Today is the birthday of Hubert Harrison. I just completed Jeffrey B. Perry’s 760+ biography of his life from 1918 to 1927, and I highly recommend this book.
On Wednesday, April 29th, 2021, Abdus and Jacquie Luqman hosted me on THE CYPHER series on Luqman Nation to talk about this book. I was most interested in how biographer Jeffrey B. Perry wrote about Marcus Garvey’s 1922 arrest. This arrest represents a watershed moment Harrison’s philosophy that became more hostile to nationalism; and it was a watershed moment in Harrison’s personal life. I highly recommend reading this biography.
This memoir “Just As I Am” by Cicely Tyson is a A MUST READ. I am grateful I had the opportunity to read and discuss this book over the course of seven weeks, reading three to four chapters each Saturday from February 13th to April 3rd. Our participants included Sandi Gilliard, Sojourna Collier, Sharon Gordon, Anthony Thomas, Briana Cannon, and my mother.
There are two persistent themes in the performances of Ms. Tyson and in this memoir: one, the important work one must do to de-program their subconscious programming that a white supremacist society has programmed into them; and two, the need to maintain strong Black family kinship. She writes in her second chapter of her parents: “the relationship’s strongest connective tissue was their shared sense of faith and family” (13). Of the necessity to de-program oneself from white supremacist subconscious programming, Ms. Tyson writes in the fifth chapter “In all of my childhood, King Kong was the only film I saw at the cinema, and Mom regretted choosing that one. At nights, I’d wake up howling from a nightmare. I didn’t step foot in a [movie] theater again until the 1972 premiere of Sounder” (59).
In our first book discussions on February 13th and 20th, we found most profound a point Ms. Tyson made on page 97: ‘her daughter [Ms. Tyson] had unknowingly repeated the very familial pattern she’d longed to end.” I believe every parent should sit down with their teenage children and read ‘Just As I Am’ by Cicely Tyson with them and talk about how to end destructive familial patterns and build new constructive ones. She was promoting the second theme here.
On Saturday March 6th discussion we discussed the memoir from chapters 11 to 13, where she mentions her first TV role. One of our participants was Sojourna Collier whose work is Emmy nominated. Sojourna told us about the storyline of The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, which is about a single dad. We saw the scene in Ms. Tyson’s first TV role, which was the series called The Courtship of Eddie’s Father which she got a chance to perform in because of her professional relationship with Jimmy Komack whom Bill Haber introduced her to. In this scene, she plays a woman whom Eddie is dating who questions his preconceived ideas about what a woman should know. Although he is not interested in football, Ms. Tyson’s character is in fact interested in football. Bill Haber would later go on to produce the stage play Thurgood initially starring James Earl Jones, that later starred Laurence Fishburne. Ms. Tyson also credits Haber for supporting her over the past forty years.
On Saturday, March 13th, we talked about chapters 15, 16, and 17, and she discussed the commercial success she encountered ever since performing in the film Sounder. She mentioned that this was the first time that she became a “headliner.” I thought that her work in Sounder most promotes the strength of the Black Family. In the most pivotal scene that I showed in this class, I chose to show the scene where Paul Winfield’s character reprimands his son for not going to school because the son wanted to make up for lost time. When he reprimands him, he runs away, and before Paul Winfield’s character chases him, Cicely Tyson’s character Rebecca explains to him why spending time with his father was more important than going to school. This is a powerful scene. She promotes the second theme in this part.
On Saturday, March 20th, I was so glad to have my mother join this conversation about the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth chapters. My mother informed us that Prince Harry’s father was the brother to Margaret, who once married Lord Snowdon, who took the photo of Ms. Cicely Tyson on the book cover. We also saw powerful clips of Ms. Tyson’s work in Sounder and in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Her devotion to Mr. Pittman in the scene we saw promoted the second theme mentioned earlier.
