In the run up to the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial in Washington, D.C. on August 28, smaller stories bubble to the surface. One that caught our notice was an NPR report about the Tuskegee Airmen—America’s first black military pilots—and their 70^th anniversary, celebrated at their national convention last week. The veterans, numbering some 100 (more than 1,000 men trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama beginning July 1941) got a special preview of the MLK monument.

Perhaps as exciting for the airmen is that one of their original planes, a 1944 Stearman biplane is being donated to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. The story of the Spirit of Tuskegee’s journey from training plane to crop duster to the museum can be read here.

Over the years we’ve had the pleasure of meeting several of the airmen—members of 99th Pursuit Squadron, later part of the 332nd Fighter Group,—including the late Lee Archer who helped us properly identify an illustration of a P51 Mustang, a fighter plane the airmen flew during World War II. The retired airforce lieutenant colonel, who shot down five German Messerschmitt 109s during his combat tour told us that the Tuskegee Airmen were the only squadron in the history of the Air Force to fly so many different types of planes—the P-40 Warhawk, the P-39 Aircobra, the P-47 Thunderbolt, and the P-51—within the course of a single tour of duty. The Tuskegee airmen’s P-51s were nicknamed Redtails because of their distinctive paint job.

Keep your eyes open for a new film Red Tails coming in January 2012

American Legacy mourns the loss of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a leader of the civil rights movement who was at the forefront of the battle against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. Calmly, doggedly, and at great risk to his life, he chipped away at the implacable system that was Jim Crow until it was dismantled. Below is a Fall 2006 article on his struggle, and eventual victory.

ON ONE SIDE WAS THE SQUAT, PUGNACIOUS EUGENE “BULL” CONNOR, a white former radio baseball announcer who made segregation his issue in Birmingham, Alabama. On the other was Fred Shuttlesworth, a wiry, combative black preacher who could fire up an audience like few others, the man who “warmed up the crowd before they brought [Martin Luther] King on to speak,” one veteran Birmingham detective remembered.

Their battleground was the Birmingham of the 1950s and 1960s, described by King in his 1963 book Why We Can’t Wait as “the most segregated city in America.” Connor, who found a place on the Birmingham City Commission in the 1930s, fought to keep his town segregated long after other Southern cities had left Jim Crow behind. Shuttlesworth—who survived Ku Klux Klan bombing attempts, beatings, and harassment by white officials—waged a decade-long battle to knock down the barriers that Connor had sworn to protect.

full story*

*Please note: The image on the opening page is not Fred Shuttlesworth. A mistake was made in production and the actual image was switched.

With the commemoration of the Martin Luther King Jr. monument delayed, yet imminent, it’s a good time to think about the folks who dedicated and sometimes sacrificed their lives to the civil rights movement in the 20^th century. Too often, though, we  remember those individuals who have become icons, MLK, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, a few names come easily to mind. We dig deeper: A. Philip Randolph, Medgar Evers, Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, John Lewis, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth—there are many more, of course, all key players, (almost all since passed on). Still, there are people—those who worked behind the scenes; those whose actions although effective, did not make national news; those without whose sacrifice and sustained dedication, the civil rights movement would not have succeeded.

From the Spring 2009 issue of American Legacy

Three years ago American Legacy featured a story about Norman and Velma Hill, longtime activists who in 1960 began their career fighting for civil and workers’ rights on a beach on the south shore of Chicago’s Lake Michigan. On August 20, 2011,  a new landmark was dedicated to mark the 50^th anniversary of the fateful day when de facto segregation began to be dismantled in that northern city.

That August in 1960 Velma Murphy and her then fiancé Norman Hill led 30 members of the South Side NAACP Youth Council and students at the University of Chicago to Rainbow Beach in the first of many Wade-in protests. The action was spurred by the treatment of a black police officer; he and his family were run off the beach by a mob of whites.

“Inspired by lunch counter sit-ins of students from historically black colleges in the upper south and the anti-colonialist struggle of Africans for independence. We decided to initiate a wade-in at Rainbow Beach,” said Velma Hill in a recent interview. “We went on to Rainbow Beach as a group some reading, some playing chess and checkers, and some wading and/or swimming in the water.”

Things were fairly calm until the group of young blacks and whites were noticed. About an hour after they began the wade-in, a white mob, armed with rocks, chains, and pipes, surrounded the protestors. As the mob began to approach the group, the wade-inners gathered their belongings and began to leave the beach.

