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.
Photo of Dr. James Turner (left) with writer James Baldwin, ca.1970, from the book Discourse on Africana Studies: James Turner and Paradigms of Knowledge, edited by Scot Brown
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.
(clockwise from left: Lori Reho, Navita Cummings James, Ed Henley, Sherre Henley, and James Reho)
“We cannot say that we believe in God if we hate each other–much less say we love God and do the same.” -Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 2021.
This quote by Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of the Anglican church summarizes his message to the world profoundly captured by Michael Battle in his biography of him. This quote is in the afterword of Battle’s biography.
I grew up assuming the presence of an Archbishop Desmond Tutu, that spoke out against one’s own government while at the time encouraging the revolutionary elements to negotiate with the South African government supported by Neo-Nazi elements.
Since his passing in December 2021, I’ve wondered if my country’s government will in fact succeed in ignoring voices like Tutu’s. Michael Battle’s biography necessarily documents the significance of Tutu’s voice for a new generation.
The study of Desmond Tutu’s life is so important because in his lifetime, he criticizes not only the Afrikaner colonial leaders from the 1980s, but also he criticizes native South African neocolonial leaders.
The books is divided into three units: purgation, illumination, and union, each a phase of what Battle calls Christian mysticism. Purgation being Tutu’s formation as a church leader, an illumination which is acceptance of the light which is his leading role as chair of the South African government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The third stage is “union” which Battle writes his Tutu being designated as a global Elder and sage. The single MOST important quote of this entire biography was in the twelfth chapter:
“Tutu helps us see how Western imperialism can no longer shape how Christians engage the world” (284).
The first five chapters make up the first unit, “purgation,” where we learn how Tutu grew up. An important group for Tutu was the Anglican Community of the Resurrection, as well as Trevor Huddleston: Battle wrote that Tutu learned from both that “there should be no effort to ease the tension between his religion and his political activity” (28). Battle would write in this chapter that “getting the oppressor to see God in common with the oppressed was Tutu’s greatest contribution and what Tutu will be known for throughout human history” (34). In the third chapter, Battle writes that for Tutu it seems as if there is a conspiracy “among certain Western countries and big businesses to keep Blacks in South Africa forever in bondage” (65).
Battle details Tutu’s thorough class and color analysis when he writes that “Tutu believed that the South African government provided substantial privileges and concessions to certain blacks in urban areas thereby co-opting them to form a buffer between the white capitalist haves and the Black have nots.” Battle reminds us that Tutu shows us that society is a result of hard work of the Afrikaner (Dutch-descended South African) making the African-descended South African feel inferior. In this formative stage of Tutu’s development, Battle writes that Tutu was thankful that Beyers Nande emerged because he was a leading Afrikaner cleric who challenged the status quo. Battle would write that Nande lost his Anglican parish for “refusing to retract his signature from the 1960 Cottesloe Consultation. The most profound point Battle makes ending this unit is that “the more vilification he got from the government, the higher his stock rose in the Black community and overseas” (98).
Battle begins his fifth chapter equating the election of Nelson Mandela to the “end of apartheid” (127). However the writings of John Pilger and Ali Mazrui tell us that apartheid did not die after the election of Nelson Mandela, it simply changed forms. This is the only part of the book, where Battle did not thoroughly enough describe the consequences of Tutu’s choices. In this fifth chapter, he writes that Tutu “looked forward to international financial investments and he hoped, aid, which would help “our infant democracy to succeed, because South Africa will be the locomotive to drive Africa’s economic train” (127).
However these foreign investments came at a cost. According to John Pilger,
“with Mandela’s reassurances, foreign capital, led by American companies, surged back into Southern Africa, tripling its stake to $11.7 billion. The unspoken deal was that whites would retain economic control in exchange for black majority rule: the ‘crown of political power’ for the ‘jewel of the South African economy’ as Professor Ali Mazrui put it” (Freedom Next Time p.221)
Tutu’s choice to go to the West asking them to fund the South African government contravened what Malcolm X warned in his 1964 speech to the United Nations warning leaders of African nations not to take foreign aid. As I finished reading this book, I wondered if I would be reading it if Tutu had not chose to appeal to Europe for their funding the South African government.
