Booker T. and the NAACP

This being the 100th anniversary of the NAACP, it behooves all history geeks to explore the fascinating early years of America’s preeminent civil rights organization. Especially the shift in power away from Booker T. Washington’s brand of non-confrontational race politics.

In 1909, that power shift was a delicate business.

It’s no secret that the NAACP was founded and led by well-born white liberals. One of them was journalist Oswald Garrison Villard, grandson of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.

Villard’s father, Henry Villard, was railroad rich... and he owned the New York Evening Post and The Nation, which provided a platform for young Oswald’s political writing.

A self-described “radical” when it came to the Negro question, Oswald Villard authored a “call” to meet – signed by 60 prominent blacks and whites – which would result in the formation of the NAACP. This meeting was labeled the National Negro Conference.

In planning that meeting, Villard was in a tricky spot. How could there be a “Conference on the Status of the Negro” without the most influential black man in America – Booker T. Washington – taking part? Prof. Washington rubbed elbows with U.S. presidents!

But Villard envisioned an “aggressive” new movement... a watchdog group for black people’s rights. And ascending Negro leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois had already rejected Booker T. Washington’s “accommodationism.”

Villard “realized that Washington could have little influence with a gathering of men and women such as were behind the coming conference,” according to NAACP historian Charles Flint Kellogg.

Complicating this ideological schism was the fact that Oswald Garrison Villard had been a friend of Prof. Washington’s and a supporter of his work at the Tuskegee Institute.

Here’s an excerpt from Kellogg’s “NAACP: A History of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People” (1967):

CHARLES FLINT KELLOGG: A few weeks before the conference, Villard visited Tuskegee to talk to the students. He felt that he was much too radical and outspoken for Washington’s comfort and that Washington disapproved of what he said.

[Villard] was critical of the school. He complained of its lack of coordination and of the need for expert educational supervision and deplored the “essentially commercial” tone. ...

Although Villard never broke with Washington completely, his growing relationship with the more “radical” group [of black activists] contributed to his disillusionment. ...

Aware as he was of the presence of two factions in the Negro world – one headed by Booker T. Washington, the other by Atlanta University Professor William E.B. Du Bois – Villard was nevertheless determined not to let this controversy interfere with the conference nor with the formation of a permanent organization.

It was in this spirit that he wrote a frank but cordial letter to Washington, inviting him to attend the conference, but tactfully making it possible for him to decline.

It was not to be a Washington movement or a Du Bois movement, he explained. It was to be an aggressive organization, ready to strike hard blows for the rights of the colored people.

Because of Washington’s educational affiliations, Villard understood the delicacy of his position. Washington would be welcome at the conference, but his absence would not be misinterpreted.

In turning down the invitation, Washington showed insight not borne out by his subsequent actions. “I fear that my presence might restrict freedom of discussion and might, also, tend to make the conference go in directions which it would not like to go.”

Lifestyles of the Rich and Slaveowning

I’m not a big reader of books. I own books, I just don’t read them. I like having them around to thumb through.

One very cool historical document is titled “Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam.” It was written in 1790 by John Gabriel Stedman and has been called “one of the richest, most vivid accounts ever written of a flourishing slave society”... that society being the Dutch colony of Suriname in South America.

Stedman, half Scottish and half Dutch, was a soldier who volunteered to serve in Suriname, fighting bands of runaway slaves for the benefit of white landowners.

Stedman kept a diary. He also began having sex with slave women. His writings express sympathy for the cruelly abused slaves... and mocking scorn for the decadent slaveowners. Stedman’s “Narrative” was used in Europe to bolster the abolitionist cause.

Here are observations that Stedman wrote on June 20, 1775.

JOHN GABRIEL STEDMAN: Did ever I describe the dress and manner of living of these West India nabobs? If not, here it is.

A planter in Surinam... gets out of his hammock with the rising sun, about 6 o’clock in the morning.

He makes his appearance under the piazza of his house, where his coffee is ready waiting on him... and where he is attended by half a dozen of the finest young slaves (both male and female) of the plantation to serve him.

At this sanctum sanctorum he next is accoasted by his overseer, who regularly every morning attends at his levee. Having made his bows at several yards distance, with the deepest respect, he informs His Greatness what work was done the day before, what Negroes deserted, died, fell sick, recovered, were bought or born, and above all things which of them neglected their work, affected sickness, had been drunk or absent, etc.

