. 

FRASER:  Which you’ve done really in your Black Classic Press.

COATES:  She didn’t ask me to agree with her. She simply said this is my theory. I think her theory is significantly enough that other people should recognize this woman and recognize the space that she’s operating in because here is the deal: what other theories do we have? Oh, why there is a dominant world of white supremacy? She came forward and she says ‘well look, this ain’t even mine. This is Neely Fuller. Yeah, I’m simply interpreting, but what he’s saying makes sense to me.’ Well, a lot of what she said needs sense to me. It still does. It doesn’t mean I wholly agree with it. I never agreed with all of what Dr. Ben said. How do you agree with everything somebody says? Why should agreement be a prerequisite for publishing? It isn’t! Its very important. You don’t have to agree with everything. You don’t have to agree with me on everything I said. You don’t have to recognize me, you don’t have to agree with everything I say.  I would think one crazy to agree with everything I said. Because I think I’m gone sometimes. It’s not a prerequisite. What is a prerequisite for a publisher as far as I’m concerned to do is recognize the significance of the conversation, and how in Frances’s case, how her theories are fertile ground and they can give root to other people who have theories. We’ve got a situation because other than that all we’re dealing with is a white dominated view of race and racism. And that race and racism, you know, people attack Frances all the time. I haven’t seen anyone attack her on the global [nature] of white supremacy. You know, the white supremacy. I just have not seen that. And I think she has something there because wherever you look in the world, white supremacy dominates, it has to dominate in order for it to continue to exist. It can’t it exist on a level of equality. It has to dominate. And that’s what we see reflected over and over and over again in the world. 

FRASER: I certainly appreciate your time, Paul and sharing your thoughts about the significance of Black Classic Press. Any closing remarks?

COATES:  Well, I just want to thank you, first of all for making the time to do this interview. I want to encourage you. I want to encourage you to continue your publishing. You’ve got a voice and now you’ve got a feel of how to get it done.  One of the things that’s important for all of us to understand is that the presses that exist, the Black presses that exist, operate on a needle and a thimble. You know what I mean? They got nothing but a piece of a string in between them that’s holding them together. I talk with these guys and these women all the time, okay? And everybody is having a hard time. Well, that simply means that there is space for other people to operate. And we should operate. So I’m encouraging you to continue your work. I love it, it takes a lot of work to pull together collective essays. That is a monster of a job. But if you got the energy for it, continue doing that. Continue looking at some of the hard subjects that need to be done. I don’t know who would have looked at Tony Martin’s work like this. You know? But they’re young scholars out there that want to write in those veins. And if you’ve got the energy to bring those together and work on them, do it while you can, you know, do it while you can.  So that’s what I’m going to close with. 

Me, Ian Smart, and Paul Coates at Sankofa Bookstore in DC, 2015.

This past Sunday I saw Donja R. Love’s play produced at the Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia (SPOILER ALERT: If you do not want to know the plot and the resolution of this theatrical work, please do not continue reading.) This play was worth the wait. Whereas I am ready to call this work a “play” because it is rehearsed, performed, and staged by a cast and crew and its elements, Donja made clear to me that he wants his work to be considered an “offering” rather than a play.

This “offering” should be produced, supported and seen for two main reasons. One, it unites the sacred and the secular of the Black radical tradition and restores the role of the Black church as the vanguard for social change. Two, it demonstrates better than any other play in the twenty first century the value of the masculine-feminine dynamic in overcoming ANY obstacle to pass moral values to the younger generation.

This play is an obvious response to Jasper Wiliams’s troublesome eulogy of Aretha Franklin that pathologized the Black family since the civil rights movement. In this eulogy the moral ills of our LGBTQ or SGL (Same Gender Loving) members were blamed for the downfall of the Black family, instead of the rampant deindustrialization and mass incarceration that came to define the end of the twentieth century. Donja’s offering shows us that the LGBTQ or the SGL members are the vanguard or the future of the Black family.

The play begins and ends with a sermon in a pulpit. It begins with Reverend Bridges asking his congregation where the beauty is, in the midst of our daily difficulties. The play ends with Reverend Bridges’ grandson answering his grandfather’s question and telling his younger congregation thirty years later, that the answer to his grandfather’s question of where to find the beauty in life is, in himself.  Despite the social conditions that try to deny Black life beauty, from the AIDS epidemic to deindustrialization, to a church culture that is handicapped by homophobia, Manny at the end of this play shows that in his life is beauty.  The first act is set in 1986 Brooklyn, New York and the second act is set in 2016 Jackson, Mississippi.

Donja’s offering does a remarkable job of showing the beauty of Manny’s life, first in the life of his father J.R. who dies by the end of the first act, to the life of his son who demonstrates what it looks like to hold on to beauty.  

In the first act, we are introduced to the “beauty” of J.R.  Not only is he physically attractive with a powerful machismo performed unforgettably by Jude Tibeau, he also enjoys a healthy sex life. 

(a photo of me and Jude Tibeau who performed J.R. & Manny)

J.R. asks his pregnant wife Max if they can have sex, and she politely declines and encourages him to get tested at the doctor’s office.  When J.R. gets tested, his Doctor “Steinberg” tells him he has AIDS.  Before he leaves the doctor’s office, he is approached by a caring advocate in Abdul who invites him to a group therapy session for HIV positive men.  

At this session, we meet an HIV positive corporate scion in Troy, a transwoman named Grace, and a young man “with lesions on his face” named Eric.  J.R. is encouraged to tell Max that he is HIV positive.  When he tells her, she discloses that since their conception, she got tested and that she and her child is HIV negative. She meets Abdul and, as J.R. told his group, his wife Max and him have “an understanding” about him sleeping with men and women.  

This is the part of the play where the audience feels the “beauty” of sexual freedom for J.R.  Max notices the nonverbal chemistry between J.R. and Abdul and invites Abdul to spend the night with J.R. while she visits her friend Vernetta, suggesting the whole time her own intimate relationship with Vernetta.   

