Peaceful Fire Journal

Getting Ready For The Day - Ways of Freedom

Some moments in history are planned, some are not. This Tuesday we will witness an extraordinary individual participate in the most fundamental of our planned historic rituals. A model of order, in debt to an era of chaotic human struggle, more often than not, violent and fear provoking. The inauguration of Barack Obama as president will follow by a day, the holiday that we annually set aside to honor the martyrdom of Martin Luther King Jr., and to celebrate the triumph of the struggle for civil rights, and ultimately, for true human freedom.

The civil rights movement became the law of the land following passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, during the Johnson administration. But true human freedom is attained by both individuals and communities only when they are able to set their fears aside and act on the inborn compassion that unites our human clan and motivates us to love freedom.

So I'm getting ready for the day by remembering the path that got us here.

I was born in 1946. I grew up on the west side of Cleveland, in an area know as West Park. I went to John Marshall High School. JMHS was integrated; unusual for those days. The reason was that a nearby neighborhood, Linndale Village, was a major rail maintenance center, with a locomotive roundhouse. The black people who worked for the railroads sent their kids to local schools and as a result, JMHS had been integrated since well before WWII, and when I arrived in 1964 the racial climate was unremarkable; though it might be more accurate to say that it was remarkable for its lack of drama or conflict. Although it was rare for white and black students to socialize after school, inter-racial lunchroom groups were common, and all sports and academic activities were integrated. It should be said that at the time of my attendance, John Marshall HS was an excellent school. Its' principal was Mr. Lee Bauer, and under his leadership JMHS excelled in sports and academics. The football team consistently played in the Charity Game, the annual all-city championship; the school either matched or exeeded Shaker Heights HS in National Merit Scholarships for a number of years running.

The civil rights movement was born about the same time I was. It took on a lot of momentum during World War II, due to the black men and women who had seen service or had worked in wartime production. Harry Truman's decision to integrate the armed services, reminds me in some ways of Lincoln's decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, in that while both were motivated by the pursuit of justice, both also had strategic advantages, during a military emergency. For Lincoln the proclamation was in part an expedient to strike at the south with the legal loss of their enslaved people, to further weaken the rebellion. For Truman, himself a WW I veteran, the integration of the armed services was a principled recognition of the contribution made by black people to the defense of the country. (And perhaps, an atonement. Earlier in Truman's career, he had attended Klan rallies in his native Missouri.) But it also was part of an overall plan to maintain a strong standing army.

In the 1950's when the media coverage brought the struggle to the attention of white people, that's when I became aware of the movement and was first confronted with the realization of people living under conditions of injustice. The television screen woke up the country with images of Bull Conners, a brutal southern sheriff, setting dogs on people gathered to integrate a lunch counter, or participate in a voter registration drive. Elsewhere in the south, public officials used fire hoses to clear the streets of public demonstrations.

Because of images like these, (as well as because the cause of justice is self-evident), my generation became aware of the need to recognize the truth about American racism and injustice, and to stand with the movement. It sounds like hyperbole as I write it, but it wasn't. Race was potent in every one's life in the fifties and sixties; as it is today. The events of these decades, the jailing of Dr. King, the letter from Birmingham Jail, the death of a group of children on their way to church, the discovered murder of civil rights workers, a volley of assassinations silencing the movement's leadership, were like boats floating on an ocean of racism. It persisted when good people thought it would not. It persists now, in the midst of our optimism on the eve of an Obama presidency. The Great Divide over race in the lives of all people, white no less than black.

An early icon of the acid generation's reaction to the struggle of blacks in the south was Southern Man, by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young:

During this time race divided families just as the Vietnam War did later. While the young were often open to at least de jure reconciliation of injustice, for older persons, change was hard. In many families, the older people had grown up in a time of Klan ascendancy and easy acceptance of racism. In competitive America, to be of value, you had to be better than someone. To be native born, was better than to be an immigrant. If wealthy you were better better than the poor. But if you were neither wealthy nor well-born, it was not a problem; as long as you were true blue and white clear through, you could still be better than black people. To be free of black taint was to carry an indissoluble credential, and it was not to be easily relinquished. Many people of my parents generation were racist without shame, and taught racist values to their children, almost proudly.

Others were fearful and ambivalent; they feared blacks as dangerous even in the early days of the civil rights movement under Martin Luther King's non-violent leadership; when a later evolution of the movement embraced "by any means necessary" these self-same people were terrified.

In my home, my parents were both positive toward civil rights; my mother, whose roots were in liberal Boston, the home of the Abolitionist movement, was a champion of civil rights in public, but as with most whites, had little to no contact with blacks in private. My father was an odd mix on race. On the one hand, he had an inborn sense of fair play, and so was basically inclined to give a man his due. But he could also be graphically racist in speech, though only in private.

Though it would not seem consistent with his character so far described, he reserved his highest respect, bordering on reverence, for jazz and the people, almost all black, who performed it. As a very young child, I recall him talking about people like Bunk Johnson, Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, and many others. For Louis Armstrong in particular, the old man had a deep respect.

He was fascinated by these performers, not just by their musical talent, but also for who they were; low status blacks from the south, without education or training. And yet, within a generation of slavery, they began the creation of a unique form of musical expression, that would sweep the world as the only genre of music born in America. The old man loved to talk about jazz. He would talk about the technical difficulty of the individual performances in a jazz recording, How this made each individual's contribution unique, the genius of the composition itself, and the interactions and pacing of the players as a group. I realize now that he truly understood and respected jazz as an art form, and felt a genuine respect for performers.