These [slaves] are generally presented, being secured by the Negro drivers, and instantly tied up to the beams of the piazza, or a tree, without so much as being heard, when the flogging begins – men, women or children, without exception, on their naked bodies, by long hempen whips that cut round at every lash, and crack like a pistol. During which they alternately repeat Dankee, Massera – “Thank you, Master” – while he stalks up and down with his overseer, affecting not so much as to hear their cries.

When they are sufficiently mangled, they are immediately untied and ordered to return to their work without even a dressing. ...

A superannuated matron makes her appearance with all the young Negro children of the estate, over whom she is governess. Being clean washed in the river, they clap their hands and cheer in chorus when they are sent away to breakfast, and the levee ends with a low bow from the overseer.

Now His Worship saunters out in his morning dress, which consists of a pair of the finest holland trousers, white silk stockings, and red or yellow morocco slippers, the neck of his shirt open and nothing over it except a loose-flowing nightgown of the finest India chintz.

On his head is a cotton night cap, as thin as a cobweb, and over that an enormous beaver hat, to keep covered his meager visage from the sun... .

To give a better idea of this fine gentleman, I here represent him to the reader with a pipe in his check – which almost everywhere keeps him company – and receiving a glass of Madeira and water from a female quadroon slave to refresh him during his walk.

Having loitered about his estate, or sometimes rode on horseback to his fields to view his increasing stores, he returns about 8 o’clock when, if he goes abroad, he dresses. But if not, remains just as he is.

Should the first take place, having only exchanged his trousers for a pair of thin linen or silk breeches, he sits down. Holding out one foot after another, like a horse going to be shod, a Negro boy puts on his stockings and shoes, which he also buckles, while another dresses his hair, his wig, or shaves him; and a third is fanning him to keep off the gnats or mosquitoes. ...

Then, under the shade of an umbrella carried by a black boy, he is conducted to his barge, which is waiting him with six or eight oarsmen, well provided with fruit, wine and water, and tobacco... .

But should this nabob remain on his estate, in that case he remains as he is and goes to breakfast about 10 o’clock, for which a table is spread in the large hall, provided with a bacon ham, hung beef, fowls, or pigeons broiled hot from the gridiron; plantains and sweet cassavas, roasted; bread, butter, cheese, etc., to which he drinks strong-beer... and a glass of Madeira... while the cringing overseer sits at the further end, keeping his proper distance, both being served by the most beautiful slaves that could ever be picked out.

And this is called breaking the poor gentleman’s fast.

After this he takes a book, plays at chess or billards, entertains himself with music, etc., till the heat of the day forces him to return to his cotton hammock to enjoy his Meridian nap.... during which time he is fanned by a couple of his black attendants to keep him cool.

Richard Wright gets a stamp.

The U.S. Postal Service today introduced a 61-cent stamp in honor of the novelist Richard Wright.

Which reminds me that during 2008, I failed to blog about Wright on the occasion of the centenary of his birth.

Well, here’s a 7-minute clip of actor Gary Dourdan reading from “Native Son”:

Jesse L. Martin reads James Baldwin

The calendar says it’s no longer Black History Month. But hey... I didn’t do all I planned to do in February, so I’m extending Black History Month by one week.

Last year, BBC Audiobooks released an audio version of James Baldwin’s 1963 book “The Fire Next Time,” recited by actor Jesse L. Martin.

Click here to hear a 4-minute excerpt from one of the book’s two essays, “My Dungeon Shook,” which Baldwin wrote in the form of a letter to his teenage nephew (also named James).

anN CoUlTer

So Ann Coulter is back with another book. And she’s all over the TV popping her usual shit, like how Michelle Obama is no Jackie Kennedy.

Made me wanna dust off this audio clip from 2007. (I swear, how does Coulter get away with saying such things?)

Funky whiteboy history lesson

If there were a Funky Whiteboy Hall of Fame, Dennis Coffey would be a charter member. A session guitarist during the glory years of Detroit soul, Coffey played on such classic cuts as “Band of Gold,” “War,” “It’s a Shame” and “Smiling Faces Sometimes.”

As a solo artist, Coffey had a big hit in 1971 with the funky instrumental “Scorpio.” (Beware of the re-recorded version for sale at MP3 sites; the original piece is inexplicably unavailable.)

And Coffey was probably the only white artist to record a blaxploitation soundtrack album (“Black Belt Jones”).