Love’s offering shows us that an AIDS diagnosis does not have to be a death sentence that requires a suppression of one’s sexuality.  Max cherishes her husband’s relationship with his lover Abdul.  She does not use his disclosure of his status as a ball and chain to police his sexuality or stifle his beauty.  In the relationship of Max and J.R., we see unapologetic beauty.  We see the beautiful affection between J.R. and Abdul, we J.R. living his full life.

Abdul introduces a camcorder to the group and brings a camcorder to Max. Max encourages J.R. to record a video for their soon-to-be born child.  J.R. obliges and sings to the recording device.  He sings with a passion and an awareness and reflects the beauty that Max and Abdul have showed him.  This beauty is plucked at when the supply of health insurance medications that J.R. is using on Max’s employment is threatened when her co-workers start ostracizing her because of the rumor about J.R. having HIV.  When Max chooses to inform J.R.’s parents about their situation, Max and J.R. argue. We as the audience feel the social pressures that J.R. endures for choosing to hold on to the beauty in his life.  Abdul passes from AIDS, then J.R.  We see the social pressures on Max.  She loses her husband, her lover, and her child’s father.  In one scene, these pressures trigger an emotional outburst in her.  Toni L. Martin’s talent shines in this scene and culminates in her taking out J.R.’s robe and wearing it. 

(A photo of me and Toni L. Martin who performed Max)

The first act ends with a visit to Max by J.R.’s father, the Reverend Bridges who is clearly paralyzed by the stigma of AIDS.  Max declines his offer but with the social pressures of the care of a newborn, an increasingly comfortable alcoholism, she eventually takes the Reverend up on his offer to allow him and his wife to raise her son.  

In the second act we are introduced to a group home for SGL queer youth, led by Reggie.  We are fast forwarded thirty years to see J.R.’s son Manny now, thirty years old, in a relationship with Elijah who both live in a dilapidating shack in Jackson, Mississippi, that also is home to Terrell, a “flamboyant teenager” and Eve “a transwoman in her early twenties.” 

This act we see the son of J.R. who is Manny hold on to the “beauty” that a repressive society taught him to deny.  Manny’s ambition in this act is to get meds for his HIV positive lover Elijah, and he endures several obstacles in the twenty first century to do so. He holds on to the beauty and the audience sees the sacrifices he makes to hold on to it. 

Manny does not realize that the nurse that Reggie has hired part-time to take care of Elijah is none other than Max, his biological mother.  She surprises Manny when she notices him drink his stash of booze hidden on the front porch, recalling the social pressures she succumbed to decades before.  

The sympathy for Manny rises as he talks with his father Reverend Bridges who keeps a veil over Manny’s head about the true identity of his biological mother and father.  The fact that Reverend Bridges is completely unable throughout the entire play to tell Manny about his father J.R. and the beauty in his life is a sincere tragedy, and it shows how SERIOUS the stigma of HIV and AIDS was for people of Bridges’s generation.  

Part of Manny’s beauty is his patience with Elijah, his belief in modern medicine, and his belief that this medicine will keep Elijah alive and maintain part of his beauty which is affection with Elijah, and his loving relationship with Elijah.  We see how Manny will do anything for Elijah.  To keep his beauty, Manny sells sex to a wealthy patron in Adam despite the havoc this creates in his relationship with Elijah.  The stage directions tells us that the sex Adam pays for from Manny is “quick as can be, but for Adam, it’s everything he needs it to be.”  

When he returns to the group house, Eve is the one who tells Manny “I saw you get out that car.”  Eve asks Manny to be careful.  Elijah interrogates Manny who replies that “I told him I upped my prices.  And it worked.  Now I got money to go towards all the repairs the house needs and to help pay for Ms. Max.”  However Elijah tells Manny that he is giving up on him.  Manny is no longer sleeping in their bed: he now sleeps in the attic.  Terrell tells Manny that his lover’s mother kicked him out of his house and Terrell asks Manny if his lover can stay in the group home.  Manny says “of course.”  

Amid the social pressures that Max faces, Manny goes out on the porch for his secret stash of booze, where Max reveals to Manny that she is his biological mother.  Manny is furious and orders Max to leave.  Before she leaves, she hands Manny a VHS cassette that Manny reluctantly but eventually seeks to watch.   When Manny confronts Reverend Bridges about his true maternity and paternity, he offers a hush money check of one thousand dollars to Manny.  Manny says to make it twenty five hundred.  The Reverend obliges, but only if Manny agrees to become the new Reverend of his church.  Reverend Bridges shows himself here as a passive figure.  He does not “go forward” to make new disciples as Jesus did.  Instead he waits until he is acrimoniously confronted to educate the younger generation about the truth of where they came from.  

When Manny returns to the attic, Reggie notices him looking for the VHS tape cassette player and locates it for Manny.  Manny watches his father J.R. and evidently musters the strength he needs to tell his congregation how one can in fact live with the God given beauty one is allowed.   Manny and Max reconcile.

This offering destroys the myth that the Black family is dead.

This offering destroys the myth of the “no-good” Black man who wants no relationship with his children.

This offering destroys the myth of the Black woman as a hopeless nag.

This offering destroys the myth that Black women hate Bisexual or gay men.

This offering must be seen, produced, reviewed and studied.  -RF.

Thank you to Donja R. Love, Theresa Davis, Brandon Nick, Jennifer Fritz, Larry Felzer, and my grandmother Maudlin Young who each made my review possible. -RF.

On June 24th this year I had the honor of presenting the paper “Green Lumumba: Identity and Nationalism in Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby and Aimé Cesairé’s A Season in the Congo. I was invited by the Toni Morrison Society to present at the Toni Morrison Symposium this year in Fort-de-France, Martinique. It was a surreal experience.