In his second section called “illumination,” Battle describes Tutu’s role as a mediator and how he was seen by some South Africans as a traitor: “he is viewed by Black South African scholars such as Itumeleng Mosala as betraying the struggle of the oppressed with too close a tie with European theology” (154). Battle describes Tutu’s theology as one of Ubuntu, a concept of Bantu cosmology that means “human beings need each other in order to be human” (46). Battle writes that “for Tutu, God takes the side of the poor, the widow, the orphan and the alien” (197). Tutu played a supportive role in the South African Council of Churches that helped the Anglican church. Although he played a helpful role, he made it clear that “Tutu remained reluctant to be a member of any political organization” (197).
His ninth chapter entitled “Leaving Church” that ends the second unit of “illumination,” Battle describes how Tutu’s work went beyond the Anglican church and that “the Christian must be more aware of how the church cooperated with colonialism and how historically white churches had a lot to gain by separating human beings on the basis of race” (214). This recalls Fidel Castro’s interview with Frei Betto in the book “Fidel and Religion” where he says that “imperialism doesn’t allow social changes to take place; it doesn’t accept them and tries to prevent them by force” (186).
In his last unit called “Union,” Battle describes Tutu’s influence on the world. Battle cites Tutu saying that Blacks would welcome the Russians as their saviors from the evil of apartheid. Battle writes that he was sought over the world to lend his help, from: Algeria, Brazil, Canada, the Congo, Gambia, Honduras, Mauritius, Ireland, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and the Solomon Islands. Although Battle says that Tutu “never supported the invasion of Iraq on grounds of just war theory,” Battle does not question enough the role the West plays in its setting up “democratic governments” across the world (238). Although Western media calls these “democratic,” the intrepid work of journalists like Marcus Garvey and Julian Assange reveal to us that these governments are “military dictatorships” that absolutely contravene those principles Tutu espouses. Battle comes closest to questioning the role of these dictatorships when he writes what Tutu says about Nicaragua: “The USA supports quite vigorously those called Contras in Nicaragua” (238). Battle comes even closer to the U.S. support for military dictatorships when he asks the question to Christians: “when Christians go to war, what are we defending?” A hierarchy that was set up by Western interests that does the same this former colonial masters did? This should NOT be what we set up.
In his 1986 speech at the National Press Club, James Baldwin said that the European vision of the world is obsolete. This vision relies on supporting military dictatorships. Battle makes clear that Tutu does defend the work of revolutionaries who defend freedom from colonial oppression when he writes that for Tutu “violence may in certain situations be necessary” (243). Battle underscores this point when he writes that “what is most required by spiritual leaders is a prophetic stance against the ready assumption of Western capitalist triumphalism” (251). Battle writes that the Western church “needs unity” so it can address the “sin of an international economic system that depends on an indebted developing world” (252). This speaks to why Tutu appealing to the European banks to fund the South African government is a contradiction.
Because of the Anglican church’s conservatism, Tutu was not able to lead the Church to unity over same sex blessings. And Battle describes South Africans’ resistance to Western feminism which is seen as “just another form of Western imperialism” (259). Battle describes one’s Christian walk as a battle in which one is fighting on every front: ” Those who followed Jesus sought union with God by defeating those forces endemic in the breakdown of human relationships…Jesus discipled those around him to move toward the demonic forces in order to cast them out from the world” (275).
In the twelfth chapter, Tutu writes that “every praying Christian must have a passionate concern for who is neighbor because to treat anyone as if they were less than children of God is to deny them in the validity of one’s own experience” (278). Although Tutu understands where violence can be used, Battle writes the holds up Tutu as a model of a Christian spirituality of liberation, because Tutu shows us how to refuse violence as the normative means by which to rescue the oppressed.
In the last chapter Battle describes differences between the “Western perspectives” and the “African perspectives” but does not describe what he means by “African perspectives.” What he described recalls the work of the Black psychologist Kobi Kambon in differentiating between African and European worldviews.
