Tag: Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois

The Relevance of Our Elderly Generation

On By thewriterfredIn Black History, Blackness, San Antonio5 Comments

In a recent exchange of emails with a group of younger people in the San Antonio area, I offered my critique of what NWA represented to our culture. One of the recipients of the email retorted with the following critique of me. “Gee Professor Williams, that’s really easy for you to pick on NWA movie. Just like a lot of things you are totally out of step with what is going on with society. That’s why today’s generation no longer wants to listen to your generation.” I struggled with that rather acerbic attack of me, I guess because I am part of the older generation. But then I took a little time to analyze his statement.  I tried to figure out, what we did wrong that the younger generation no longer wants to listen to us. Here is what I discovered.

My generation was the first to really attack segregation in the South. It was my generation that sat down at lunch counters and refused to leave until they were served. They were spat upon, kicked, physically attacked and called every indecent name you can imagine. It was my generation that got on buses, and rode into the South or if they already lived there, joined those coming from the North in order to integrate bus lines and bus stations. They were kicked, physically attacked and called every indecent name you can imagine. It was my generation, i.e., Robert Moses who challenged the registrars in the South who failed to allow Blacks to vote. It was my generation, i.e., John Lewis who attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery in a protest against the unconstitutional failure to allow Blacks to vote. It was my generation that organized campus protests throughout the entire country in an attempt to get universities to offer Black Studies. It was my generation that stood up and proclaimed their right to a just and fair treatment when such a statement could cause them serious bodily harm and even death.

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The other part of my detractor’s statement was that “we are totally out of touch with what is going on in society today.” I thought about that statement and assumed he meant that with the young people’s assertion, “Black Lives Matter,” somehow my generation and generations before me never understood that concept. If that is what my detractor was implying, then he really hasn’t read his own history; because if you look back through time you would know that black lives have always mattered. David Walker wrote his Walker’s Appeal in 1829, because Black Lives Matter; Nat Turner began a rebellion in 1831, because Black Lives Matter; Harriett Tubman risked her life going into the South and brought her people out of bondage, because Black Lives Matter; Frederick Douglass spoke on the hypocrisy of the Fourth of July Celebrations back in 1852, because Black Lives Matter; Martin DeLaney, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, A. Phillip Randolph, Fannie Lou Hamer and many more all challenged an apartheid system, because Black Lives Matter. Medgar Evers, Malcolm X., Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and many others were murdered, because Black Lives Matter, and thousands of Black Americans marched and fought in the trenches against an oppressive and abusive social and economic system in this country for years, because BLACK LIVES MATTER.

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I have nothing but admiration for the young people who are now continuing the work began by others, long before any of them were around. Our history is a continuum from one generation to the next. So therefore, what has happened in the past is relevant to what is occurring now. For any one group of people to make the charge that any generation, as far back as when our ancestors were brought here in chains, is irrelevant to our cause is destructive to what we all want to accomplish.

In the Chinese culture, the elderly are venerated, respected and listened to for worldly advice by their young, and the Chinese culture has survived since 1200 B.C., or even earlier. There must be something right about their culture of respect for their sages, and maybe some of those who don’t believe in the relevance of the saying, “with age comes wisdom,” could learn a valuable lesson from the Chinese.

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King’s Radical Idea: Black is Beautiful

On By thewriterfredIn Black Culture, Black History, Black Literature2 Comments

Most people today do not consider Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to be, in any way, a radical. For example, during the King Holiday Celebration the one speech you will hear over and over again is, “I have a dream.” That’s acceptable to most of the country because it is all-inclusive. He was talking about young white kids and young black kids holding hands. It sounds like his ideal world will exist when whites are willing to take us under their wing, and accept us as their equals. But there is a lot more to Dr. King than this non-confrontational, passive nature. He had the audacity to suggest that black is beautiful, before James Brown proclaimed: “Say it Loud. I’m black and I’m proud.”

In a speech given very little recognition, Dr. King told an audience of Black Americans in 1967 to, “Believe in yourself and believe you are somebody. Nobody else can do this for us. No document can do this for us. No Lincolnian Emancipation Proclamation can do this for us. No Johnsonian Civil Rights Act can do this for us…Be proud of our heritage…Somebody told a lie one day. They couched it in language that made everything black, ugly and evil…But I want to get the language so right tonight, that everyone will cry out “Yes, I’m Black and I’m beautiful.”

dr-carter-g-woodsonI now can understand why this speech receives very little recognition, as part of the King celebration in January of every year. These were empowering words, with a totally different meaning than, “I have a dream.” The words were not about reconciliation between the races. They were meant as rehabilitation within the race. Rehabilitation for a people who had been denied the dignity that their color deserved for decades. Forty years after Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois had made the same observation, Dr. King found it necessary to reiterate that identical message to his people. Don’t you think it is time that we realize very little is going to change unless we accept the advice of these great men, and begin the process to redefine the meanings that have been attributed to the color black in the past? The great historian, Dr. Carter G. Woodson also had these words for us to ponder, “To handicap a person by teaching him that his black face is a curse, and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching.

Fannie_Lou_Hamer_r190x220Every Sunday, in practically every black church in this country, some preacher will quote from the Bible to, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” But how is it possible to love someone else, if you haven’t been taught to love you first? I believe in prayer, but I also believe what Fannie Lou Hamer said over fifty years ago, “You can pray until you faint, but unless you get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap.” We as black people need to try something else. We must take heed of Dr. Du Bois, Dr. Woodson and Dr. King and begin the process of redefining who we are for ourselves. If we do not accept this challenge to incorporate Dr. King’s radical idea into our belief system then, “something worst than lynching” will continue to plague us as a people.