(Photo credit: Kris Yohe)

In this paper I discussed the theme of betrayal in both Morrison’s fourth novel Tar Baby and in Césaire’s stage play A Season in the Congo. Specifically, I discussed how Morrison’s character Jadine Childs in her romantic experience with Son Green, betrayed Son Green in her relationship by her inability to respect Son Green’s U.S. Southern culture (WARNING: THERE ARE SPOILER ALERTS IN THIS POST). I discussed in this paper the factors that attracted Son to Jadine, but also, how the novel chronicles his moral responsibility to stop pursuing Jadine once he was advised by Thérèse to do so because Jadine “has forgotten her ancient properties.” I find this such a common dilemma among many Americans: loving the sexual attraction but being misled by the individual’s modern soul-killing values.

(Cover illustration by Thomas Blackshear)

I chose to compare this betrayal to the betrayal by Césaire’s Mokutu character of Césaire’s Patrice Lumumba in his play A Season in the Congo. I based my read of this play from my attending the 2013 performance of this play stage managed by Lazette McCants and directed by Rico Speight. While in Martinique I met the niece of Aimé Césaire, Murielle, who granted Rico permission to produce the play in 2013. In the play, Mokutu pledges allegiance to Lumumba to work towards “dipenda” or an independent Congo.

However behind the scenes Mokutu is plotting with the banking class, the U.N. Ambassador and with Belgians to overthrow Patrice Lumumba. This is based on what actually happened in 1961. The dramatic irony of Césaire’s play is that everyone in the play knows this impending betrayal including Patrice’s wife Pauline, except Patrice. It is clear that Césaire intends for Lumumba’s ignorance of Mokutu’s plans to overthrow him to be highly dramatized on the verge of delirium. Both Morrison’s Son Green and Césaire’s Lumumba are lured by the promise of a lasting relationship. However both are deceived by individuals who betray because of their being socialized to desire safety in a Western world. Jadine betrays Son heads for the material safety of her modeling career (the narrator of the novel tells us she was promised thousands in Europe). And Mokutu who betrays Lumumba in the material safety of his role as a neocolonial puppet for Belgian and American banking interests. To this day the coltan in our smartphones comes from the pillage that Césaire wrote about. He intends his audience to see Lumumba’s death as a sincere tragedy. Conversely, in Morrison’s novel, Son has an opportunity to escape the claws of Western colonization. When instructed by Thérèse to follow the horsemen on the rural side of Isle-des-Chevaliers, the novel ends with him taking her advice.

We visited a monument whose origin story had an uncanny connection with the myth Morrison creates of “the horsemen” in her fictional Isle-des-Chevaliers (island of horsemen) in Tar Baby. This monument is called in French Memorial de L’Anse Caffard and on our trip to this memorial we met the sculptor Laurent Valere who told me personally that the Martinican poet Edouard Glissant was instrumental in its creation. This is a monument to the enslaved who lost their lives drowning on a wayward slave ship in 1830. In Morrison’s story, “the horsemen” are descendants of enslaved Africans who were on their way to “Isle des Chevaliers” who were struck blind upon seeing the island. These are “the horsemen” who live like maroons on her island. Thérèse tells Son to join the horsemen at the end of the novel, instead of pursuing Jadine. The horsemen live in the woods and not according to the Western plantation model that Morrison’s Valerian Street lives by. I appreciate the connection that our symposium keynote speaker, Edwidge Danticat (pictured below with myself), made between Morrison’s “horsemen” and the spirits of those who L’Anse Caffard is dedicated to.

The lesson from the novel, the play and the experience in Martinique for me was to NOT forget your ancient properties. This includes not being used as a tool for Western interests. Morrison writes Tar Baby in a way where the reader is supposed to celebrate the psychological freedom of Son because he is not pursuing an individualistic lifestyle like Jadine; Césaire writes A Season in the Congo in a way where the audience member is warned not to be like Mokutu. The audience member is warned not to be the proverbial wood used against other wood in the annihilation of the forest.

I could not help but notice how Western media continues to attempt to promote colonial values in Africa, specifically NBC’s use of a Black reporter to goad African Stream into admitting that African Stream “targets Black audience with misinformation” as African Stream’s July 1st IG post reveals.

African Stream has been first and foremost in reporting news from an anti-Western and African perspective. They continually report on the efforts of the people on the ground to resist Western imperialism and MUST NOT be considered as targeting Black audience with misinformation. As that July 1st post later reveals in promoting the policies of the Biden administration, specifically in goading Kenyan President Ruto to accept the repressive policies of the International Monetary Fund, NBC News is the true culprit in promoting misinformation. I wrote about the difference between industry journalism and advocacy journalism in my first book in 2019 and African Stream is clearly on the side of advocacy journalism.

It is our duty not to be used to decimate the forest of indigenous people. Like Morrison’s Son Green and Césaire’s Lumumba, our spirit guides are waiting for us to make the right decision of moving away from Western colonization and to pursue truth. Special thanks to Dr. Carolyn Denard and the Toni Morrison Society for inviting me to Martinique. -RF.

My third book To A More Positive Purpose: Critical Responses to the Scholarship of Tony Martin will be released Monday, February 19th, 2024 at Penn State University in University Park, PA. I will be interviewed by Penn State University Department of African American Studies Professor Michael West about my book. You can register to attend this book talk via Zoom here.

This book is scheduled for a February 2024 release.

A Review of The Case For Cancel Culture by Ernest Owens

I read this entire book looking for a single cogent argument for cancel culture but I could not find one.  I think the truest statement Owens makes in this book is that  

He writes that “discussing cancel culture without the additional lens of power becomes futile.”  The problem of this book is that Owens does not interrogate what “the additional lens of power” actually is. He does not probe enough the power dynamics between the employer and the employed, between labor and capital.  He does not provide a deeper context as to who gets cancelled and who doesn’t.  His analysis is missing the power dynamic.  His whole book assumes U.S. liberal power is good power, and trustworthy power.    