On Saturday, March 27th, we discussed at length what Ms. Tyson wrote about her appearance in the film The Women of Brewster Place based on the novel by Gloria Naylor. Her scene with Robin Givens playing Kiswana is I THINK HER BEST WORK IN ADDITION TO HER WORK IN THE FILM “A HERO AIN’T NOTHIN BUT A SANDWICH.” Her work in both films promotes the second theme about the importance of family.
In our last conversation about the last three chapters of this memoir, we talked about how Ms. Tyson’s work promoted the building of a conscious African centered family. We saw a clip of the film The Marva Collins Story where she defends her teaching style that promotes a culture of reading against a parent who thinks she is doing too much. We saw a clip of the film Bustin’ Loose with Richard Pryor, where she tries to get a loan for the house she is using to educate her students but is encouraged by Richard Pryor’s character to continue securing this space. We saw a clip of the film based on Alice Childress’s novel A Hero Ain’t Nothing But A Sandwich where she relates her own child’s drug abuse with the drug abuse of other Black people in her community. She is promoting the unity and strength of the Black family here. In this discussion, we appreciated her point at the end of this memoir that “Centuries of abuse have taught us to regard one another with disdain, to treat ourselves with the same contempt plantation owners once held for us” (397). She dissolves all negative comments that come from a self-hatred with this comment. I am grateful to have finished this memoir with an awesome reader like Anthony Thomas. You can watch our last discussion here with the password: eb6b*6&1 -RF.
On Wednesday, March 10th, 2021, I hosted a discussion of the book “Critical Responses about the Black Family in Toni Morrison’s ‘God Help the Child’ including contributors Natalie King-Pedroso, Jericho Williams, Yolanda Franklin, and Jasmin Wilson.
You can watch this video here with the passcode: k2fx@ViA.
On Tuesday, October 24, 2017, the day of the premiere of Juney Smith’s film The Woodie King Jr. Story, Michael Dennis recorded my interview with Woodie King, Jr. about his 45 years of producing stage performances at New Federal Theatre which included Black Girl by J.e. Franklin, for colored girls who’ve considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange, and countless more productions, some of which are detailed below.
Photo of productions of New Federal Theatre
Photo 2 of productions of New Federal Theatre.
Photo of the Productions of New Federal Theatre.
There were three life changing productions by Woodie King Jr.’s New Federal Theatre (NFT). The first was the 1974 production that was revived by directors Jamila Capitman and Heather Thomas that I helped to stage manage in 2007. The second was a 2010 reading that the NFT produced of Pearl Cleage’s play Flyin’ West starring Kim Brockington, Stephanie Berry, Bianca Lavern Jones, and Ms. Ruby Dee, narrated by T. Renee Mathis. The third life changing production was NFT’s 2010 production of Charles Smith’s play Knock Me A Kiss starring Tony winner Andre De Shields as W.E.B. Du Bois and Erin Cherry as Yolande Du Bois. This production was life-changing because that was the first and last “standing room only” production I attended where I saw and witnessed and felt THE COMMERCIAL POWER of Black theater. The audience was hypnotized by the POWER of Chuck Smith’s direction. It was a great thing to witness. Thank you Woodie King, Jr. for producing life-changing theater.
Photo of me with Woodie King Jr. by Michael Dennis of Reelblack.com
“whatever can be remembered can grow–even through the darkness.”
I highly recommend reading Racism From The Eyes of a Child by Mathew Knowles, born on this day, January 9th. At the end of the memoir, he quotes his sister Chiquita Knowles-Ash who says “whatever can be remembered can grow–even through the darkness.” The story is about the determination to accept the place that society has made for you. This book includes perspectives from his cousin Robert Avery, his sister Chiquita, his classmate Barbara Castarphen-Bush, and his cousins Linda Hogue-Anglen and Oscar Underwood, Jr.
The book is divided into five parts: one, roots in racism; two, growing up Gadsden; three, University lessons in Race; four, the Corporate challenge; five, outro: Racism today.
