Suzuki Harunobu, Woman Admiring Plum Blossoms at Night
Wednesday
Because I resumed teaching only a couple of weeks ago after a two-year hiatus, I only recently had the unmasking moment that many experienced months ago–which is to say, the moment when people we’ve gotten to know only through their eyes and voices suddenly reveal their faces. When it happened the first time, Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” flashed (or should I say apparated?) into my mind.
Although located in mask-averse Tennessee, private college Sewanee has a strict indoor mask policy (hurrah!), which means that my students are a mystery. After conferencing with one of them on Monday, however, I walked out of the building with her, at which point we unmasked. She looked nothing like I thought she looked. Not better and not worse. Just different.
The same thing happened yesterday when, again, I exited with a student. He is a Pakistani and, in fact, I learned that he looks Pakistani. But again, it came as a shock.
Which brings us to Pound’s poem. While traveling on the Paris metro, Pound apparently experienced one person’s face luminescently shining forth in the anonymous crowd and then another. Seeking to capture the exact moment when a sensory image imprints itself on the imagination, Pound described the experience as follows:
The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough.
Although the poem is only 14 words long (20 if you count the title), its images catch the mind with an intensity that might be lost if the poem were longer. Pound was dabbling in imagism at the time, a movement that is most linked with poet Hilda Doolittle (H.D.). Everything depends on the vivid contrasts in the poem, whether between petals and bough or between an urban crowd and a nature image.
In my own case, my students’ revealed faces contrasted vividly with their previously masked existence. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was for them.
At this point in history, rightwing parent groups and legislators are tumbling all over themselves to attack teachers who get their students to engage with America’s complex and often bloody racial history. The latest is the governor of Florida pushing legislation that would prohibit the state’s public schools from making anyone “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin.” Meanwhile, Virginia’s governor has set up an e-mail helpline so that parents can report any teachers teaching “divisive” subjects.
What such people want instead, I suspect, are teachers like those who taught me Tennessee history in 7th grade and U.S. history in 11th. I’ve written in the past that I had segregationist instructors who failed to mention the trail of tears when they taught us about Andrew Jackson and the horrors of slavery when they taught us about the Civil War. Their job, as they saw it, was to indoctrinate us in the reigning ideology rather than to encourage us to think and explore for ourselves.
Pope designates such a teacher as one of his dunces in his mock epic masterpiece The Dunciad (1742). Richard Bentley, a noted editor, was famous for his dictatorial pronouncements and narrow readings. Pope models teachers like Bentley on one of Satan’s fallen angels in Milton’s Paradise Lost: the figure of Moloch, a Palestinian god to whom (or so the Israelites claimed) children were sacrificed. But whereas Milton’s angel demands literal child sacrifice, the Bentleys of the world demand classroom sacrifice.
So that you can compare the two, here’s Milton’s Moloch:
Firs Moloch, horrid King besmear’d with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents tears…
And now Pope’s Bentley. One doesn’t literally die under such an instructor’s tutelage, but the students of Eton, Winton and Westminster are regularly flogged with a birchen rod (“dreadful wand”):
When lo! a Spectre rose, whose index-hand Held forth the Virtue of the dreadful Wand; His beaver’d brow a birchen garland wears, Dropping with Infant’s blood, and Mother’s tears. O’er ev’ry vein a shudd’ring horror runs; Eton and Winton shake thro’ all their Sons. All Flesh is humbled, Westminster’s bold race Shrink, and confess the Genius of the place: The pale Boy-Senator yet tingling stands, And holds his breeches close with both his hands.
