Are you content to sit back and watch mainly (formerly) “middle class” white kids lead the movement against these age-old ills which are now finally hitting them, but have been a way of life with us [black folks] – while you remain lost in the irrelevances of styling and profiling?
By Herbert Dyer, Jr.
As a student in the mid-60’s at Indiana University (Bloomington), I was in the thick of the protests, sit-in and takeovers of buildings and offices on that campus. We did not call them “occupations” back then, but they amounted to the same thing. Black students protested for a number of reasons, chief among them were:
- The spectacularly low number of Black students and faculty on campus. For example, out of a total student body of over 29,000 students at Indiana, barely 500 were Black. The sighting of a Black professor was like spotting a rare and exotic bird. Indeed, we knew they existed but they were oh so hard to find.
- Indiana University now has one of the best degree-granting Black Studies Programs in the country, thanks almost entirely to our sitting-in and thus shutting down of the Administration and other buildings for weeks at a time. The Program is run and taught by some of the most respected scholars in the world today – of all colors, and of all political perspectives.
- The formation of the Black Student Union was another success story. Many students were suspended and/or expelled for persistent and “militant” stances against the Administration for its refusal to recognize our existence. We fought for and eventually won recognition as a campus organization with the same rights and responsibilities as any other such group.
Of course, not all Black students participated in the protests. Understandably, those who did not were concerned about losing their scholarships, fellowship, grants and loans, etc. It took some doing, but we eventually got the more radicalized/militant brothers and sisters of the Black fraternities (the Kappas, Alphas and Ques, and the AKAs and Deltas) to join the “movement.” I won’t name any names, but you know who you are.
Two events propelled our movement into high gear:
1)The assassination of Dr. King. At the time, I was a member of the newly formed Black Theater Workshop. We took a new book by the Black Panther Party’s Minister of Information, Eldridge Cleaver, called Soul On Ice, and adapted it into a play. We divided the main character of the book, Cleaver himself, into three parts: The Revolutionary, The Rapist, and The Writer. Guess which part I played.
On April 4, 1968 at about 6:45 p.m., I was walking through the (white) Student Union to play rehearsal. As I passed through a TV lounge, I saw a large group of white students gathered around a TV. Just as I walked up behind them to check out what everybody was looking at, Walker Cronkite said, “…and Dr. Martin Luther Kind died in Memphis just minutes ago.” All of the white students – every last one of them – broke into raucous applause, whistling and cheers. When I arrived at rehearsal, all of the sisters were crying – some uncontrollably – and all of the brothers were talking about “getting whitey.” Our director, an East Indian female Ph.D. student, sat us down and quietly, patiently talked to us about Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination in 1948 and his legacy of non-violent protest which Dr. King had long embraced. Gandhi had non-violently led the entire nation of India to independence from of the most powerful, brutal and imperialistic nations on earth – England. He had done so by employing sheer soul force and commitment to non-violent protest. She also convinced us that aside from being suicidal, the last thing Dr. King would want us to do as young Black people and future leaders of our own “nation” would be to retaliate violent against his murderers – whether white society generally or individual whites particularly. After we calmed down, we had our most intense rehearsal ever; and in May our play was a state-wide hit. Our protests against University policy and practices relative to the paucity of Black students and faculty, Black curricula, and recognition of our Union, likewise intensified and ultimately succeeded as well.
2) James Brown. Indiana University has always been known as a “party school.” And, yes, rightly so. We prided ourselves on putting the “P” in “party” back then. Even Playboy Magazine routinely recruited many of its “playmates” from our campus.
But when James Brown’s iconic Say It Loud! I’m Black And I’m Proud! Came out just before Dr. King’s death, we had no choice but to get serious about changing the University’s policies and the world itself. That song immediately replaced James Weldon Johnson’s Lift Every Voice And Sing as the new Black (nee “Negro”) National Anthem. It was the power in and of Say It Loud! I’m Black And I’m Proud that helped transform us from “Negroes” and into “Black People.”
My point about this trip down memory lane is that today’s Black students owe their very campus presence and unlimited curricula choices directly to our struggles back then. Yet they are strangely quiescent, mollified, apathetic, even ignorant of their forbearers’ history of speaking truth to power. The fact that there are more Black men in prison today than in college does not explain this situation. Have we, their elders, somehow failed them? Or is something else going on? Sure, the putative “war on drugs” has taken its heavy toll on every Black community everywhere. Likewise a resurgent reactionary right wing, beginning with Nixon and running right straight through to and including the nation’s First Black President (despite his pretension to the contrary), has tried mightily to turn the clock back to the bad old days of Old Jim Crow.