That’s when things turned ugly. Someone in the mob shouted that the integrated group was on the wrong beach. A racial slur followed. “They started throwing rocks, bricks and stones at us – in fact, Velma was hit on the head by a rock, and suffered a wound that required 17 stitches,” said Norman Hill.

The protestors, including Velma and Norman, went back to the beach the following Saturday with police protection using the facility without incident. The beach closed after Labor Day, and the wade-ins resumed the summer of 1961. The Hills were there.

The Hills, who flew to Chicago from their home in New York City, and 10 others who took part in the wade-ins were joined at the ceremony by U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., State Sen. Kwame Raoul, and nearly 200 others gathered lakeside to unveil a plaque, a memorial marking the importance of that first protest half a century ago.

Said Norman Hill in a speech at the celebration, “the wade-Ins were consistent with the principles of A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr. in three ways. First they encompassed our commitment to integration, second a belief in self liberation and third, the use of direct non-violent action as the most democratic vehicle for participation in social change regardless of economic and social status, degree of education and financial well being.”

The attack on Rainbow Beach had serious consequences. Velma Hill lost a baby as a direct result of her head injury, and was never able to have a child. But this did not stop her or Norman Hill from steaming ahead full force into lives of activism, for years working closely with civil rights and labor leaders A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin on campaigns such as the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and to integrate Broadway plays,  the workforce at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, A&P stores, and Trailways buses.

Today the Hills remain passionate about fighting for the impoverished, the disenfranchised, the overburdened. “We and the AFL-CIO, which is the coordinating body for most unions considers jobs the top political and economic priority, with unemployment at the official rate of 9.1%,” says Norman Hill. “Jobs are urgently needed in the black community where unemployment is twice the national rate and over 20% among youth. The labor movement is pressing President Obama and Congress to immediately initiate job creating programs to put back to work the millions that are unemployed, working part time, would like to work full time, and those who have been out of work for so long that they have given up looking for employment.”

“Toward this end, the AFL-CIO is proposing the following six point program to deal with the unemployment crisis:

1. Rebuild America’s schools and transportation and energy systems.

2. Revive U.S. manufacturing and stop exporting good jobs overseas.

3. Put people to work doing work that needs to be done.

4. Help federal, state, and local governments avoid more layoffs and cutbacks of public services.

5. Help fill the massive shortfall of consumer demand by extending unemployment benefits and keeping homeowners in their homes.

6. Reform Wall Street so that it helps Main Street create jobs

“Specifically and immediately contact your Congressional Representative urging support for President Obama’s  America Jobs bill, which will create two million jobs.”

Says Hill, “We need a coalition similar to that which organized the 1963 march on Washington which was for jobs and freedom. The coalition should include labor, civil rights, religious institutions, and minorities as part of a majoritarian strategy for economic and social justice.”  

In the run up to the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial in Washington, D.C. on August 28, smaller stories bubble to the surface.  One that caught our notice was an NPR  report about the Tuskegee Airmen—America’s first black military pilots—and their 70^th anniversary, celebrated at their national convention last week. The veterans, numbering some 100 (more than 1,000 men trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama beginning July 1941) got a special preview of the MLK monument.

Perhaps as exciting for the airmen is that one of their original planes, a 1944 Stearman biplane is being donated to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. The story of the Spirit of Tuskegee’s journey from training plane to crop duster to the museum can be read  here.

Over the years we’ve had the pleasure of meeting several of the airmen—members of 99th Pursuit Squadron, later part of the 332nd Fighter Group,—including the late Lee Archer who helped us properly identify an illustration of a P51 Mustang, a fighter plane the airmen flew during World War II.  The retired airforce lieutenant colonel, who shot down five German  Messerschmitt 109s during his combat tour told us that the Tuskegee Airmen were the only squadron in the history of the Air Force to fly so many different types of planes—the P-40 Warhawk, the P-39 Aircobra, the P-47 Thunderbolt, and the P-51—within the course of a single tour of duty.  The Tuskegee airmen’s P-51s were nicknamed Redtails because of their distinctive paint job.

Keep your eyes open for a new film Red Tails coming in January 2012

“The ill-starred ancient Greek romance of Eurydice (played by the luminous Marpessa Dawn, who was actually African-American and Filipino from Pittsburgh) and Orpheus (Breno Mello) takes place in Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval, with an all-black, mostly Brazilian cast, and evocative samba soundtrack by Luiz Bonfá and Antônio Carlos Jobim. With the success of this film, its director Marcel Camus and screenwriter Vinicius de Moraes broadened the global perspective on black cultures and helped ignite the bossa nova movement that would seduce music lovers in both hemispheres.