In his conclusion, Battle writes that “we learn from Tutu that we must oppose injustice and oppression as religious people, even at the cost of personal freedom, or life itself.” By writing this, Tutu recalls from the radical Christian tradition, abolitionists David Walker, Maria W. Stewart, Harriet Tubman, John Brown, Pauline Hopkins and many others, all of whom opposed “injustice and oppression as religious people.” Battle is absolutely accurate in his assessment that “those who live in the Global North are far more socially isolated today than in any other time in history.” Therefore it is incumbent to be intentional about working with others to “oppose injustice and oppression” after a global pandemic. Tutu’s Afterword in Battle’s biography are his last published words: “I pray that I would have made a contribution in forming both a mature consciousness and conscience for those who say they believe in God.” Tutu did just that. Thank you to Michael Battle for documenting this. THIS REVIEW IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF A FELLOW CHRISTIAN AND MY FORMER COLLEGE CLASSMATE CALVIN LIONEL NICHOLSON (1978-2022).
In this first YouTube LIVE, I discuss May 19th and the meaning of Lorraine Hansberry and Malcolm X, and the 2022 production of Alice Childress’s 1966 play Wedding Band.
The book The New York Times’ 1619 Project and the Racialist Falsification of History is a collection of essays and interviews edited by David North and Thomas Mackaman, published by Mehring Books. This book should be read because it exposes a popular twenty first century false narrative that oversimplifies U.S. history into a simple race conflict between conquering whites and helpless blacks. This is akin to a history promoted by what Marcus Garvey called the “Negro intellectuals” of his time who, he writes, were paid to promote a false narrative and false interpretation of history. This book should be read because it exposes the reality that U.S. history was less a conflict between races than it was a conflict between classes. However the shortcoming of this book is that it has an incomplete or confused understanding of Black Nationalism and confuses it for integrationism, clearly defined by Marcus Garvey as the political behavior that reflects a desire to be white or colored. The book confuses Black Nationalism for integrationism at two different parts.
Perhaps the part of the book that contains its central thesis rests in Part III: Polemics, of its five parts (I: Historical Critique, II: Interviews, III: Polemics, IV: Historical Commentary and V: The Crisis of the New York Times’s 1619 Project). In this Part three was “An Analysis of the New York Times’s Reply to Five Historians” written by Eric London and David North, where they write that
“The Democrats obsessive focus on race and identity is aimed at undermining the development of class consciousness” (195)
Every point made in this book supports this overarching argument, which puts Nikole Hannah-Jones at odds with those like Marcus Garvey, Maurice Bishop, Claudia Jones, and C.L.R. James, who see history from a much more nuanced perspective.
In their first article in Part I entitled “The New York Times‘ 1619 Project: A Racialist Falsification of American and World History,” Niles Niemuth, Thomas Mackaman and David North argue that “racism was the consequence of slavery” without giving Eric Williams credit for arguing this in 1944 book Capitalism and Slavery (7). They later mischaracterized the project, arguing that the 1619 project promotes “a Black Nationalist narrative” when in reality it promotes an “integrationist” narrative. A Black Nationalist narrative would not be a narrative, as Trevon Austin, Bill Van Auken, and David North write in Part V, that would promote a foreign oil company’s exploitation of Black owned land and natural resources, for material profit. If anything, by taking Shell Oil money to promote the message of the 1619 Project, Hannah Jones is promoting an “integrationist” narrative, because she and its proponents use Shell Oil money to integrate into the mainstream popular culture, despite its revisionist history.
In his book Black Awakening in Capitalist America, sociologist Robert L. Allen writes about the power of Western capital in transforming colonialism into neocolonialism, where the “nationalist native elites…cooperate with their former enemies in subduing and controlling the rebellious colony” (65). Shell Oil has done this across the world, especially among the Ogoni people in Nigeria, as the authors have written. By taking Shell Oil money, which has created this class of “nationalist native elites,” she is a committed integrationist and not, as North and Mackaman claim in their book, “a Black Nationalist.”
By encouraging history to be read simply as a conflict between blacks and whites, which destroys class consciousness and the opportunity to organize constructively against foreign exploitation.
This book should be read because it introduces a variety of narratives of history that question the framing of the 1619 project. Namely, part II: Interviews. In one of their interviews with Victoria Bynum, she tells stories of Southern landowners who chose during the Civil War to fight for the Union Army: Jasper Collins (74). Bynum later cites historians like Margaret Storey and David Williams describing yeoman communities that organized themselves into bands that included poor whites, slaves, and free people of color in common cause against the Confederacy (76).