Most of the arguments in this book are muddled in corporate liberal talking points that get in the way of a clear description of cancel culture.  I find most of his arguments corporate, disingenuous, and inauthentic.  He says that “right wing cancel culture is obsessed with reinforcing traditional power structures,” however I’ve found that left wing cancel culture is “more obsessed with reinforcing traditional power structures,” especially when you consider the ways that so called Left groups like Facebook cooperated with local police and federal agencies to murder Baltimore resident Korryn Gaines, persecuted Palestinian journalists for defending their homeland, and for carrying out James Comey’s attacks on so-called “Black identity extremists.”  

In his Introduction, he mentions how the concept of cancelling came from the “Love and Hip Hop” Reality TV show which he says he likes to watch, but he does not probe how the storylines its actors play out follow the dictates of its producer Mona Scott-Young, nor how she follows the dictates of her superior Brad Abramson who expects some amount of “drama” to draw Nielsen ratings.  Owens’s analysis is shallow and ignores the ways that white ownership of television and internet media make money by continuing to parade and incentivize the dysfunctional behavior of Black people.  From the Introduction it goes downhill.  

He claims in the next section that “in the hands of conservatives,” cancel culture has “reinforced entrenched power structures.”  I couldn’t help but think of Russiagate, and how every Left media outlet, from MSNBC to DemocracyNow.org cancelled so many people in the Left if you did not agree that Russia stole the 2016 presidential election, instead of Hillary’s poor choice not to campaign in several swing states including Michigan.  That was the Left reinforcing power structures, not the “conservatives.”  

Owens’s discussion of Jesse Williams celebrates his nicely worded 2016 speech at the BET Awards that cancelled the reply by Justin Timberlake.  However, I was expecting so much more of Owens’ analysis, like how Wililams’s entire 2016 speech celebrating Black identity was completely negated by his choice to leave his then wife, Aryn Drake-Lee to date Jessica Alba.  

Owens claims “the election of Trump emboldened a culture of toxic hostility toward minorities.”  Nothing has been more toxic to the culture of Black people than Democratic presidential administrations.  During Obama’s eight years, the public sector shrank more than during any other president, and Joseph Biden locked up more Black and brown people with his 1994 crime bill than any Republican president since the 70s. 

Owens writes: “Cancel culture is what has given me, a Black Queer millennial the freedom that so many others take for granted.” 

As a Black Queer Generation X-er, I’ve seen “cancel culture” do nothing but create online mobs and monsters to ultimately destroy an individual’s ability to critically think for themselves. It destroys an individual’s ability to critically think for themselves because its in the hands of those who use their capital, liberal or conservative, to push their corporate agenda.  Cancel culture is nothing but detrimental.  As Kenny Babyface Edmonds told Jason Lee this month, “cancel culture destroys artists.”

Both liberal and conservative media used their capital to cancel Jeffrey Epstein, but to this day they have protected most of Epstein’s clients.  In most cases, when corporations cancel someone they are “saving their face” or “covering their ass” to keep advertiser revenue.  They are not upholding some noble cause as Owens argues.  It is not a form of democratic expression, but a tool to punish someone and put up a facade to support whatever cause they want to claim.     

Owens’s analysis is most shallow in his section called “Cancel Culture Been Here,” where he writes that “MLK cancelled racial segregation in America.”  As the liberal Pew Research Center showed, since the 1970s the racial wealth gap has widened in America, and cancel culture could only play a constructive role in that widening because it celebrates only token progress.

Malcolm X made clear in his 1964 “Ballot or the Bullet” speech the difference between a Black revolution and a Negro revolution.  A Negro revolution is not a real revolution and is composed of only token progress.  Owens’s whole book celebrates token success of Black people and not actual success.  Its clear that Cancel Culture promotes tokens.  

He claims that the “March 4 Our Lives” event after the shooting at the Marjorie Stoneman High School “cancelled gun culture,” but delivering speeches did not cancel the lobbying power of the National Rifle Administration. They’re now stronger than they were before that march.  Owens distinguishes Black Lives Matter from Antifa, and again fails to discuss the corporate controls over BLM by the Open Society Foundation.  I found his defenses laughable.  He defends Disney by saying they provide disclaimers that their films promote one culture over the other. 

What is more fascinating to me is how Disney’s conglomerate with the Lifetime network has raked millions creating what Ishmael Reed has called a “Black Boogeyman” industry by creating monsters in Kevin Hunter in the documentary about Wendy Williams, and by creating a monster in Lifetime’s documentary about R. Kelly.  Owens mentions the latter film and the “disgraced” Dr. Bill Cosby as proof that cancel culture works, however this way of looking at cancel culture completely eliminates any discussion of how consent figures into the behavior of those who accused R. Kelly and Dr. Cosby. 

Those who ask about whether consent figures into these accusations are instantly accused of victimizing the victimizers and are immediately censored.   This is why cancel culture is destructive.  

Later, Owens writes very wisely that if you make a mistake you should be offered grace, however “we’re selective about who gets grace.”  This is why cancel culture is detrimental and should not be celebrated.  Owens mentions Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson being “cancelled” by the U.S. government for criticizing Jim Crow, but he misses the class dynamic and how discriminating racially maintained a certain profit motive for the elite.  

His mention of Anita Hill avoided how she was wrongly coached by a California judge Susan Hoerchner who, as Charles Ogletree writes in his book “All Deliberate Speed,” told Anita Hill she was harassed by Clarence Thomas.  Ogletree wrote her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  This told me, the reader of Ogletree’s book, that I should not have believed Hill’s claims.  Nobody should have to tell you when you’re harassed.  Anyone who did not experience your harassment, nor witness to your harassment, should not be writing your public testimony about it.  But Hill seized her chance to try to use the media in a salacious disingenous attempt to cancel Clarence Thomas.  Owens claims that Anita Hill was ignored but Catherine Blasey Ford was listened to.  The claims of both women were dismissed. Its clear that Anita Hill was in fact listened to more than Blasey Ford.  Professor Anita Hill listened to the wrong advice in their attempt to tank the nomination of Clarence Thomas who Joseph Biden as Senator voted for.  Sexual harassment allegations are good for bored senate judiciary committee members, TV ratings, news headlines, but not for logical arguments about judicial qualifications.  Owens fumbles Anita Hill.  