In the first part he begins talking about how his grandmother put his mother out the house. His mother like his grandmother had a strong personality. Linda said “that’s just the way she was.” And it was Oscar who provided the historical background of Marion where his grandparents lived. Marion, Alabama, was where an Alabama state trooper killed Jimmie Lee Jackson for defending his mother while they were both attending a voter registration meeting.
Mathew Knowles’s schooling was like mine in that he was called “Oreo” for his extraordinary academic schoolwork. He says “I couldn’t go to any Black social gathering and I never got invited to any white ones. I absolutely wouldn’t think about dating a Black girl from Carver and never did” (61). What makes this book interesting is that Knowles is very clear about consciously expressing the ways he has been socialized to only date white or light skinned women.
Despite this colorism he was raised by his mother to have who told him never to bring a “nappy headed” woman home, he was also raised by this same mother to respect himself. He tells the story of his mother telling an insurance agent who calls her by her first name: “when you can get out and ask for Mrs. Helen Knowles, I will speak with you. If not, please cancel my policy” (70).
He talked fondly about his father who “would go and tear down houses sell the lumber and he would collect metal–alumnium, copper, etc. that he would sell” (78).
I appreciated several parts of this story: one, his point that “my whole life follows that pattern of always having some job” and I appreciated identifying the connections between what he did at Xerox to what his daughter Beyoncé is doing to the music industry. When breast cancer research expanded and Xerox started selling machines that conducting xeroradiography, Knowles writes that he “studied everything” he could on breast cancer. Of his sales work he said about his clients: “I wanted that person to buy me first…they would do that [by learning to] respect me, my knowledge and ability” (154).
His transition from Xerox to the music industry was seemless because he was determined. He writes that he was never intimidated to do what he was doing because he spent twenty years in a number one position in sales and had “learned to maneuver in the best interest of whatever he was selling” (163).
He is boldly honest about his mental health challenges, revealing that he had “anxiety attacks” and that he internalized a lot of trauma.
I highly recommend reading every page of this book because it is a testament to the power of introspective growth and development professionally and spiritually. -RF.
This past week I just finished Andrene Bonner’s novel Long Walk to Cherry Gardens and I highly recommend it her development of her male adolescent character named Roderick Brissett. Roderick is a teenager coming of age in the post-independence Jamaica. I recommend this novel for two reasons: one, it fulfills what William H. Ferris in a 1920 article in the Negro World newspaper about what novels should do: “novels which can powerfully envisage the struggles of an aspiring Negro in a hostile Anglo-Saxon civilization.” Roderick comes into his own identity and his manhood in a hostile Anglo-Saxon civilization that is still tethered to its colonial origins.
The second reason I recommend this novel is because it is an example of a young man who rejects what James Baldwin has called “the assumptions” he’s been given by a still heavily colonial society; he rejects the colonial assumptions society has given him to use education to better himself. Baldwin said this in his 1971 interview with Nikki Giovanni recently released by the Post Archive.
Roderick is a young man who seeks identity first by seeking to escape the duty of running his Aunt Hope’s shop. Aunt Hope discourages him from getting an education. Roderick learns the history of colonial history from a Rastaman and various characters. The education these characters give him, Roderick uses to move himself out of the subservient place his Aunt Hope is trying to keep him in. In my 2017 review of Marlon James’s novel A Brief History of Seven Killings published in the Caribbean Quarterly, I discuss the tragedy of his Kim-Marie Burgess character not developing because she is unable to use the knowledge of her history to develop herself.
Bonner’s Roderick is quite the opposite.
When he is told by the Rastaman, that “Education develops the intellect,” Roderick takes this to heart and uses class-conscious code switching to avoid being prosecuted by a police officer, and to avoid joining a drug dealing gang.
His friend Chloe Goodman encourages him to go to school and earn a scholarship. In his journey to do this, Roderick survives so much. Bonner’s italics indicate his thoughts such as those on page 8:
“A wonder why Aunty make sure Stephen and Nelton go a school every day but won’t make me go.”