In the second chapter of his book A History of Pan-African Revolt, C.L.R. James writes that “we have clear evidence that the poor whites of the districts had definitely allied themselves with the Negroes.” This book shows how the 1619 Project completely ignores this aspect of history. Also in this section is their interview with Richard Carwardine who makes the false claim that “taken as a whole, the abolitionist movement of the 1820s and 1830s was largely white,” which ignores the history of Maria W. Stewart, David Walker, and the highly influential preacher Nat Turner (145).
Their interview with Dolores Janiewski quotes Hannah-Jones saying “white southerners of all economic classes…experienced substantial improvement in their lives even as they forced black people into a quasi-slavery” (164). Albion Tourgee, who this book mentions definitely did not do this, nor did Jasper Collins whom Bynum mentioned. White southerners of all economic classes did not force black people into a quasi-slavery. Some of them worked to destroy what George Jackson called wage slavery.
Part III: Polemics It includes the article “An Analysis of the NYT Reply to Five Historians.” Five historians wrote a letter questioning the claims of the 1619 Project: Victoria Bynum, James McPherson, James Oakes, and Gordon Wood. The New York Times replied and according to the analysis written by David North and Eric London, this reply was insufficient. The authors of the 1619 project “must still provide an accurate account of the historical context and poiltical constraints which led to the decisions of the Founders. No such analysis is provided by the authors of the 1619 Project. Everything is explained in terms of the alleged racial hatreds of “white” people (186). The article goes on to write that “an economic mode of production based on slavery, which had existed for thousands of years, was abolished through social mass struggle” (187). This part begged mention of the Haitian revolution and how it led to the Louisiana Purchase.
This article contains a very incomplete understanding of Lerone Bennett’s book Forced Into Glory. This is the second time this book mischaracterizes Lerone Bennett’s work as “race-based” without engaging his argument about how Lincoln in fact catered to Southern slaveowners. Lincoln did in fact want to deport all free Blacks to Liberia in order to curb their increasing influence on runaways up to the Civil War. The authors of this article are unable to truthfully engage this. This section of the book makes a powerful point that echoes the aforementioned thesis.
“The justification of the domestic and global interests of American capitalism, the relentless quest for corporate profitability, the effort to suppress the class struggle, and the justification of staggering levels of social inequality are not compatible with the pursuit of historical truth” (197).
This point necessarily questions the standard by which Hannah-Jones was awarded a Pulitzer prize for Journalism, especially if it was a journalism that foments racial division and is rewarded with capital from Shell Oil.
This book includes David North’s article “July 4, 1776 in World History” which accurately describes the American Revolution as an “American bourgeois-democratic revolution” that was determined by the existing objective conditions. In this section III is Victoria Bynum’s article “A Historian’s Critique of the 1619 Project” where she writes that Matthew Desmond in his essay on capitalism and slavery “ignores nonslaveowning propertied farmers, the largest class of whites in the antebellum South” (204).
The final section V entitled “The Crisis of the New York Times’s 1619 Project,” includes an article by Eric London and David North where they analyze a speech by Hannah-Jones at NYU, where they write that she argued that “once the Nazis killed the Jews, anti-Semitism disappeared in Germany,” but in the United States “racism has persisted because whites still have to look at and interact with Blacks.” London and North make clear that “it is a well established fact that the vast majority of Nazi officials were never held to account for their crimes.” London and North write:
“Many leading Nazis, includingindividuals who played a major role in the extermination of the Jews, led successful political, corporate and academic careers after 1945″ (270).
One can argue that the 1619 Project, based on its funding is still in line with a Nazi agenda, especially when one reads the race hatred it is fomenting, especially when one studies how the U.S. government funded neo-Nazis in Ukraine in toppling their democratically elected leader in Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, as Robert Parry wrote in 2014.
The narrative of the 1619 would lead you to believe that history boils down to a racial conflict when in fact, as C.L.R. James has argued it is more a series of class conflicts. As I tweeted on Maurice Bishop’s birthday, using the words of him and Marcus Garvey, I welcome a debate on the historical accuracy of the 1619 Project.