Owens claims that since cancel culture, “we understand harassment and assault so much better.”  This is not true.  We understand how those with the capital and the ownership and exaggerate harassment and assault, and create monsters out of thin air.  People argue that because so many women “came out” claiming they were assaulted by Dr. Cosby, then that means Dr. Cosby must be guilty.  We also have many accusers including Janice Dickerson recanting their testimony and admitting that they were paid to make accusations.  So we do not understand harassment and assault so much better. 

We understand that anyone could be paid to claim assault and harassment, and get away with it. 

As Owens writes in his last section, “imperfect people are determining imperfect scales of value.”  I could not agree more.  Those people made imperfect by their capital are sharpening their axes for their next victim that they believe their corporate agenda needs to cancel.  In the last section of this book, Owens writes that “cancel culture has always been about power.”  However Owens’s analyses needed to interrogate that power further.    

Before reading this book, I despised cancel culture and after reading this book, I am more convinced that it should be ignored at all costs.  

While I was not able to relate to the incomplete context provided by Ernest Owens book, I was able to completely, experientially, and theoretically relate to the complete context provided by Sam P.K. Collins in his book Babylon Be Still:  How a Journalist-Educator Adopted an African-Centered Worldview.  

This is a book that describes how Collins came to be an African centered journalist.  At the time I am reading this book, I am infinitely more clear about my theoretical interests and my theoretical grounding which is, like Collins, thoroughly Pan-African.  I highly recommend this book for those seeking context, identity and theoretical grounding outside of the conventional two-party Western political paradigm.  The paradigm in this book is African centered, clearly grounded in the knowledge of Marcus Garvey, who is the subject of my forthcoming edited collection.  

It consists of six parts, and each part has at least two chapters.  The first part titled “Laying It Out, Plain and Simple” describes Collins’s beginnings as a journalist and his theoretical grounding as a Pan-African.  Collins said “the universe blessed me with a circle of new people who shared my perspective and passion for institution building” (31).  This is what makes the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Black Panther Party so interesting to me because those who founded had this “passion for institution building.” 

Collins also describes the function of white supremacy when he writes that “the system of white supremacy was designed to siphon African greatness for the benefit of the white elite” (33).  

The second section called “Navigating the Academic Waters” discussed the progressive disillusionment with the NETROOTS conference which was a gathering of progressive activists started by Howard Dean.  The third section called “Young Lion Awakens” includes articles from Collins’s independent media outlet AllEyesOnDC.com discusses Collins’s growth as a Rastafarian: “the further I drifted away from Christianity, the more aspects of the somewhat similar Rastafari livity resonated with me, especially as I carried along on my journey to a higher African consciousness” (62).  In Collins’s article called “I’m Tired of Protesting,” Collins writes about the slogan
“Black Lives Matter,” Sandra Bland, and Ethiopians in DC, “unbeknownst to many, Ethiopians and African Americans share a history of rebellion against imperialistic European forces” (79). 

His 2016 article called “It’s Not Over: Practicing Kwanzaa in the New Year includes a powerful manifesto: “nothing else can extinguish the economic power of violent police forces and genocidal figureheads better than a mass consolidation of Black finances” (100). 

This is the opposite argument of Jared Ball’s book The Myth of Black Buying Power.  Like Collins and unlike Ball, I’ve never believed this buying power is a myth.  With crypto currency, it becomes more elusive and more potentially influential.  I appreciate at the end of this section how Collins sees his work as a journalist and writer, in being able to shape the minds of his readers: “I’m planting seeds of revolution in their mind” (108).  He continues: “viewers should have some media literacy and understand how and why their news sources present certain news and viewpoints” (108).  This was an article about Kwanzaa and the new year and he said we should “become a more conscious people, breaking out of our mental slavery, one chain at a time” (109).  This was a reference to Marcus Garvey’s 1927 speech warning his audience about the danger of “mental slavery” since the abolition of chattel slavery in the U.S. Civil War.  This “mental slavery” is carried out by the mainstream media.  

His fourth section called “The Politics of Nation Building” Collins describes his growth during the Obama administration: “during the age of Obama, I’ve taken a Black Nationalist political consciousness” (121).  Of Obama’s policy, Collins writes that “after cutting Pell Grant funds often used for matriculation to historically Black colleges and universities, Obama chastised school administrators for mismanagement of funds and low graduation rates” (129).  This is why Collins says that he will no longer vote Democrat. 

Like Collins, I’ve abandoned the Democratic Party, especially after studying the tremendous impact that third parties have had on this country, from the Liberty Party in the nineteenth century to the Black Panther Party in the twentieth century.  Collins defines his departure towards Black Nationalism when he writes: “Its a fear of mine that we’ll accept piecemeal change and not truly grasp the opportunity to write and create sustainable institutions that work in the interest of Black people” (141).  He has an awesome article in this section called “Black liberals, their use of ‘Hotep,’ and ‘Ankh-Right’ and a Denial of a Nation Building’s Merits” where he writes that “it is my hope the Black liberals get to embrace their African heritage” (165).  This is exactly what I thought while reading books by authors like Owens who just sound like they’re repeating Westernized corporate talking points that dismiss the importance of Pan African heritage.  

His part five is called “Instilling Knowledge of Self in African Youth (2016 to 2019)” and resembles my experience teaching in a public charter school.  Collins writes about resisting the identity of being a colonial educator when he writes: 

“I wouldn’t make that total plunge [away from being a conventional, traditional educator to pursuing writing full time] until my termination from Paul Public Charter International High School on May 24, 2018.  That event culminated a turbulent year during which I faced forces, in students and adult colleagues alike, that disregarded consistency, discipline, accountability, collaboration, honesty, and knowledge of self.  Up until my last day, I espoused those principles, as taught to me by my family and in the readings of Marcus Garvey and others.  Earlier in the school year, I applied for, and accepted, the opportunity to explain to a group of white educators in Pittsburgh the need for an African centered education for African youth.”  