The film won the Palm D’or at Cannes in 1959, and the Oscar and Golden Globe for best foreign film in 1960. It was shot mostly in a favela (ghetto) in the Leme neighborhood of Rio giving us snapshots of a time and place gone some nearly half a century.

Put criticisms about the oversimplification of black lives and colonial attitudes that render the black Brazilians childlike aside if you can (for indeed some of the characters come off as one-dimensional and buffoonish and there is a point where you feel like you may be watching a panorama f the ghetto ) and enjoy the film for the colors, the music, the rhythm, (the infectious “O Nosso Amor” makes it impossible for anyone not to get up and dance!)  the atmosphere is magic! Queue it, rent it, borrow it from the library if you can (a tip for New Yorkers, the Mid-Manhattan Branch of the Public Library will be screening Black Orpehus on July 10 at 2:00). Turner Classic Movies (TCM) offers the film from time to time, or as a last resort, buy it.

Close your eyes while listening to “Felicidade,” “Manha de Carnaval” or “Samba de Orfeu” and try not to dream of a magical place called Brazil.—Audrey Peterson

We’re determined not to let our most recent memory of Etta James be about the non-feud that jumped off between James and Beyonce Knowles around the song “At Last” at the inaugural ball. It was silly, and we can’t always let the media tell us who to be mad at. Can you imagine if there had been social media and viral video back in the day picking up conversations and utterances best left unseen? Just imagine how many of our superstars would be in trouble today. All of this is to say there is room for all of our magnificent entertainers, from every generation, warts and all.

Interesting to me that Beyonce and Etta were teenagers when their careers hit pivotal moments: Beyonce was 17 when  Columbia signed her group Destiny’s Child. Etta was 14 or 15 when she formed the doo-wop group the Peaches. Her first hit was in 1955, The Wallflower Song (Roll with me Henry),” which topped the Billboard chart for four weeks.

“The Wallflower” and 14 other songs from her early career (1955-1957) can be found on Etta James: The Essential Modern Records Collection (Virgin). Although everything on this album has been released under other labels beside the original (Los Angeles-based Modern Records went bankrupt in the 1960s), because it is set up chronologically, we can hear a bit of the evolution of Etta’s style as she shimmies through Wallflower, “Hey Henry” and “Good Rockin’ Daddy.”

And that voice! That teenage girl sounds like the grown woman she would come to be when in 1960 she recorded “At Last,” a 1941 song written by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren for the musical film Orchestra Wives. Glenn Miller and his orchestra played it and you can find it on Itunes. The original version is nice in an old-timey movie kind of way, but I can almost bet that had Etta James not recorded  her version of the song, we may not ever have heard it.

James’s career was slowed by her addiction to heroin, but she did continue to record with Chess Records, then Warner Brothers, and earning a Grammy nomination for her 1973 album Etta James. She was inducted into The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame (1993) and The Blues Hall Of Fame (2001), but long before all of this she was just a teenage girl with a gritty style and a lot of talent.

Etta James: The Essential Modern Records Collection (Virgin, 2011)

photo courtesy Virgin Records

It is 1974. Claudine Price (Diahann Carroll) is a single mother of six who works as a domestic and collects welfare so she can raise her kids in a crowded apartment (seven people squeezed into a space for two or three) in Harlem. Rupert P. Marshall, played by James Earl Jones is a garbage collector who asks her out and is turned down, but after a bit of convincing (Roop, as she later calls him, stands up to “the man”, in this case her employer) Claudine decides to take Rupert up on his offer.

The date finds them in bed, they become lovers, and then complications arise in the form of  a nosy welfare case worker, a wayward (and pregnant) daughter, an idealistic revolutionary son (Charles, played by Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, also known as Freddy “Boom Boom” Washington on the television series Welcome Back, Kotter), a son who doesn’t want to go back to school, just roll dice on the corner, and the rest of Claudine’s unruly kids (her children are Bebe’s Kids, really, with fresh mouths full of backtalk and foul language).

The situation is further complicated with the child support Rupert must pay to two women who are the mothers of two daughters (I refuse to use that 21st century phrase everyone is so fond of. It’s tired and anachronistic). Rupert runs away from it all for a minute, Claudine melts down and I won’t tell you the rest. I will tell you that  Diahann Carroll received a Best Actress nomination for her performance, so if you haven’t seen it, put it on your list.