Bonner’s writing of Jamaican patois is impeccable, she seamlessly goes in and out of patois to indicate dialogue and provide important cultural references for future generations to understand. My first published book is about the work of novelist Pauline Hopkins who wrote that the art form of the novel’s purpose is show “manners and customs” from generation to generation, and Bonner’s novel does exactly this.
Even though Roderick does not have a biological family to support him, he has an intellectual family to support him. His exchange with the older Maas Suraj character was important, who tells him: “you need to find a way to clear your mind so you can think critically, clearly and make good decisions. Meditation will help you.”
Roderick takes this advice to heart when he finds a way to go to school and to listen to his grandmother Tata’s advice. He also puts together the story of how his biological mother met his biological father by “thinking critically,” asking the right questions, and putting the pieces of the puzzle about who he is together.
The journey is incredible. I especially appreciated the influence of the Rastaman Lij on Roderick’s life and him giving him the popular book Black Power by Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton. The colonial forces tragically take the life of Lij in ways that mirror its hostility to forces that teach young people to decolonize their minds. What was most significant was Roderick’s grandmother Tata’s counsel to leave the gang that he was enticed to join. This advice enables him to pursue his education. When I think of Roderick, I think of the ways that men like my father Anserd and men like the journalist Marcus Garvey came from humble beginnings to make a significant impact on the world. Because of constructive guidance like the guidance that Lij gave to Roderick.
This novel teaches the importance of mentorship for young men, and how these mentors allow our young people to think critically and use education to further their development. While hearing Nyabinghi drums, Roderick remembers his and Lij’s favorite Bible verse from Psalm 1:
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful…But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”
Roderick was this tree planted by nurturing rivers of water, despite being despised as a young man. He used his education to further himself by rejecting the assumptions colonial Jamaican society gave him. I highly recommend Long Walk to Cherry Gardens by Andrene Bonner.
This is an opinion editorial recently published in the Jamaica Gleaner where I argue that Amy Ashwood Garvey should be a national hero of Jamaica and that her grave should be identified and her tombstone found. Two days after this was published online, I was sent an email from a writer who located her gravesite. Thanks to Professor Rupert Lewis who inspired this editorial and thanks to the Jamaica Observer for publishing it.
Itis written that the grave of Amy Ashwood Garvey is somewhere in Kingston’s Calvary Cemetery. It needs to be found so a tombstone can be placed on it. She co-founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914 with Marcus Mosiah Garvey, whom she married on Christmas Day 1919 in New York. Although historian Tony Martin wrote on page 47 in his 2007 bookAmy Ashwood Garveythat Marcus Garvey terminated their marriage three months later, historian Lionel Yard wrote on page 208 in his 1990 bookBiography of Amy Ashwood Garveythat a New York judge ruled that Garvey was never officially divorced from Amy Ashwood Garvey.
Martin wrote that Amy Ashwood Garvey was buried in Calvary Cemetery on May 11, 1969 after a funeral service at Holy Cross Church in Half-Way-Tree, attended by Michael Manley. Fifty years later, after I earned my PhD in African American Studies at Temple University, I completed my fifth play based on these two books about Amy Ashwood Garvey. After finishing this play I reached out to Garvey scholar Rupert Lewis and asked of the tombstone of Amy Ashwood Garvey. He replied that Roman Catholic Church Deacon Peter Espeut has been working on identifying the grave of Amy Ashwood Garvey. Rupert Lewis suggested I write an op-ed in support of finding this grave, here we are.
Amy Ashwood Garvey’s grave should be identified and marked with a tombstone because of her immense contribution to Jamaican and world humanity.
It was Amy Ashwood Garvey who introduced Amy Jacques to Marcus Garvey. In 1922, Marcus Garvey would later marry Amy Jacques, who would edit and print The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey. Marcus Garvey’s relationship with Amy Jacques lasted until his death; however, his relationship with Amy Ashwood Garvey was the foundation. It was Ashwood Garvey’s editorship of the Negro World newspaper that led to Earl Little and Louisa Norton meeting in Montreal to eventually conceive Malcolm X.