The murder and/or imprisonment of the most effective Black leaders during the ‘60s essentially decapitated both the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Dr. King, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Each of these murders and many, many more of course (but especially these five) snuffed out whatever flickering flames of freedom were attempting to shine at that time. By the end of the ‘60s, Black people felt and, if the truth is told, actually were defeated by the white powers that be. As author Debra Dickerson has written in her insightful 2004 book, The End of Blackness, our defeat was not simply in terms of political economy. Our defeat lay in the fact that we forgot how to be free. We did not know whether to “integrate” or “separate.” We argued endlessly over the meaning of “Black Power” versus “Civil Rights. We fought over the role of women in the movement. We remained “color struck” – light skin versus dark skin. These were, of course, discussions and arguments which harkened all the way back to slavery, to the Washing/Dubois/Garvey divide, to the Harlem Renaissance, and right on into the turbulent 1960s.
And now, here we are with a putatively “Black” President whose very being has wrought an existential change in our self-perception. We no longer strive for “freedom” in the sense of self-determination. We no longer even think of ourselves as a “nation” at all. Other nations, even some African nations are beginning to look askance at us, wondering whether we have abdicated our role as the vanguard in the worldwide struggle for freedom. If we continue down this path, in less than a generation there will no longer be a recognizable “Black Community.”
Thus, are we – particularly our youth – reduced to following the lead of the mostly white “Occupy Wall Street” movement? Even as we suffer (as usual) disproportionately more than the ocdcupiers themselves? In the ‘60s, it was the white kids who foillowed us, who patterned their resistance to the Vietnam War after our struggles for freedom, justice, jobs….and yes, full integration into the “American way of life.” It was the Women’s Liberation Movement which adopted, adapted and finally co-opted our tactics and strategies. Indeed, although they (white women) were at the time and remain to this day America’s largest single group of citizens, they managed to get themselves officially recognized as a “minority group” deserving of even more state largesse, including “affirmative action”, than the traditional doormat of this society – us.
So my question and challenge to young Black people of today is this: Where is your sense of history? Where is your outrage at our always deteriorating economic, political and social position in this nation? Are you content to sit back and watch mainly (formerly) “middle class” white kids lead the movement against these age-old ills which are now finally hitting them, but have been a way of life with us – while you remain lost in the irrelevances of styling and profiling? Just asking.
Herbert Dyer Jr. is an African American writer in Chicago. Herb also works at Roosevelt University’s “Life Skills and Re-entry Program” as a tutor in computer skills, language training, job-readiness skills to ex-offenders. He has a masters degree from Governors State University in Political & Justice Studies and can be reached at: accra0306@yahoo.com.
I hear what this man is saying but I have to say it’s a bit trite to blame the youth. Maybe if more of the elders weren’t sit-in and sing-in revolutionaries we wouldn’t be in this niggardly situation. Non-violence has went from a tactic to a theology of cowardice and passivity. They don’t need the bible or the qur’an to tell people to remain passive anymore, it’s firmly en-grained in the culture. If you need proof look at Oscar Grant’s murder, people who rioted barely broke a window. Aiyana Jones’s murder barely sparked a protest. The system has our minds as well as our bodies. It’s high time the community of elders takes at least some responsibility for their mistakes instead of looking at our miserable condition and ways with disdain as if they carved the way to freedom in stone. Also letting some woman outside of your community talk to you about what Martin Luther King would want and then also talk you out of at least throwing a brick or a bottle is insanity and is only made all the more insane that you can’t see it. Also it’s not about King and never was about King. We don’t fight to be free for a man we fight to be free for a people. The last thing we need is another cathedral to a man that we seasonally intellectually masturbate around in a classroom as we go back to work for the same people who have made themselves our problem. I ask you “Where is your sense of history?” if we are a disappointment to you how do you stand in the measure of your forefathers?