Above all, he struggled to express his belief that there was something extraordinary about it. That it was not just great music, but was also a human accomplishment of great importance. He also spoke of how hard it was for musicians to find a place to stay, and stay out of trouble with the cops while on the road, especially in the Jim Crow south. Which is why New Orleans jazz is the only form born in the south; it migrated with freedom-seeking players, to Chicago, St. Louis, New York City, and eventually California. Many of the performers found greater acceptance overseas, particularly in France, than they did in their homeland. Sidney Bechet, one of the old man's favorite clarinet/alto sax players, moved permanently to France after the war. His recordings were treasured gems in the old man's record collection. It brought home to him the realization that in a racist society, perpetrators are punished as well as victims, although he didn't put it in just those words.

Louis Armstong was also aware of the bitter irony that goes with the experience of receiving adulation while on tour in Europe, and then being thrust back into the role of second-class citizen upon returning home. He famously took a stand against discrimination when he cancelled a goodwill tour he was to have taken on behalf of the State Department, saying in effect, 'until conditions for my people improve at home, I won't front for you overseas.'

Even for a big star like Louie Armstrong, it was a risky position to take. In those days, prominent blacks who spoke out about discrimination and inequality were often branded communists and accused of working for the Moscow. MLK Jr. was smeared in this way in later years as were many other civil rights workers, actors and others, white and black. Much of the dirty work was done by the FBI through a program known as COINTELPRO; it wasn't all talk.
(see - COINTELPRO - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia )

The old man must have found it hard to reconcile the contradiction between what his society taught him about black people, and the evidence of his eyes and ears, when listening to performances of the jazz greats. The attitudes of people in his day had not changed much if at all, since the Civil War. I recently re-read Carl Sandburg's two volume biography of Lincoln. In his descriptions of racial attitudes in Lincoln's time, Sandburg could have been describing my neighborhood on Cleveland's west side in the fifties. Though the Klan was archaic by the time I came along, it had still been very powerful in Ohio when my father was a young man. In his day blacks were expected to behave with subservience and stupidity. People did not look to them for culture, let alone genius.

To be attracted so powerfully to jazz, as he was, and to find a way to reconcile his deep respect for jazz performers with the values of his world of reference, was my father's contribution to civil rights. Always remembering that the world is transformed one person at a time.

My own interest in jazz came somewhat late in life. When we were growning up, we couldn't stand to listen to my Father's old 78 rpm records, It was not until Miles Davis released Bitches Brew in the sixties, that I began to realize what an important art form I was missing. As I later learned to appreciate, jazz is an environment of thought and emotion which is human in a way that does not allow for the limitations of racist thinking or values. The talent of the composers, arrangers and performers presents to a racist perspective an irreconcilable contradiction; abundant evidence of creative genius, in an environment where the racist perspective predicts mediocrity and dissonant incompetence.

After this Monday, the death of Reverend King will forever feel linked to the inauguration of President Barack Obama. And as we head toward this moment in history, I find myself thinking about jazz as an expression of human freedom. What does it mean to be enslaved and to struggle for freedom and to attain it? What does it mean to witness a people enslaved and then to witness their rise from slavery to the attainment of human greatness, in but a generation or two. And what witness does jazz bear to the greatness of a people?

From the end of slavery in 1865, to the birth of Bunk Johnson, was but 24 years; to the birth of Louis Armstrong, just 35.

From the Emancipation Proclamation to the release of The Great Summit, the classic collaboration between Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington in 1956, was just 90 years.

From Appomattox Courthouse, to the release of Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, was just a little over 100 years.

One of the early pioneers of Jazz, Bunk Johnson. Born in 1889, approximately, and died in 1949. He laid claim to his propers as the "Father of Jazz," but he had to share the title with the next guy...

Jelly Roll Morton. Also know as Mr. Jelly Lord, he regarded himself as the "inventor" of Jazz. To keep his musicians true to his arrangements, the Jelly man used to keep a revolver on top of his piano, one of two band leaders known for this; the other was Charles Mingus. Though an innovator of New Orleans jazz, he later migrated to Chicago.

Duke Ellington would have to be considered one of the foundations of Jazz, but also as one of the few great modern American composers, of any race. His stature as a figure of respect among all other jazz musicians is legendary.

Here is a great story about Duke Ellington that occurred as part of the civil rights movement. It occurred in a concert hall in Washington, D.C., a civil rights rally and fund-raiser. A bomb threat was called in and the crowd began to panic as people tried to get out. In their panic, people were jostling Duke Ellington, who was getting on in years at that time. Charles Mingus arranged a flying wedge of other musicians around the Duke, to make sure he got to safety. After making sure the Duke was safe, Mingus and his group resumed playing to calm the crowd down, until everyone got out safe.

This cut is Take the "A" Train.

BTW: around 2:00 you will begin to hear a series of dissonances that offer convincing proof that when the word "genius" is used with reference to Duke Ellington, it is not misplaced. For those who like to point to Thelonious Monk as the master of asymetrical jazz, know that it is to the Duke that Monk himself pays homage.

Recorded in 1956, The Great Summit, is a unique piece of jazz history. The only instance of a collaboration between two giants, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. It is way past classic status; more of a national monument. This cut is Mood Indigo.