I appreciated Collins’s candor and his relating his own growth as a Pan-Africanist to trying to be a mentally stable public school educator.   In his article “Leading the Charge:  Equipping Our Black Youth with Knowledge of Self,” he describes the personalities that our youth are encouraged to adopt: “a false Black identity currently parroted in popular culture is rooted in criminality, sexual promiscuity, dysfunction, lack of industry, perpetual victimhood, economic immobility and a persistent source of otherness” (221). These are stereotypes promoted in the so called reality TV that’s only a reality for the producers promoting Black dysfunction.  

I especially Collins’s literary analysis of Alice Walker’s 1973 short story “Everyday Use” which centers on a conflict between two sisters over a quilt: one college educated sister who wants to put the quilt in a museum and the other sister who didn’t go to college who wants her child to use the quilt to sleep with. Collins compared the personality types in that story to today’s personality types: “the young [college educated] African woman reintroduced as Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo…does not exemplify how the newly Africanized must treat well meaning family members struggling to reconcile their kin’s evolution in Afrikan consciousness” (227).

Collins insists that Wangero, known to the family as Dee, “squanders an opportunity to include her family in her Africanization” (231). Also, her sister Maggie who did not earn a college degree “ends up on top.”  Collins concludes about Dee that her desire for the family quilt in the story was perhaps more about “a need to monopolize access to her lineage” (237).  Collins compares Walker’s Dee to “a cohort of contemporary Afrikan-centered social media pundits and figures who abhor serious scholarship and lack nuance in their assessment of complicated Afrikan freedom fighters.”  Collins writes that “they embrace their ancestry not out of respect, but out of a desire to appear the purest among the collective” (239-40). 

I couldn’t help but remember Stephanie Mills telling Vlad TV that Black journalists like Gayle King should not be exploiting Black artists like R. Kelly and how it behooves Black journalists in their coverage not to promote racist stereotypes and try to appear “the purest among the collective,” but to genuinely respect their ancestry through their coverage.  

In his sixth section titled “The Covid-19 Files,” Collins has three very important articles.  In his first article in this section titled “An Open Letter to My Fellow Pan-African Nationalists,” he writes that “throughout the 20th century, too many organizations fell to the wayside because the surveillance state manipulated internal squabbles” (241). 

Like Collins, I am excited about being able to apply the principles taught by those conscious who came before us in order to avoid being manipulated. 

Collins himself in this article writes that: “I doubled down on my commitment to rectify schisms within myself and my African family” (245).  Collins describes a criteria that eliminates those forces which are using their token position to advance white supremacy: “the quintessential Pan African revolution will revolve, and only revolve, around those devoid of ego who’ve expressed a commitment to their healing and that of their family and community” (247).  That includes de-programming from the colonial order and deconnecting from those subconscious thoughts that keep us tied to the colonial order. 

Collins provides more details at the end of this article when he writes that “we must strive to raise above our differences and commit to direct action that produces more results of merit for several generations to come” (257).  His last article in this section titled “The Creator: A Conduit Between Africans and the Ancestors specifies” the direct action he mentioned: “by mentioning the Most High through prayer and a pious lifestyle, the Africans of yesteryear kept their environments clean and gained internal foresight and knowledge needed to imagine and create—their heaven on Earth, before and during European colonization and terror” (275). 

His last article argues “the masses we want to cajole into a liberation mindset don’t exist…because a segment of our population has espoused individualism to the point where they’re ready to defect from their group and create another entity within minutes of a verbal disagreement” (294).  I found his most conclusive statement to be “those of us with the heart of lions must close ranks and learn all that we can in separating away from this society” (297).  His last points remind all of us of how Africans came to the West: “chattel slavery and subsequent forms of European exploitation thrived on the cooperation of Africans who lacked courage and fidelity to Pan African nationhood” (299). 

Collins’s book leaves me motivated to not allow the surveillance state to manipulate squabbles with me or Africans I know to continue the centuries long exploitation.  Collins’s book underscores the importance of theory which is, how you look at or study an event, person or phenomena.  His book encourages me to understand the ease with which nation is maintained.  -RF.  

Suzan-Lori Parks’s stage adaptation of Perry Henzell’s 1972 film “The Harder They Come” opens within the week at the Public Theater.

In the original 1972 film, Jimmy Cliff plays the character of Ivan, who comes from the Jamaican countryside to live in urban Kingston and make his name as a recording artist. The audience likes him and cares about him because he stands up for the exploited and the oppressed in the major institutions in Jamaica that wield influence in this country: the church, the music industry, and the ganja trade.

This stage adaptation by Suzan-Lori Parks must be seen for three reasons.

One, her stage adaptation shows more than the film the popular influence that the music like artists like Ivan had on their urban environment. This aspect should remind the audience that the role of an artist is that of a public servant, and not a corporate manufactured Western celebrity.

Two, her stage adaptation shows more than the film the potential for all record label owners, like the character Mr. Hilton, to become a convert and promote the conscious music of artists like the film’s Ivan, the real life Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh, and Bob Marley who stood up for the oppressed. In the original, Hilton never becomes a convert and never promotes Ivan’s music throughout the film, like the real-life treatment of Bob Marley’s music in 1970s Jamaica. Parks’s adaptation shows how record label owners can squander billions by ignoring the demands of the masses for music with a political message.

Three, this adaptation must be seen for the UNFORGETTABLE performance of Ivan by Natey Jones. Jones sounds so much like the original Jimmy Cliff. His performance makes you root for him; Jones’s performance makes you want him to get the record deal; his performance makes the audience want to have his music played across the city in order to raise the consciousness of his listeners.

In these aspects, Parks’s adaptation captured the essence of the original film.

Although this adaptation must be seen, it also suffers from serious flaws that detract from the meaning of the film.