Don’t know if you are deliberately missing my point, or just can’t see it. This is not a “blame game.” This is certainly not a piece worshiping Dr. King or anyone else. What I tried to do here was simply put today’s so-called “occupations” in context — historical context. Because I was on campus during the latter half of the ’60s, that’s what I talk about. I had just missed my own older brothers/sisters who had risked life and limb riding those buses throughout the south in the early ’60s. Had I been old enough, I would have been with them.
As to listening to someone “outside our community” relative to Dr. King, brother, brother, brother. Did not you read the point I made that Dr. King himself took his basic and most important idea (peaceful nonviolent resistance) from a man “outside” our community. Ever heard of John Brown? Viola Liuzzo? The Quakers, for goodness sakes? Do some reading.
Yes Mr.Dyer I know who those people are as well as Martin Luther King Jr’s infatuation with Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas of “manhood” and “resistance”. As my statement may be viewed as hostile or even apathetic to struggles past. What I’m trying to highlight is the connection between those struggles and today’s disconnect. The reason people are not reacting in the ways your challenging them to is because very few people have been taught anything in the ways of politically moving besides voting for this or that democrat or protesting. Many of the institutions that are anointed to remotely appear to promote black interest in this society from the civil rights era, seem all but content with promoting the status quo. The movement as it relates to now is at it’s weakest point in recent memory and has been co-opted by opportunist. Growing up in the climate of Micheal Eric Dysons, Jesse Jacksons, Tom Joyner and Al Sharptons has made for a very weak understanding of much of anything outside of what civil rights has come to mean at this present time. The reason you don’t see young African people leading this movement or at least asserting themselves in proportion to their affectedness is because there is no unified set of interest set forth by us. Instead of bringing organization with goals were bringing our bodies and faces to add to the mass of sporadic interest. Were splintered in a thousand different directions as a people and at present were trying to assemble a plane from a picture instead of a blueprint. Also what I meant (forgive me if that didn’t come across) about listening to someone outside “our community” is that no one else’s opinion should influence or guide how you decide to move in your own interest. Ella Baker from the Civil Rights Movement was a great example of this.
Thanks to Mr. Dyer for this article and to both Sol and Dyer for the exchange. Both are very illuminating. It seems to me you both are really on the page. What I see is merely misunderstanding.
To me it’s evident Sol is historically well read and that Dyer is aware of the forces designed to pacify and intellectually numb today’s African youth. I think the article was intended as Dyer’s challenge against the forces fostering apathy. And Sol’s point is that as we challenge we must take care not to unintentionally alienate African youth who do understand history and are trying to fulfill their generation’s mission. Because we (well, they. lol)are out there.
This is where I appreciate the point Sol makes, that the reason we don’t see young African people leading this movement is due to an absence of a unified set of interests. Yes, “Instead of bringing organization with goals we’re bringing our bodies and faces to add to the mass of sporadic interest. We’re splintered in different directions as a people, trying to assemble a plane from a picture instead of a blueprint.”
I appreciate Dyer’s article as well and, unless i am missing something, I don’t see any fundamental ideological differences in what has been put forth so far.
Much Respect,
-netfa
Yes Mr.Dyer I know who those people are as well as Martin Luther King Jr’s infatuation with Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas of “manhood” and “resistance”. As my statement may be viewed as hostile or even apathetic to struggles past. What I’m trying to highlight is the connection between those struggles and today’s disconnect. The reason people are not reacting in the ways your challenging them to is because very few people have been taught anything in the ways of politically moving besides voting for this or that democrat or protesting. Many of the institutions that are anointed to remotely appear to promote black interest in this society from the civil rights era, seem all but content with promoting the status quo. The movement as it relates to now is at it’s weakest point in recent memory and has been co-opted by opportunist. Growing up in the climate of Micheal Eric Dysons, Jesse Jacksons, Tom Joyner and Al Sharptons has made for a very weak understanding of much of anything outside of what civil rights has come to mean at this present time. The reason you don’t see young African people leading this Occupy movement or at least asserting themselves in proportion to their affectedness is because there is no unified set of interest set forth by us. Instead of bringing organization with goals were bringing our bodies and faces to add to the mass of sporadic interest. Were splintered in a thousand different directions as a people and at present were trying to assemble a plane from a picture instead of a blueprint. Also what I meant (forgive me if that didn’t come across) about listening to someone outside “our community” is that no one else’s opinion should influence or guide how you decide to move in your own interest. Ella Baker from the Civil Rights movement was a great example of this.