Bentley is concerned with literature, not history, but his literature lessons are as circumscribed as my history lessons were. Authoritarian teachers, which is what rightwing extremists want, know that there is only one truth, no matter how narrow it may seem. Here’s Bentley proclaiming his views:
Then thus. Since Man from beast by Words is known, Words are Man’s province, Words we teach alone. When Reason doubtful, like the Samian letter, Points him two ways, the narrower is the better. Plac’d at the door of Learning, youth to guide, We never suffer it to stand too wide. To ask, to guess, to know, as they commence, As Fancy opens the quick springs of Sense, We ply the Memory, we load the brain, Bind rebel Wit, and double chain on chain, Confine the thought, to exercise the breath; And keep them in the pale of Words till death. Whate’er the talents, or howe’er design’d, We hang one jingling padlock on the mind…
Along with advocating narrow textual interpretations, Bentley also appears to insist that students parrot back to him his own words. Imagination and thinking outside the box (wit) are not allowed.
Revel once more in the brilliance of that final couplet:
Whate’er the talents, or howe’er design’d, We hang one jingling padlock on the mind…
Our rightwing legislators and parents want to hang that padlock.
In my faculty group’s discussion of Paradise Lost, member Ross MacDonald observed that, in Book II, Milton suddenly takes a surprise turn into Spenserian allegory. By this he meant that a story that has heretofore involved realistically drawn characters (Satan and his angels) suddenly veers into the kind of symbolic story that one encounters in Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, with characters like Sin and Death.
I loved the observation, and a bonus was that, upon refreshing my memory of Spenser’s Arthurian tale, I came across an incident that works as an allegory of the grip that crazy conspiracy theories have on rightwing America. I have in mind Redcrosse Knight’s encounter with (as Spenser spells it) the monster Errour.
In the work, Redcrosse and his lady Una, who stands for the true religion (in Spenser’s mind, the unified Church of England) are riding through the countryside. She has been expelled from her kingdom and has turned to Redcrosse for help.
In the process of fighting for true faith, however, Redcrosse periodically loses his way. In the spirit of Spenserian allegory, I warn you that I’ll be using the story to capture how America, founded on the principle that all are created equal and have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, has also lost its way. I will be interpreting Errour as the right wingers’ embrace of authoritarianism, whether through suppressing the vote at home or singing the praise of autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban abroad. They claim to be patriots but are espousing ideas that are, well, unAmerican.
Early in the poem, Redcrosse finds himself rashly thinking that conquering Errour is easy. Indicating the difficulties to come, however, is that, like Dante, he finds himself lost in a labyrinthine wood:
When weening to returne, whence they did stray, They cannot finde that path, which first was showne, But wander too and fro in wayes unknowne, Furthest from end then, when they neerest weene, That makes them doubt their wits be not their owne: So many pathes, so many turnings seene, That which of them to take, in diverse doubt they been.
Redcrosse, arrogant in his righteousness, thinks he is proof against Errour and disregards warnings to avoid its cave. What he sees therein is a creature that is half woman (reminiscent of Eve), half serpent:
But full of fire and greedy hardiment, The youthfull knight could not for ought be staide, But forth unto the darksome hole he went, And looked in: his glistring armor made A litle glooming light, much like a shade, By which he saw the ugly monster plaine, Halfe like a serpent horribly displaide, But th’other halfe did womans shape retaine, Most lothsom, filthie, foule, and full of vile disdaine.
Errour in Spenser’s allegory would be the initial falling away from the true faith, say Catholic corruption. That straying, however, has led to a host of other errors, which are symbolized by Errour’s progeny:
Of her there bred A thousand yong ones, which she dayly fed, Sucking upon her poisnous dugs, each one Of sundry shapes, yet all ill favored: Soone as that uncouth light upon them shone, Into her mouth they crept, and suddain all were gone.