Despite its incomplete understanding of Black Nationalism and Lerone Bennett’s detail of Lincoln’s actual emigration plan for free Blacks before the Civil War, this book is A MUST READ.
C.L.R. James was born on this day. James wrote the influential historical book The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. Ceri Dingle and Rob Harris produced, edited and directed a film that premiered in 2021 about his life entitled Every Cook Can Govern: The life, impact & works of C.L.R. James. In March I was invited by Ogechi Chieke of Bowie State University to speak about the work of C.L.R. James along with the co-producer Ceri Dingle.
I saw this film and I highly recommend it because it shows like no other previous film, how C.L.R. James’s books brought historical figures to life. He did this most profoundly for me in The Black Jacobins, and in the book Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution. This film includes archival footage of C.L.R. James, his birth in Trinidad, his sailing to England because of the cricket playing of Learie Constantine, his sailing to France in order to read and write The Black Jacobins in the French National Archives. His getting the money to do this from Harry and Elizabeth Spencer of Nelson, Lancashire in England.
Images from the film Every Cook Can Govern
The film makes a wonderful analysis of James’s 1953 book Mariners, Castaways, and Renegades that compares Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick to the elite class and working class of U.S. society. The film celebrates this book the most and missed the profound implications of The Black Jacobins on making Toussaint L’Ouverture relevant to younger generations including myself.
My only critique of the film is its incorrect characterization of Marcus Garvey. Robert A. Hill is interviewed in this film as saying that “Garvey went from denouncing Italian fascism to denouncing Selassie.” This is not true. Garvey always denounced Italian fascism, as Tony Martin as documented in the book The Poetical Works of Marcus Garvey, in poems Garvey wrote while he was in prison. In fact, he denounced Italian fascism by denouncing Selassie and Selassie’s appeals to the English government that Garvey thought conceded too much to Italian fascism. Historian Horace Campbell wrote about this in Rasta and Resistance. Marcus Garvey’s love for Selassie and the Ethiopian people is unmistakable and unmatched in human history.
Images from the film Every Cook Can Govern
The film addresses a key question in my consciousness about a key philosophical difference between Jamaican Rastafarians and C.L.R. James’s Rastas unite with James on demonstrating the importance of studying the Haitian revolution and history of Pan-Africanism, but they break with him on his refusal to attend the sixth Pan-African Congress in 1974. I talked to a Rasta directly who helped plan the sixth Pan-African Congress and this Rasta believes James betrayed this Congress at the last minute by refusing to attend because he said the Caribbean governments there would not be represented correctly. I struggle with James’s logic in this decision and the film would have better served its purpose if it addressed this question, but the film is already two hours plus long. It covered what it needed to cover.
I highly recommend ALL SCHOOLS purchase this film. It is required understanding of C.L.R. James. You can watch the film here.
In March, I was invited to discuss this film with the filmmaker.
After seeing the 2021 Broadway production of Alice Childress’s 1955 “Trouble in Mind” by the Roundabout Theatre Company, the line that echoes throughout this production was the older actress Wiletta’s line to the younger actor John:
Wiletta: John, I told you every thing wrong ’cause I ddin’t know better, that’s the size of it. No fool like an old fool. You right, don’t make sense to be bown’ and scrapin’ and tommin’….No, don’t pay no attention to what I said.
John [completely MANNERS]: Wiletta, my dear, you’re my sweetheart. I love you madly and I think you’re wonderfullymagnificent!
This line echoes throughout the production. This line echoes throughout LaChanze’s unforgettable performance of Wiletta Mayer, the actress in the play who at the end comes to her conscience. Wiletta is an actress who dares to question the script; she speaks from a conscience that refuses to perform a stereotypical role.
The play Trouble in Mind is a play within a play.
The play’s setting is a rehearsal room of a Broadway stage production where the cast is rehearsing an historical drama Chaos in Bellville, that is supposed to depict the Jim Crow life in a dramatic way. However the play’s climax emerges when Wiletta poses serious questions to the play’s director about whether the mother she is performing should actually send her son Job out to a lynch mob for simply asserting the right to vote.