First is the undeveloped or childish way the relationship between Ivan and his love interest Elsa is shown. In the stage adaptation, Ivan covers his selling ganja from Elsa and his mother and refers to it as a “fishing business.” This makes the stage version of Elsa look foolish and gullible. In the original film, it is obvious that Elsa is aware of and condones Ivan’s selling ganja, as she cares for Pedro’s son. This part of Parks’s script panders to U.S. respectability politics and undermines the power of the relationship between Ivan and Elsa.

It also forms the shaky foundation for their relationship, as it furthers the gap between Ivan’s growth in Parks’s stage version. Elsa is unable to grow WITH Ivan instead of against him, and by the second act, as Ivan is growing in his consciousness and militance, Elsa begs for Ivan to turn himself to the Jamaican police, a serious betrayal of the original script.

That is not the only relationship that Parks’s adaptation leaves undeveloped.

After a series of rewrites, its clear that Parks’s adaptation cannot handle the social relationship between Jamaica and Cuba. Her adaptation can’t appreciate how in the original film Jamaican Pedro forcefully sought to heal Ivan’s shoulder wound after his gun fight with police. In the original film, Pedro encourages Ivan to board a boat to Cuba where he can get free medical treatment for his wounded shoulder.

The film shows Ivan, his wounded shoulder, the consequent difficulty from swimming with such a shoulder, the boat, the Caribbean sea, as glaring metaphors for the barriers the average Jamaican faces living in a neocolonial island nation. These are absent in the adaptation.

The version I saw on March 11th completely erased Pedro’s lines to Ivan about going to Cuba, and simply shows Pedro changing the bandage on Ivan’s shoulder. This betrays the message of the original film about the reality of Jamaican life.

Despite these betrayals, this stage adaptation should be seen for many reasons.

Her adaptation fleshed out the characters of Ivan’s love interest Elsa and his mother Daisy who sing original songs that speak to their own development. It allows for Daisy’s awesome song in the second act “Many Rivers to Cross” to show the singing talent of Jeannette Bayardelle.

The song “Aim and Ambition” that Parks originates for Ivan is powerful.

There were scenes that the audience LOVED, which was the scene in the church where they members transformed themselves from church dancers to dancehall dancers. This scene is AMAZING and highlights the sacred nature of dancehall music.

Clint Ramos’s set design is absolutely remarkable awesome, it transforms from the stage to a church, to a recording studio, to a street in downtown Kingston, to a bedroom, and deftly handled Parks’s variety of scenes.

Japhy Weideman’s lighting was equally flawless and made the scene with Ivan and Elsa on the bicycle come alive, along with the scene of Ivan’s swim for the boat.

Emilio Sosa’s costume design is flawless for each character.

The intimacy between Ivan and his love interest Elsa was hard to believe and needed more work. The live band needed all the elements of the original film specifically the organ that was played in the original film. The live stage band’s sound was more like U.S. gospel instead of the tambourined Jamaican Shouter Baptist church that Ska sound came from.

With the exception of those playing Ivan, Lyle, Hilton, and J. Bernard, the entire cast needed more work on their Jamaican dialect to sound more convincing.

Chelsea-Ann Jones’s performance in the ensemble as shopkeeper, to whom Ivan pleads, was powerful and unforgettable.

Housso Semon’s performance as a Radio DJ named Lemon Soul and Newscaster was strong and convincing.

Garfield Hammonds’s performance as Hilton was stern and strong.

J. Bernard Callloway’s performance as the Preacher, and Ivan’s nemesis was strong and, like Natey Jones’s performance, deserves critical acclaim.

Special thanks to Jana Zschoche of the Public Theater for her gracious hospitality that enabled me to see this performance; special thanks to the House Manager at the March 12th performance for accommodating my guests Carlene Taylor and her son Caleb. Thanks to Saundra Gilliard for her support in my writing this. Special thanks to playwright David Heron for his phone call and conversation that inspired my review. -RF.

From Saturday November 5th to Saturday December 10th, Dr. Jared Ball and I read and discussed two chapters a week of Neal Gabler’s book “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. On Saturday November 5th, we discussed the introduction and the first chapter; on Saturday November 12th, we discussed the second, third, and fourth chapters; on Saturday November 19th we discussed the fifth and sixth chapters; on Saturday December 3rd, the seventh and eighth chapters, and on Saturday, December 10th we discussed the ninth and tenth chapters. -RF.

Dr. James Turner who passed this August, was one of the pioneers of Black Studies in the U.S. university who wrote a 1984 article called “Africana Studies and Epistemology.” In this article, Turner writes that many faculty “have succumbed to the orthodox norms of academic traditionalism in their pursuit of careerist aspirations for legitimacy and acceptability for the purposes of job stability and security” (181).

The books written by Keisha Blain clearly show that she is academic traditionalist because she writes about influential figures–specifically Amy Ashwood Garvey and Fannie Lou Hamer– in a context that makes these women look like lackeys for the Democratic Party.

A close personal study of each of these women, shows they are not simply lackeys for the Democratic Party but were radicals who challenged the machinations of the Wall Street-backed Democratic Party, a party whose popularity has dropped 33 percent this year.

In the September 9th issue of The New Republic, Keisha Blain penned an article called “Black Historians Know There’s No Such Thing as Objective History,” where she claims that “in a white dominated world and academy,” Black historians “are always fighting to assert our voices and histories into spaces designed to exclude us.” However in the process of asserting “voices and histories” Blain downplays the seminal work of these women in resisting the harmful policies of the two party mainstream.

In her book Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom, Blain writes more of Amy Ashwood Garvey’s public statements endorsing integrationism than Black Nationalism. For example, in quoting Ashwood’s words at the April 1944 conference hosted by the Council on African Affairs, Blain writes: “maintaining the belief that interracial political unity was a necessary step toward ending political rule, Ashwood added ‘I see no ill in finding white allies’” (Blain 149).  In Blain’s words, Amy Ashwood Garvey becomes an integrationist. Blain’s writings about Amy Ashwood Garvey turn her into an integrationist who sought cooperation with the N.A.A.C.P. when in fact Tony Martin writes about her nationalist identity, seeking advertising space in the Nation of Islam’s Muhammad Speaks newspaper for sponsors of her concrete enterprise in Liberia.