I don’t know if we can call Donald Trump the true parent of QAnon and another whacky conspiracy theories, but his blatant disregard for truth may have had a hand in unleashing one nutty theory after another—in fact, conspiracies vie in outrageousness, from Democrats running pedophile kidnapping rings to Venezuelans compromising voting machines to Bill Gates putting microchips in Covid vaccines to Jews putting space lasers in outer space, etc., etc. Errour represents the same kind of dangerous craziness, wrapping Redcrosse as QAnon has wrapped a portion of the American electorate in her hideous folds. For those of you who have read C.S. Lewis’s Silver Chair, you’ll see that the scene is also the inspiration for the Lady of the Green Kirtle, who doubles as a serpent and wraps Prince Rilian in her coils:
Yet kindling rage, her selfe she gathered round, And all attonce her beastly body raizd With doubled forces high above the ground: Tho wrapping up her wrethed sterne arownd, Lept fierce upon his shield, and her huge traine All suddenly about his body wound, That hand or foot to stirre he strove in vaine: God helpe the man so wrapt in Errours endlesse traine.
Like Prince Rilian, Redcrosse gets one arm free and grabs her by the throat, at which point she disgorges like a commentator on Fox “News” or a rightwing website:
Therewith she spewd out of her filthy maw A floud of poyson horrible and blacke, Full of great lumpes of flesh and gobbets raw, Which stunck so vildly, that it forst him slacke His grasping hold, and from her turne him backe: Her vomit full of books and papers was, With loathly frogs and toades, which eyes did lacke, And creeping sought way in the weedy gras: Her filthy parbreake all the place defiled has.
Fortunately, these horrid creatures cannot hurt Redcrosse. He thinks, like many liberals today, that QAnon theories are so outlandish that one can simply brush them away, the way (to use the poem’s analogy) a shepherd brushes away a cloud of gnats:
A cloud of combrous gnattes do him molest, All striving to infixe their feeble stings, That from their noyance he no where can rest, But with his clownish [rustic] hands their tender wings He brusheth oft, and oft doth mar their murmurings.
The monster Errour is another matter. Once Redcrosse manages to cut off her head, however, all her brood end up destroying themselves. This they do by lapping up her blood and then…Well, here’s Spenser’s account:
That detestable sight him much amazde, To see th’ unkindly Impes, of heaven accurst, Devoure their dam; on whom while so he gazd, Having all satisfide their bloudy thurst, Their bellies swolne he saw with fulnesse burst, And bowels gushing forth: well worthy end Of such as drunke her life, the which them nurst; Now needeth him no lenger labour spend, His foes have slaine themselves, with whom he should contend.
So Spenser tells us here that the truth will win out, an optimistic assurance I have heard from many journalists in the year since Donald Trump started promulgating “the Big Lie” of a stolen election. Although parts of the country only consume rightwing (Errour) media, we can’t brings ourselves to believe that they will get the last word. We think, instead, that if we cut off the monster’s head—say, if the House committee investigating January 6 delivers irrefutable evidence of a coup—the lies spawned by the Big Lie will die off of their own accord. We think the country has a chance to return to its founding principles.
Spenser himself, however, reveals that it may not be that easy. Redcrosse’s travails are not yet over, as the monster Orgoglio, symbolizing pride, awaits, as does Despair. Those fighting for Truth and Principle in our own time should take note. That being ackowledged, however, in the end Redcrosse does indeed return Una to her parents. And after killing a dragon, he marries her.
Our own dream was that Truth would triumph when we defeated Trump in 2020. Spenser informs us that we still have monsters to fight.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist monk and poet who worked for reconciliation between North and South Vietnam and then, in exile, for refugees worldwide, has died at 95. His poem “Looking for Each Other” which describes long arduous search and ecstatic reunion, seems a fitting meditation for the occasion:
Looking for Each Other By Thich Nhat Hanh
I have been looking for you, World Honored One, since I was a little child. With my first breath, I heard your call, and began to look for you, Blessed One. I’ve walked so many perilous paths, confronted so many dangers, endured despair, fear, hopes, and memories. I’ve trekked to the farthest regions, immense and wild, sailed the vast oceans, traversed the highest summits, lost among the clouds. I’ve lain dead, utterly alone, on the sands of ancient deserts. I’ve held in my heart so many tears of stone.