In Childress’s original, powerful, and uniquely American play, Wiletta is punished by the Broadway industry for speaking her mind about why the character she is assigned to play is stereotypical and, consequently, should be, in her mind, changed into a less stereotypical character. In Childress’s real life, life imitated art.
In this 2021 production, the way LaChanze performs Wiletta Mayer is unforgettable. Her most dramatic scenes, which include her confrontation with the play director Al Manners, performed powerfully by Michael Zegen, all seem empowered by her line to the younger actor John in the cast who plays the son of Wiletta’s character, Job.
Wiletta in the first act is confident about her ability to perform her role to the satisfaction of her director, Al Manners. She conveys this confidence to the younger actor, John, performed perfectly in this production by Brandon Micheal Hall.
However by the second act, when Wiletta spends more time with the script of Chaos in Bellville, she begins to question the motivations of the character she is cast to perform. To Al Manners, Wiletta questions why a mother would send her son out to a lynch mob just for asserting the right to vote.
Alice Childress wrote this play after writing for Paul Robeson’s Freedom periodical, which I wrote about in my 2012 Temple University dissertation. In this dissertation, I wrote that Trouble in Mind is based in part on the life of Maceo Snipes, who was mentioned in the Freedom periodical and in Robeson’s 1949 address to the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship where he said: “His murderers walked away saying, ‘We told you not to vote. But the widow of Maceo Snipes told her children: “When you grow up, you’ll vote too.” From this play’s script, it is clear that the message of Snipes’s widow to her younger generation affected Childress and how she wrote Wiletta’s responsibility to the younger generation.
Like Snipes’s widow and Alice Childress herself, Wiletta does not want the younger generation kowtowing the industry or its lackeys by succumbing to the fear that the industry tries to induce.
When Wiletta confronts Al Manners about why her character should be written differently, he replies that the mainstream theater audience does not want to hear “the unvarnished truth.” The director Al Manners then leaves the rehearsal, ends the rehearsal promptly and has his stage manager tell the cast members that they will be called individually for tomorrow’s rehearsal.
Wiletta deduces that all the cast members except her will be called back to return for rehearsal. The beauty of this play is her decision to show up to the rehearsal, whether she is called back or not; it is her resolute posture and attitude after her honest and direct questions to the play’s director about the stereotypical nature of her character.
Life imitated art in the case of Childress’ own life but also in the case of the life of Trouble in Mind. After its original Greenwich Mews theater production, according to her scholars Kathy Perkins and Lavinia Jennings, Childress had similar problems of “interpretation” with her own white producer when he threatened to cancel the off-Broadway production if she did not end the play happily, dec since the commercial theater preferred such happy endings. Childress conceded and changed the ending. In the revision, Wiletta, instead of resolving to return the next day, negotiates a “realistic” presentation with Al Manners. Later Childress was asked to move the play to Broadway with a series of rewrites. Her frustration with the constant request to accommodate the various white producers resulted in her refusing to continue rewriting after she said she “couldn’t recognize the play one way or the other” therefore ultimately resolving not to have it done.
Sixty six years after Childress decided not to change her script to her 1955 Broadway producers’ demands, Todd Haimes at the helm of Roundabout Theatre Company has produced this play on Broadway, directed by Charles Randolph-Wright. In a letter by Haimes that was printed in the production’s playbill, it reads: “I am proud that Roundabout is giving Trouble in Mind its long overdue spotlight, especially at this vital moment.”
In the age of #BlackLivesMatter, Childress’s message in 2021 is as vital as it was in 1957 when it references the efforts of the younger generation in the Little Rock Nine to better themselves. Childress’s voice through Wiletta is a warning to all members of the older generation not to encourage those of the younger generation to kowtow to the demands of industry.
Jessica Frances Dukes’s performance of Millie is unforgettable, namely her lines to John about the danger of getting involved with their castmate, Judy performed by Danielle Campbell.
Special thanks to Lavinia Jennings for writing an UNFORGETTABLE biography of Alice Childress published by Twayne; to lighting designer Kathy Perkins for her edited collection of Childress’s plays published by Northwestern University press, and for tickets to see this production. And special thanks to Gordon Barnes for joining me to see this production.