Tony Martin put Amy Ashwood Garvey in her proper nationalist context, rather than a figure seeking approval and integration into Western white organizations.

In Blain’s latest book Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America, she situates Hamer as an inspiration for Democratic politicians like Kamala Harris. Although Blain puts Hamer’s work in the context of the popular causes of the Black Lives Matter movement, she does not apply the most enduring and important principles of Ms. Hamer’s speeches. For example, Blain quotes Hamer saying “time out for white people…hand picking the leader that [is] going to lead me ’cause we ain’t going to follow” (65-7). However she does not show how Hamer practiced this principle in her own life. In the conclusion of this book, Blain references Kamala Harris’s 2020 Democratic National Convention speech that mentioned “structural racism” as evidence that Hamer “helped to frame” Harris’s political vision.

This is a vision by Harris that allows the city of Jackson in Hamer’s state of Mississippi, to not have running water, while the federal government stands by, failing to respond. Yet this government finds the money and the weapons to deliver to the Ukraine, which has clean running water. A close read of Hamer’s autobiography, available on SNCC Digital, reveals that Hamer did not believe the policies of the Democratic Party should go unchecked by Wall Street.

Blain’s frame of Fannie Lou Hamer as one who inspired Kamala Harris downplays the failure of the federal government in addressing the very real systemic racism in Mississippi that the Democratic Party has demonstrated it is unable to address.

My forthcoming book details exactly how Blain mischaracterizes Amy Ashwood Garvey and is scheduled for release in June 2023 by Arawak Publications. It is entitled To A More Positive Purpose: Critical Responses to the Scholarship of Tony Martin and features articles by Joshua Myers, Ian Smart, Rupert Lewis, Geoffrey Philp, Latif Tarik, Wendy McBurnie, Ophera Davis and April Shemak.

Blain writes that “the work we do has the potential to shape national debates and inform policies that have broad implications for all Americans.” It behooves her and the academic establishment that supports her to ensure she writes about these influential women in a deeper context from which they emerge so as not to distort them into corporate lackeys for personal career advancement. -RF.

In the first ten days of our trip, we stayed at a pastoral or “bucolic” retreat named Volmoed. We attended a service like the Anglican church service I grew up in. This service was attended by young Cape Townians, one of them who reminded me so much of my sister named Amahle. On the first day, we attended a service of a church in Zwelihle and later that evening. We later had an important conversation on poverty of the material versus poverty of the spirit. Those we passed in Zwelihle definitely were rich in spirit.

The next day, which was Day 4, we attempted to get a whale watching tour, however the weather conditions were too windy, so the tour (photo below) was cancelled. We did however visit one of the highest peaks of Hermanus, the suburb of Cape Town, which was Hoy’s Koppie (photo above with Dr. Navita Cummings James of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida).

That Sunday the 21st, so many things happened. First, I was invited to preach at the same church in Hermanus that the Archbishop Desmond Tutu attended; second, I attended an amazing service at the All Saints Church in Zwelihle that reminded me of my mom’s Baptist church in Mitchell Town, Clarendon, Jamaica. The All Saints Church in Zwelihle was spoken in Xhosa, a language first exposed to me by my father when he took me and my younger sister to see the Broadway musical Sarafina! in 1988.

Above is a photo of the All Saints Church in Zwelihle and with his hands raised is Father Jerry Gelant who introduced me when I gave my sermon at the All Saints.

When I finished my sermon, I thought I heard an owl hooting loudly outside the church building. When I asked Father Jerry whether that was in fact an owl hooting he said yes. For me the owl is a reminder of my grandfather, who came to me on May 13th, when I lived thousands of miles away from him the year he passed in 2019. And again on November 13, 2019 when I saw the same white owl outside my window. The first day I returned from South Africa, my mother told me that my Godmother, Aunt Laurel, passed on Sunday the 21st which was the day I heard the owl after my homily, or my small sermon.

On the fifth day we visited the headquarters of Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation which exhibited his work that included his notes and archival video including his early speeches. Below are notes on the Craddock Four who were murdered by South African security police.

Below is a photo of one of the most inspiring quotes I believe Archbishop Tutu said, which was that “the Holy book [or the Bible] says when a ruler gives you unjust laws, disobey.” This is what John Brown and Harriet Tubman did in the United States, they used the Bible to justify their intentional disobedience of the laws that upheld chattel slavery.

I want to thank Professor Michael Battle (pictured below) for planning an incredible experience in the #TutuTravelSeminar2022 and for writing an extensive 300 page biography of Archbishop Desmond Tutu that I reviewed in my previous post.

I want to thank Father Edwin Arrison for his outstanding guidance of this travel seminar and knowledge he shared about Archbishop Tutu.

On our second to last day we visited the Robben Island Museum where we saw the cell that Mandela was confined to. I couldnt help but think about how Mandela was originally sentenced to five years but after giving this speech entitled “I Am Prepared to Die,” he was sentenced to life on Robben Island. Knowing this inspires me to continue to fight for what I believe. It makes me continue to fight for the compassionate release of Dr. Mutulu Shakur, whose only crime was trying to release U.S. citizens from the grip of drug addiction.

Below is the page signed by Michael and Edwin of the book about Tutu’s life.

Thank you to Father Ed Henley for inviting me to be part of this seminar and for funding my travel to and from it. I thank Father Ed for his support of me and my family, for believing in me, for suggesting I preach the homily, for reading my book about Toni Morrison’s last novel and being THE FIRST reader of my book to describe my book’s significance to me. Thanks to Sherre Henley for her tireless support of me and my work, and thanks to my Travel Seminar members who made this experience unforgettable.