Part of what makes this film such a great thing to watch is that it is a celluloid time capsule.  In 1974 Harlem we’ve got race consciousness going on, placed here and there and in places that if you don’t listen or watch closely, you’ll miss it. When Rupert rings the doorbell at Claudine’s place on Edgcombe Avenue, her daughter Patrice answers. When Rupert says her name is Patrice, like in Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese revolutionary who was assassinated 14 years earlier in 1960, she snaps, “no, like Patrice Price!” (We got the generation gap going on in this film, too. Especially when the same kid tells  Claudine that 36 years old is too old to be having sex!)

Claudine’s oldest son Charles, is part of a black nationalist group; her eldest daughter, Charlene, is seeing a boy, formerly named Teddy who has renamed himself Abdullah (and manages to get Charlene pregnant). Rupert names a mouse who has been lingering around his kitchen Milhous (the about to be disgraced ex president Richard Nixon’s middle name), and at one point Charlene turns off a Tarzan movie on the television to the loud protests of her siblings:

Charlene: Mama they rootin’ for Tarzan! He up there fighting a thousand blacks and they up there screaming  “yeah kick the shit of them Tarzan!”

Black stereotypes and the Kafkaesque fantasy that was and is the welfare system are given a sound beating with lines delivered dripping with sarcasm(Claudine: Haven’t you heard about us ignorant black bitches always got to be laying up with some dude just grinding out some babies for the taxpayers to take care of? Rupert: “You know us black studs. No feelings, knock ‘em up and leave ‘em, don’t give a shit if the children are starving.)

It’s so clear that neither Claudine or Rupert are the two-dimensional characters dreamed up by conservative America.  But it’s the soundtrack, written by an icon of Seventies soul music, Curtis Mayfield, that wraps itself around the story in an aural mantle of “black is beautiful” that puts a lie to the negative stereotypes. The movie wouldn’t be the same without the evocative urban soul instrumental,  theme song “Claudine,” “Mr Welfare Man” (“I’m so tired, I’m so tired of trying to prove my equal rights, Ooh, So keep away from me, Mr. Welfare. Did you hear me? Keep away from me, Mr. Welfare.”) My favorite: Gladys Knight singing the hell out of Curtis Mayfield’s “The Makings of You” as Diahann Carroll luxuriates in a lemon fresh Joy bubble bath in Rupert’s apartment.

Watch Claudine (you can watch instantly on Netflix) for the acting, the story, the great scenes of 1970s Harlem, but certainly watch it for the soundtrack.

Claudine (1974) written by Tina and Lester Pine, directed by John Berry. Soundtrack written by Curtis Mayfield, performed by Gladys Knight and the Pips

BLACK MUSIC MONTH is upon us, so for the next couple of weeks or so we’ll be offering you some historical musical treats as well as a shortlist of books, films, and albums we think will further enrich our American music archives. We’ll begin with one of our biggest and most important archives.

Every year for the past nine the Library of Congress has added a new list of songs to its National Recording Registry. The purpose? To make sure that our recorded national songbook—which begins as early as the mid nineteenth century— is available to all.

“America’s recorded-sound heritage has in many ways transformed the soundscape of the modern world, resonating and flowing through our cultural memory,” said Librarian of Congress James A. Billington. “Songs, words and the natural sounds of the world that we live in have been captured on one of the most perishable of all of our art media. The salient question is not whether we should preserve these artifacts, but how best collectively to save this indispensable part of our history.”

Among the notable African-American contributions are guitar-evangelist Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground,” An electric sermon “The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest,” delivered  by Reverend C. L. Franklin (Aretha’s father)  in 1953 at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit; Franklin would be a great influence on gospel; Al Green’s super classic “Let’s Stay Together,” and hip-hop group De La Soul’s 1989 album 3 Feet High and Rising, a masterpiece in sampling that ranged from Otis Redding, the Bar-Kays, to Kraftwerk, Hall and Oates, and George Clinton.

Nominations come from online submissions from the public and from the NRPB, a in the fields of music, recorded sound and preservation. You can enter nominations for the next registry at the NRPB website.

For the full list of all 325 entries visit the Library of Congress registry web site.

In Fall 2008 American Legacy featured a story about the Freedom Riders—a courageous group of more than 400 black and white Americans who, in 1961 risked their lives to travel to the Deep South on buses and trains. Together. They were testing Jim Crow laws and facing virulent racism and mob violence along the way. For more than a few, the practice of nonviolence was an extremely difficult one. For all it was an experience that shaped the rest of their lives. This month PBS’s American Experience will debut Freedom Riders, a film by award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson (Wounded Knee, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, The Murder of Emmett Till). Based on Raymond Arsenault’s book Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, the two-hour documentary presents testimony from the Riders themselves, state and federal government officials, and journalists who were eyewitnesses to what would become a seismic movement.To coincide with the debut of the film and the 50th anniversary of the rides American Experience has selected 40 college students from all backgrounds to participate in a recreation of the Freedom rides, For more information on this as well as film previews, a roster of the freedom riders with selected bios, an interview with the director Stanley Nelson, visit pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience.