A reading and a production of my fifth play, The Original Mrs Garvey, reveals the historical significance of Amy Ashwood’s unique contributions to the anti-colonial Garvey movement in the Caribbean and in Africa. She lectured across the Caribbean and West Africa, playing an instrumental role in unifying the black and Indian population in Guyana. She played an instrumental role in trying to unify Kwame Nkrumah and his vocal dissident J B Danquah, whom she had met in London. She encouraged Jamaican citizens to gain a radical political education and run for political office — like J A G Smith against former Prime Minister Alexander Bustamante. She also encouraged sex education for the Jamaican masses decades before it would be introduced in Cuban schools after their 1959 revolution. In 1946 she traced her paternal Ashanti heritage to her grandmother’s birthplace in then Gold Coast, now Ghana.
Every individual in Jamaica needs to know and study the story of Amy Ashwood Garvey. Books about her need to be reprinted and sold in physical or electronic copies across the nation. Studying her life will lead to a deeper understanding and a personal appreciation for the resilience of African people overcoming chattel slavery, Jim Crow discrimination, and neocolonialism.
I believe that Amy Ashwood Garvey should actually be recognised as a national hero for her contribution to the worldwide anti-colonial movement across the Caribbean and Africa — started by herself and her first husband, Marcus Mosiah Garvey. Her writings on women leadership in Africa anticipate the writings of US writers Toni Cade Bambara and Alice Walker, as well as the philanthropy of Oprah Winfrey in South Africa. Her life and her writings need to be taught as part of the Jamaican educational curriculum for generations to learn from and emulate. We can begin by locating her grave and marking it with a tombstone. -RF.
Today is the birthday of Claude McKay and I just completed his novel “Amiable with Big Teeth,” and it was the first novel in years that COMPELLED me to finish it, and I wonder why. I realized why, and I want to share why. I am not motivated to finish most novels that I am asked to read. However I was motivated to finish this novel because the way McKay wrote his Pablo Peixota character moved me like no other character I’ve read. I wanted Pablo and his organization to succeed.
In this novel, McKay shows the natural life-and-death progression of Black-run organizations in the West trying to connect with Africa but getting hampered or stopped by Western philanthropy and propaganda. McKay’s Pablo Peixota is chair of the Hands to Ethiopia organization. As the reader, you want the organization to succeed. It is hosting the envoy from Ethiopia named Lij Alamaya. Alamaya’s job is to deliver a letter from the Ethiopian emperor to Peixota. In the Introduction written by Jean-Christophe Cloutier and Brent Hayes Edwards, the president of Dutton, John McCrae who had the option to first publish this novel, said that the novel was “so bad and poor” (xl).
Viking declined to publish Hurston’s Barracoon. And Dutton also declined to published McKay’s Amiable. Dutton thought it was “bad” because the novel is such a strong indictment of Western philanthropy. In the end, like Paule Marshall’s character Harriet Amron, the white philanthropist dies because of their own arrogance and the chaos they created.
The reader is encouraged to see Alamaya deliver the letter, however Alamaya loses the letter. Peixota’s daughter Seraphine retrieves the letter after finding out it was stolen by the chair of Friends of Ethiopia, Maxim Tasan. The novel becomes more suspenseful where the reader wants to see Seraphine retrieve the letter and strengthen the connection between Ethiopia and “Aframericans” as the novel states. Peixota’s allies include the Reverend Zebulon Trawl who prays: “show me the way to defeat the machinations of the strong white ones against thy poor black sheep.”
Seraphine falls in love with Alamaya in way that shows the difficulty of Black parents raising Black children in a white world. McKay writes a full background for Peixota as a former numbers runner-turned-successful businessowner. McKay makes Peixota sympathetic as a Black parent who wants the best learning and career opportunities for their child yet, not a career that assaults the relationship between Aframericans and Ethiopians. When Peixota does not approve of Seraphine’s pursuit of Alamaya, she leaves the house in anger and consciously works for Maxim Tasan, leader of his rival organization that, as McKay shows, tried to undermine Hands to Ethiopia on several fronts.