Blessed One, I’ve dreamed of drinking dewdrops that sparkle with the light of far-off galaxies. I’ve left footprints on celestial mountains and screamed from the depths of Avici Hell, exhausted, crazed with despair because I was so hungry, so thirsty. For millions of lifetimes, I’ve longed to see you, but didn’t know where to look. Yet, I’ve always felt your presence with a mysterious certainty.
I know that for thousands of lifetimes, you and I have been one, and the distance between us is only a flash of thought. Just yesterday while walking alone, I saw the old path strewn with Autumn leaves, and the brilliant moon, hanging over the gate, suddenly appeared like the image of an old friend. And all the stars confirmed that you were there! All night, the rain of compassion continued to fall, while lightning flashed through my window and a great storm arose, as if Earth and Sky were in battle. Finally in me the rain stopped, the clouds parted. The moon returned, shining peacefully, calming Earth and Sky. Looking into the mirror of the moon, suddenly I saw myself, and I saw you smiling, Blessed One. How strange!
The moon of freedom has returned to me, everything I thought I had lost. From that moment on, and in each moment that followed, I saw that nothing had gone. There is nothing that should be restored. Every flower, every stone, and every leaf recognize me. Wherever I turn, I see you smiling the smile of no-birth and no-death. The smile I received while looking at the mirror of the moon. I see you sitting there, solid as Mount Meru, calm as my own breath, sitting as though no raging fire storm ever occurred, sitting in complete peace and freedom. At last I have found you, Blessed One, and I have found myself. There I sit.
The deep blue sky, the snow-capped mountains painted against the horizon, and the shining red sun sing with joy. You, Blessed One, are my first love. The love that is always present, always pure, and freshly new. And I shall never need a love that will be called ‘last.’ You are the source of well-being flowing through numberless troubled lives, the water from you spiritual stream always pure, as it was in the beginning. You are the source of peace, solidity, and inner freedom. You are the Buddha, the Tathagata. With my one-pointed mind I vow to nourish your solidity and freedom in myself so I can offer solidity and freedom to countless others, now and forever.
I’ve shared this poem by my father a couple of times, including in the early days of the Covid pandemic. In March, 2020, when many of us were locked down and wondering when the plague would pass, books seemed particularly attractive. We could always curl up and lose ourselves in an old favorite.
Scott Bates’s poem is a riff off of Jesus’s injunction not to hide your light under a bushel basket. Or as he puts it in Matthew 5:15-16,
Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
I must say that my father spent much of his life spreading his light far and wide, sometimes through the poems he wrote. In other words, he didn’t always follow his poem’s advice. But he also loved to withdraw into a work of poetry or fiction, a luxury that he also encouraged in his wife and his four sons.
I’ve always been struck by the works on the candle’s booklist. As I wrote in a previous post,
I’m open to anyone who can find a pattern in the books mentioned in the poem. Maybe the connecting thread is that all, with the exception of the Elizabethan sonnets, are contrarian. Russian poet Yevtushenko and social theorist Thorstein Veblen challenge the State; fairy tale author Charles Perrault, nonsense author Lewis Carroll, and utopian author Samuel Butler challenge conventional reality; and La Rochefoucauld, through his maxims, challenges conventional wisdom. Maybe the sonnets are thrown in because they seem irrelevant to a modern world obsessed with practicality.
As I also noted in a previous post, Jorge Luis Borges once said that he “always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” When my father’s candle flickered out and he went to sleep, I imagined him making his way to that library.