Back in the Fall of 2009, Congressman Joe Wilson’s (R-SC) claimed, in a formal apology, that his emotions got the better of him when he shouted out “You lie!” during President Barack Obama’s address to Congress. I didn’t believe for a minute that it was about Wilson’s objection to the president’s remarks about healthcare. I believe it was the fact and fear of a black president that sent Wilson over the edge. Although there were people who behaved worse toward Obama during the presidential campaign, and others who catcalled and held up inappropriate signs during the president’s address, this was, unfortunately, a watershed moment: Wilson gave others permission to disrespect the President. If a member of Congress could do it during a presidential address, then everyone is free to show zero respect.

A year and half later, it should be no surprise that the racist backlash has gotten worse. The Joe Wilsons of the world were out there during the presidential campaign and all through the election. They, for the most part, kept their mouths shut while they scrambled for a way to tear down a black president without looking racist. Now that their worst fears have been realized, it seems they have nothing to lose, so why not let it all hang out? The most recent example of a person not giving a damn is California Republican party official Marilyn Davenport and her insincere apology for forwarding the image of President Obama’s head on the body of a baby chimpanzee. “I didn’t stop to think about the historic implications and other examples of how this could be offensive,” Davenport said. She’s 74 years old. She was born in 1934. She lived as an adult through the years during and after the civil rights movement. You have got to be kidding us, Ms. Davenport. To quote the President: “Do you think we’re stupid?” Her apology, without a hint of irony, was worse than no apology at all. I want so badly to believe that she just did something really stupid and regrettable, which all of us have done at least once in our lives. Still I’m going to have to say to her and Joe Wilson: apology not accepted.

Those of us who have been watching the racists leap out of the closet since the inauguration, and are disturbed and disgusted, need to recognize that Marilyn Davenport, Glenn Beck, Anne Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Michele Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh, Donald “Friend of the Blacks” Trump, and others in an unfortunately long list are all on the same team. That whatever their individual goals and motives, the underpinnings of their actions are to maintain the myth of white superiority, to keep our country white majority, to make sure that “their kind” have all the power, and to justify these mandates any way they can. And they’ve done what all people who make a grab for power do: they appeal to the common folk. Just as the power brokers in the South turned to the less powerful, and often much poorer white population during and after Reconstruction, so, too, the right wing has gone after their white constituents. Only today they do it in code, and hide behind spurious ideology and policy (Obama is a Commie! Obama wants a death panel to decide when old people should die! We want our country back!) and outright lies (Obama is a Muslim. Obama was not born in the United States) “Wake up White People!” is what white supremacists used to say after the Civil War and up to and including the civil rights era. They would shout this and point out to many whites that even though they were poor as dirt, at least they weren’t black and inferior. And, oh, by the way, you better watch out because now that those black people aren’t slaves, they are going to take your jobs away.

Today it’s the Latinos that the right-wing holds up as the job snatchers. And while the best of our activists and intellectuals argue among themselves about whether our President is doing enough for black people, and the best of our artists fight over the small piece of the pie that we are given, instead of just telling the powers that be that we are going to be TAKING a bigger piece of the damn pie, people like Davenport are being more and more overt about their racism without even a show of remorse, however hypocritical. She didn’t resign when asked by her own people to do so. Just gave us a lame apology.

In the 2008 presidential election 69,456,897 people voted for Obama. Yet from where I’m standing many of those nearly 70 million voters, of all races and ethnicities, are so caught up in being disappointed because he isn’t the magical creature they thought he was going to be, that they forgot about the previous administration, and the mess it left behind. Bush’s administration and the people in it didn’t give a damn about anybody but themselves, never mind the greater good. Can we take a moment to remember how it was? Does what Obama is accomplishing in office come close to resembling the damage that George Bush and his minions did? Do we really want to hand over the reins to people who don’t even bother to pretend to listen to us, and are open with their contempt toward us?

What will it take for us to get together, people of all types, and do something about this? Will the KKK have to march on Washington D.C. like they did back in the 1920s.  What does it take?—Audrey Peterson

Oh, and that picture up top? Ku Klux Klan march in Washington D.C., September 13, 1926.