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Women in Jazz Month

March is Women in Jazz Month, a time to celebrate the contributions of women to jazz.

As a lifelong activist, I want to celebrate the role that women in jazz played in paving the way for the Civil Rights Movement. Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” written by Abel Meeropol, is the first protest song.

Ethel Waters’ “Supper Time” is not well-known. Written by Irving Berlin especially for Waters, the song is about a wife’s grief over the lynching of her husband.

For Lady Day and Ethel Waters, Black Lives always mattered.

Marking and Whitewashing Black History in Pennsylvania

As Black History Month comes to a close, a threat to teaching African American history is looming in Pennsylvania. In the last session of the Pennsylvania legislature, a conservative lawmaker introduced the Teaching Racial and Universal Equality Act which would limit how teachers discuss racism and sexism, and ban schools from hosting speakers who advocate "racist or sexist concepts." Republican State Rep. Russ Diamond said his bill is “aimed at curtailing the divisive nature of concepts more commonly known as ‘critical race theory’.” Diamond likely cannot spell “CRT.” Critical race theory is an academic framework for examining how racism is embedded in law, public policy and institutions.

Not to be outdone, Republican State Rep. Parke Wentling, one of four state lawmakers on the 12-member Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, wants to privatize the state agency's historical marker program which recognizes people, places and events that have statewide or national significance. In a 2021 op-ed Wentling wrote:

Rather than have the official arm of the state be the arbiter of history, perhaps it is time for the commission to get out of the marker business entirely and find a way to privatize our historical recognitions.

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission’s blue and gold historical markers are public history lessons. For many Americans, the markers are their only exposure to African American history and culture.

In a recent op-ed published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, I wrote:

For only the second time in its history, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum announced in November that it was “temporarily pausing” the program because of “ongoing supply chain issues” affecting the production of the iconic blue-and-gold markers. I contacted the agency this week to check on the program’s status; spokesperson Howard Pollman told me, “There is no timetable as to when the temporary hiatus will be lifted.”

To me, the open-ended suspension — coupled with the vague language in the November announcement that the agency “will be reviewing the marker program in the interest of continuous improvement” — raises a red flag.

…

I believe Wentling’s screed is of a piece with a bill introduced in the last session by Republican State Rep. Russ Diamond, which seeks to prevent our schools from teaching “critical race theory.” Some politicians want to erase the progress made in telling a more inclusive American story by attacking a conceptual framework for the teaching of Black history. I fear these culture wars will escalate as the 2024 presidential election heats up.

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Black History Month 2023

First started as “Negro History Week” by Carter G. Woodson in February 1926, African American History Month is a celebration of all things Black. The Association for the Study of African American Life and History chose Black Resistance for this year’s theme:

African Americans have resisted historic and ongoing oppression, in all forms, especially the racial terrorism of lynching, racial pogroms, and police killings since our arrival upon these shores. These efforts have been to advocate for a dignified self-determined life in a just democratic society in the United States and beyond the United States political jurisdiction. The 1950s and 1970s in the United States were defined by actions such as sit-ins, boycotts, walk outs, strikes by Black people and white allies in the fight for justice against discrimination in all sectors of society from employment to education to housing. Black people have had to consistently push the United States to live up to its ideals of freedom, liberty, and justice for all. Systematic oppression has sought to negate much of the dreams of our griots, like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, and our freedom fighters, like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Septima Clark, and Fannie Lou Hamer fought to realize.

Billie Holiday denounced the terrorism of lynching in “Strange Fruit,” the first protest song. Bassist Charles Mingus observed that Lady Day resisted racial oppression before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

From Louis Armstrong to Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, jazz is the music of Black Resistance.

Poet Langston Hughes said jazz transformed Black Resistance into an art form:

But jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America; the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul—the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.

Jazz is the sound of struggle.

Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a drum major for justice, was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Legends recognize legends. Jazz pianist Herbie Hancock dedicated his 1969 album, The Prisoner, to Dr. King. In his 2014 memoir Possibilities, Herbie wrote:

It was a concept album focusing on the struggle for civil rights. The Prisoner reflected the beginnings of my new musical directions.

Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space

When a Clarence Thomas, Candace Owens or Herschel Walker is in the news, Zora Neale Hurston’s quote, “All my skinfolk ain’t kinfolk,” comes to mind. Zora was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist. Author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, she interviewed Cudjoe Lewis, the last known survivor of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Cudjoe was on the slave ship Clotilda which arrived in Mobile, Alabama in 1860. Zora's book, Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo,” was published in 2018, 68 years after her death.

Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space premieres on PBS this month.

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE executive producer Cameo George said:

Zora Neale Hurston has long been considered a literary giant of the Harlem Renaissance, but her anthropological and ethnographic endeavors were equally important and impactful. Her research and writings helped establish the dialects and folklore of African American, Caribbean and African people throughout the American diaspora as components of a rich, distinct culture, anchoring the Black experience in the Americas.

Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space premieres nationwide on Tuesday, January 17, 2023. The documentary will be available on PBS, PBS.org and PBS Video App. Check your local listing here.

Nana Harriet Tubman Committee Says ‘Enough!’

From Auburn, New York to Ypsilanti, Michigan, the commissioning of a Harriet Tubman statue has been a source of civic pride. In Philadelphia, the city where Harriet first experienced freedom, the public art acquisition process is tainted by white privilege, lies, and fuzzy math. The Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy (OACCE) manipulated survey data to minimize public support for a permanent Harriet Tubman statue. OACCE claimed that only 25% of respondents want a statue of the American icon.

When OACCE was called out by a reporter with the Philadelphia Inquirer, the “full report and report summary were revised on November 22, 2022, clarifying the result for question one.”

The Celebrating the Legacy of Nana Harriet Tubman Committee has had enough of OACCE’s lies and “math not mathing.” During an interview on “Wake Up With WURD” Committee spokesperson Mama Maisha Sullivan-Ongoza said, “We cannot let this level of disrespect and incompetence continue to happen.”

Mama Maisha recounted that OACCE Director Kelly Lee told her that the City planned to award a no-bid commission to Wesley Wofford “because he’s in the system already. We can expedite it faster because he’s already in our system.” Her response: “Of course he is. White men are always in the system.” In a majority-minority city, two African American women are gatekeepers for white privilege.

These unaccountable bureaucrats want to sign the contract for the Harriet Tubman statue – or random African American figure – while their boss, Mayor Jim Kenney, is still in office. To do so, they have set an arbitrary timeline that would require artists competing for the commission to work like slaves through Christmas, Kwanzaa, Watch Night, New Year’s Day and Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend. By contrast, Lee and Anglin spoon-fed Wofford inside information for months as he prepared his proposal.

Mama Maisha notes the disparate treatment of Black and other underrepresented artists:

Now they got a speedy timeline. They want everything in by January, over the holidays. People busy, people committed to their families. They got stuff to do at the end of the year. So now you got a rushed timeline. You didn’t have a rushed timeline for Wesley Wofford. But now that you’re dealing with people of color and women, you got a rushed timeline.

The Celebrating the Legacy of Nana Harriet Tubman Committee said in a statement:

Enough! OACCE’s misinterpretation of the data and the lack of transparency in their decisions and actions minimize the importance of community engagement in public art acquisition. We demand a moratorium on the current statue commission Open Call until new, competent, transparent, and accountable oversight is created.

Mama Maisha told Attorney Michael Coard

We want a moratorium on this Open Call, and we want Kelly Lee and Marguerite Anglin removed from any oversight. We’re going to the Mayor. We’re going to City Council. And if necessary, we will put boots on the ground in front of the Mayor’s Office. We’re ready to hit the streets.

If you have had enough of the coonery at OACCE, contact Mama Maisha Sullivan-Ongoza at (215) 385-0214 or Dr. Michelle Strongfields at (267) 231-0092; email: nanaharrietlegacydefense@gmail.com.

Election Day 2022

The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on February 3, 1870. Section 1 of the Reconstruction Amendment reads:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Election Day is Tuesday, November 8. Be careful how you vote.