The Retiring Candle By Scott Bates
A Candle Burned under A bushel
He did not let his light shine forth Among Men He did not even let his light shine forth Among Potatoes The bushel was empty (Being upside down) And somewhat stuffy besides
They all called down to him To come up on deck And get some air They wanted him to be the life of the party To shine Illuminate eternal verities Set the world on fire
But no He politely declined He didn’t want to set the world on fire All he wanted to do was stay down in the hold And smoke And curl up with a good book
Which he did
He smoked and curled up with The poems of Yevtushenko The Theory of the Leisure Class Perrault the Duc de la Rochefoucauld Erewhon and Through the Looking Glass Also assorted Elizabethan sonnets
When he had finished He put himself out And went to sleep
Today’s radicalized GOP is teaching me that a literary education is a vital tool in resisting tribalism. In the days when I used to think that respecting difference was a commonly held value in our multicultural democracy, literature didn’t seem to have the urgency it has since acquired. Poetry and fiction were nice things to have, I thought, but not essential to our political survival.
After Donald Trump came along and gave a significant portion of our electorate permission to demonize and otherwise write off many of their fellow Americans, however, my view changed. Teaching Composition and Literature, as I’m currently doing at Sewanee after a two-year hiatus, suddenly feels like a political act.
For instance, when I was teaching Lucille Clifton’s poem about her autistic grandson the other day, I couldn’t help but think of the time when Trump made fun of reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a congenital condition affecting the joints. When I was teaching her “note to self,” about ways in which I and others as St. Mary’s College failed to understand why our black students were angry and confused (read my account of that here), I thought of those Republicans who don’t want schools engaging in difficult race conversations. When I taught her “wishes for sons,” where she wishes men would be more sensitive to the biological challenges that women face, I thought of how the Supreme Court appears ready to wipe away (or severely curtail) a woman’s right to choose—as though the state knows better than women what is right for them.
As I noted the other day, I realize that what the right now means by “critical race theory” is actually “race conversations that make us uncomfortable.” And I think how Clifton used to introduce her poetry readings with the declaration that her job was “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Her poetry, in other words, is often written to make people uncomfortable. In the eyes of the right, then, to teach Clifton’s poetry is to teach critical race theory.
That’s not the only currently sensitive issue that the play tackles. In Othello-Desdemona it captures the complex dynamics of interracial relationships, and in Othello the insecurities of a black man who desperately wants to be accepted and who believes his military victories and his white wife mean that he’s arrived. He can’t imagine how deep white resentment goes. That’s a good reason why Iago can manipulate him so easily.
I know ahead of time that these issues will come up in our class discussions. That’s the thing about a liberal arts education: it liberally explores all kinds of things. That’s why rightwing extremists hate it so much.
It’s not that professors are leftwing radicals indoctrinating students. Like many, my own politics are fairly moderate and I go out of my way to avoid imposing my views on my students. Not that attempting to shape them politically would do much good even if I tried: in my experience, students, having their own minds, go their own ways after they leave us. But it is true that I insist that they seek to understand people unlike themselves and accord them a degree of respect. This goes for both the characters in the works we read and for the people who are their classmates.
In the eyes of people who dwell within tribal animosities, this is unacceptable, which means that they often regard literature itself with suspicion. And indeed, literature is powerful force that is not easily controlled. They are right to fear it.
Tony Diaz in 2012 bringing in Mexican-American books banned by a Tucson, Arizona school district
Wednesday
I chanced upon Langston Hughes’s essay “My Adventures as a Social Poet” when I was writing Sunday’s essay and was so intrigued by it that I return to it for today’s post. It brings to mind the book bans that are beginning to crop up in various states, with many more sure to follow.
At issue, in the words of a Texas legislator, are books that make people uncomfortable. “Critical race theory” has now come to mean “uncomfortable discussions about race.” Also targeted are books on LBGTQ issues since those too make people uncomfortable.
Writing for the Texas Observer, activist Lupe Mendez recalls a time in March, 2012 when it was Arizona that was initiating books bans. At the time, Mendez was involved in an effort to get kids books that school authorities had removed from school libraries and school curricula:
The state’s lawmakers had recently passed a bill making the teaching of “Ethnic Studies” illegal, along with banning courses that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people” and “are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.” The bill also created a list of banned books. Of the more than 80 books that were eventually added to the list, many of the authors were Black and Latinx.