Tasan said: “now that we have Alamya on our side and he’s going to work with the White Friends, we must see that he doesn’t keep up his contact with Peixota and Dorsey Flagg and their gang” (127). He also tried to prevent the Hands member Dorsey Flagg from accompanying Alamaya on his tour of the States. Tasan’s goal is to essentially stop aid from Peixota’s group, and to have as many people as possible join the “Popular Front” which was popular Communist group that was the arbiter of bourgeois democracy across the world.
He also helped get Peixota framed up. The trial and criminalization of Marcus Garvey looms throughout this novel. As you see how unfairly Western philanthropy, Tasan’s funder, stereotypes Peixota, you can’t help but think of how the same thing happened to Marcus Garvey, who ran the Negro World newspaper, that McKay wrote for before he pursued his solo writing career by 1927.
The narrator later tells us that Alamaya “had quickly perceived that the unfavorable publicity given the man’s arrest was an underhanded attack on the Hands to Ethiopia” (155). However, as McKay revealed in a letter mentioned the Introduction, his character Alamaya was not as strong as he wanted him to be, because he ultimately succumbs to the propaganda, to the machinations.
And after attacking Peixota’s organization, Peixota’s connection to Alamaya, Peixota himself, Tasan goes after Peixota’s daughter Seraphine. The narrator says that Tasan was perfectly satisfied in having Peixota’s daughter (181). Although the criminal case against Peixota was dismissed, the dismissal was ignored by the mainstream media. As James Baldwin in Giovanni’s Room, and as Morrison in God Help the Child, McKay wants the reader to question the narrative presented by the mainstream news media. McKay’s reader should see the power of philanthropy in shaping a narrative, even though that narrative is false.
After this break, the story shifts to the machinations of Maxim Tasan. The reader follows him to his death. McKay shows the consequences of Tasan’s effort, albeit successful. Tasan loses his life when he tries to separate Professor Koazhy from his supporters–a group that is reminiscent of the masses who were faithful readers of the Negro World and supporters of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. For this, which was part of his pattern of creating chaos and cultural separation, he dies. Although Tasan dies his damage is done. However McKay gives agency most to the group in Harlem who APPLY their knowledge of the anticolonial struggle. -RF.
This month I started teaching an online Zoom course entitled “Course on Marcus Garvey” that featured four committed students. We read Dr. Tony Martin’s book Marcus Garvey, Hero as a primary text.
One of my students, whose father was a Garveyite, had this to say about my course:
This course on Marcus Garvey was very enlightening. Thank you, Dr. Fraser, for presenting Garvey’s complex ideologies in such a easy to understand way. Your knowledge and commitment to shedding light on the foundation of Black liberation is invaluable. I highly recommend this course as a primer for the study of any component of the Black radical response to racism in America and worldwide. Sincerely, Saundra Gilliard
You can watch one of the classes here using the password: “3O%36i&@”:
In the second week, when we read up to page sixty, we talked about Bride’s relationship with her co-worker Brooklyn:
In the third week, we talked about the beginning of Bride’s journey guided by Booker’s admonition: “correct what you can, learn from what you can’t:”
In the fourth week, we talked about exactly how Bride was correcting what she could, and learning from what she couldn’t:
In the fifth week, we talked about Bride’s pursuit of truth:
In the sixth week, we learned about Booker’s back story:
In the seventh week, we learned the result of Bride’s pursuit of Booker:
In the eighth week, we discussed the end of the novel:
In the ninth week, we read the Introduction I wrote to the book Critical Responses about the Black Family in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child.
In our tenth week, we read the second half of the Introduction:
In our eleventh and last week, we discussed Jasmin Wilson’s article “Raising the Inner Child: Lessons of Emotional Development in ‘God Help the Child'” and my article “Socialized to Silence: A Close Reading of Booker Starbern and Lula Ann Bridewell in God Help the Child According to Kobi Kambon’s Model of African Self-Consciousness:”