At that time, Mendez and other Texans came to the rescue. Calling themselves librotraficantes, meaning “book smugglers,” they went to work:
We used all of our book nerd talents to create an old-school freedom ride, collecting 35 bus riders and caravanning to six cities: Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Mesilla, Albuquerque, and Tucson. We collected more than 1,000 copies of Arizona’s banned books and disseminated them to community libraries through book bundles to Arizona high school students. The Librotraficante Movement has been crucial in giving a voice to students of color across the nation.
Recalling the Arizona trip, Mendez reports a powerful story:
As we arrived in Tucson, where the school district had shut down a Mexican American Studies course, a few of us were assigned the task of sorting the more than 1,000 books amassed during the caravan. It was early morning—7:30 or so—when we noticed that a tiny group of teens had come by. They quietly approached to see the books and grabbed some, retreating without a word. Later, a young lady grabbed a book and took it away to the corner to read it.
As the day went on, the young lady returned, saying, “Thank you for giving me this moment. I was just about to finish this book on the day the district personnel came to forcibly take the books away from us.” Wise beyond her years, she left us with some parting advice: “I want you to have this book back. Give it to somebody else. I hope somebody can learn from this book.”
Now the problem is in Mendez’s own state. The legislature’s lists, he observes,
seem to target non-white and LGBTQ authors. This much is clear: The Republican Party intends to deny children access to books, authors and an education that would spur their intellectual growth. And in an effort to satisfy their base, Republicans in Texas are pushing away the one population that needs their attention the most: youth—and more pointedly—youth of color.
Back to Hughes and his own encounters with repressive authorities. It all began, he reports, when he chose not to write lyric poems about the moon and flowers but rather about the problems of the African American community:
The moon belongs to everybody, but not this American earth of ours. That is perhaps why poems about the moon perturb no one, but poems about color and poverty do perturb many citizens. Social forces pull backwards of forwards, right or left, and social poems get caught in the pulling and hauling. Sometimes the poet himself gets pulled and hauled – even hauled off to jail.
I have never been in jail but I have been detained by the Japanese police in Tokyo and by the immigration authorities in Cuba – in custody, to put it politely – due, no doubt, to their interest in my written words. These authorities would hardly have detained me had I been a writer of the roses and moonlight school. I have never known the police of any country to show an interest in lyric poetry as such. But when poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color lines, and colonies, somebody tells the police.
After recounting various incidents, Hughes concludes,
So goes the life of a social poet. I am sure none of these things would ever have happened to me had I limited the subject matter of my poems to roses and moonlight. But, unfortunately, I was born poor – and colored – and almost all the prettiest roses I have seen have been in rich white people’s yards – not in mine. That is why I cannot write exclusively about roses and moonlight – for sometimes in the moonlight my brothers see a fiery cross and a circle of Klansmen’s hoods. Sometimes in the moonlight a dark body swings from a lynching tree – but for his funeral there are no roses.
The Young Adult Writers whose books are under attack by school boards might be comforted to know that the proposed bans are a compliment: their books must be having an impact. In fact, they might be justified in seeing their omission from such lists as an insult. I think of Bertolt Brecht’s famous poem “The Burning of the Books,’ inspired by the Nazi book burnings:
When the Regime commanded the unlawful books to be burned, teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires.
Then a banished writer, one of the best, scanning the list of excommunicated texts, became enraged: he’d been excluded!
He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath, to write fierce letters to the morons in power — Burn me! he wrote with his blazing pen — Haven’t I always reported the truth? Now here you are, treating me like a liar! Burn me!
Quoting the Book of John (8:32), Martin Luther King used to call out, “And ye shall know the truth,” to which his Biblically knowledgeable audience would respond, “and the truth shall make you free.” That’s why truth-telling books are essential for our lives. But as King also knew, the truth is dangerous and under constant assault.
If snow is currently blasting you and paralyzing all your movements, I have just the poem for you. To fully appreciate Ezra Pound’s “Ancient Music,” however, it helps to first read the poem he is parodying. “Summer Is Icumen In” is one of my favorite medieval poems, largely because its intense nature imagery makes it feel so alive. For a moment, therefore, imagine yourself in warmer circumstances. Then you can return to your cold reality:
Sumer is i-cumin in— Lhude sing, cuccu! Groweth sed and bloweth med And springth the wude nu. Sing, cuccu!
Awe bleteth after lomb, Lhouth after calve cu, Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth— Murie sing, cuccu! Cuccu, cuccu, Wel singes thu, cuccu. Ne swik thu naver nu!
If you want a translation, you can go to my blog post on the lyric. “Bullock leaps, buck farts, merry sings cuckoo,” however, is probably all you need for the moment.
Ready for some winter storm therapy? Take it away, Ezra:
Ancient Music By Ezra Pound
Winter is icumen in, Lhude sing Goddamm, Raineth drop and staineth slop, And how the wind doth ramm! Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us, An ague hath my ham. Freezeth river, turneth liver, Damm you; Sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, ’tis why I am, Goddamm, So ‘gainst the winter’s balm.
Sing goddamm, damm, sing goddamm, Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.
King in Charleston, 1967, delivering the speech I heard him give
Monday– Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
When I was 17, my father took me to Charleston to hear Martin Luther King, Jr. The year was 1967, the summer before King died (July 30), and Esau Jenkins, a successful Black businessman and key civil rights figure in his own right, was sponsoring a workshop on John’s Island. We arrived the day before, spent the night at Jenkins’s school, and the morning discussing issues that the activists in attendance were experiencing, and then went into the city that afternoon for King’s speech/sermon.
A lot of the details are hazy. At the workshop, I remember someone talking about using the non-violent tactics of Saul Alinsky to pressure banks to invest in minority communities. I remember singing freedom songs. Someone was recording the affair and I would love to get my hands on the cassettes. As it was, I was too young to really know what was going on.
I remember King’s speech, however. Charleston County Hall was surrounded by national guardsmen. Local officials were sure there would be violence, seeing no difference between King and the rioters who had burned Newark and Detroit a few weeks before. But there was not even a hint of anything amiss. In fact, it was a pretty tame crowd. Many people had come straight from church as most of the women wore hats, white gloves and white dresses and the men coats and ties.
In fact, the words I remember most from King were his pushback against those activists to his left. Using the call and response style, which I’d never encountered before, he pointed out that the Black communities were the real victims of the riots, not Whites. He noted that he was against violence, whether in America or in Vietnam. The moment I remember most is when he said, “Therefore I say to you, not Burn, Baby, Burn, but Build, Baby, Build.” As slogans go, it wasn’t the catchiest. It revealed that he felt himself outflanked by Black radicals. They saw a difference between him and them, even if white segregationists didn’t.
I witnessed the segregationist mentality the following spring after King was shot. I remember walking into my American history class at the Sewanee Military Academy, taught by an ardent segregationist, who said, “He lived by the sword and he died by the sword.” I didn’t get up and walk out, as maybe I should have. I just pretended that I hadn’t heard him.
Anyway, today we remember a man who gave his life to make our country better. King saw the best in us, even when we couldn’t see the best in ourselves. As he said at one point in the talk I heard, “Ye shall know the truth,” to which the audience came back with, “and the truth shall make you free.” Gwendolyn Brooks understands all this in the poem she wrote about him:
Martin Luther King, Jr. By Gwendolyn Brooks
A man went forth with gifts.
He was a prose poem. He was a tragic grace. He was a warm music.
He tried to heal the vivid volcanoes. His ashes are reading the world.
His Dream still wishes to anoint the barricades of faith and of control.
His word still burns the center of the sun above the thousands and the hundred thousands.