Dennis Coffey published his musical memoirs in 2004 – “Guitars, Bars and Motown Superstars.” I love this book. It captures the excitement of a magical time in our cultural history.

Here’s a small excerpt from the book, where Coffey recalls his breakthrough session for Motown... laying the backing track for the Temptations’ “Cloud Nine” alongside the almighty Funk Brothers.

Motown producer Norman Whitfield had checked out Coffey’s playing at a “producers’ workshop” that Motown created so producers could work out their ideas before going into the studio with the Funks.

“Cloud Nine” was one song developed in the producer’s workshop. In fact, it was the only big hit to come out of it, according to Coffey. The workshop was discontinued due to lack of interest from the producers. But while it lasted, this workshop opened the door for Coffey to become a bona fide Motown session musician.

Click here to hear the result of his first date at Hitsville... the Top 10 smash “Cloud Nine.”

DENNIS COFFEY: As I drove up to the house on Grand Boulevard in Detroit and saw the sign, Hitsville, on the front, I suddenly realized that I too could become a part of the Motown Sound. I’d been packing them in at jazz and R&B clubs for the last two years, and I knew once they heard me play I’d be in like Flynn. ... I had already played on hits with artists such as J.J. Barnes, Del Shannon and Edwin Starr, so I was as ready as I’d ever be.

I was a little nervous, but I was young and thought I could do anything. It never dawned on me just how many musicians got one chance at Motown and were never called back. ...

The first person I spoke to was [James] Jamerson, who was sitting on his stool smoking a cigarette. When he saw me, he looked over and grinned.

“Coffey, me lad, how be it with you? What’s going on?”

I grinned back with my guitar in one hand and my special effects bag in the other. “Hey, man, I’m fine. Just tell me where I can set up.”

... Jamerson took me around the room and introduced me to the musicians I didn’t know. Everyone was smiling and real friendly, so I felt right at home. ...

I soon learned that we were expected to record one song per hour – no small feat. We had to sight read a new chart every hour, improvise guitar fills or a solo, and try to make a hit record all at the same time. Each session lasted about three hours. On most days, we did double sessions with an hour off for lunch. ...

That day on the session we had two drummers. Spider [Webb] played high hat and cymbals, and Pistol Allen played snare drum and foot pedal. Most people didn’t realize it, but the concept of using two drummers was born on that session. We used two drummers on almost every session after that.

That was how the drum cymbal parts on Motown records became so rhythmically complicated. I was sure that a lot of drummers working in bars and clubs were going crazy trying to duplicate the drum sound of Motown by attempting to play both drum parts at once. ...

Norman counted off the tempo, and everyone started playing. I ad-libbed a fast wah-wah effect in the introduction and played the written figure on the guitar through the wah-wah pedal. It immediately became very clear to me that I was playing with the finest rhythm section I’d ever heard. ...

On the last verse of the song, the groove we were playing was so hot that I just had to jump in and play a solo. I cranked my volume up a bit, closed me eyes, and let ’er rip.

It didn’t get much better than this. I was finally playing at Motown’s Hitsville studios with the finest damn band in the world and getting paid good money for it too. ... I gave Mr. Wah Wah Pedal a hell of a workout that day!

Bill O’Reilly, kickin’ street knowledge!

I knew Bill O’Reilly was a gifted broadcaster. What I didn’t know is... he is also a world-class novelist.

A novelist of the streets!

Wanna hear a small bit of the audiobook version of O’Reilly’s 2004 crime novel, “Those Who Trespass”... read by the author himself?

Then click here.

But I must warn you, this clip describes the sexual exploitation of two underage girls. Indeed, Bill doesn’t flinch from the hard, cold realities of the drug game. (Matter fact, I bet he was smoking crack when he wrote this!)

UPDATE (11/26/08): I cannot stop listening to this clip. This is some Ted Baxter shit.

The Carlisle Indians

If you think the story of black people in America has too many forgotten chapters, let’s talk about the Indians. (November, after all, is American Indian Heritage Month.)

Did you know that the game of American football, as it is now played, owes a debt to Indians? Sportswriter Sally Jenkins explained this in her 2007 book “The Real All Americans.”

I was already vaguely aware of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which was created by the U.S. government to “civilize” the conquered Indians. But I didn’t know that the “Carlisle Indians” were a collegiate football powerhouse in the early 20th century, competing against teams such as Harvard and Yale.

The Carlisle Indians couldn’t match the white teams for physical size. So instead of the common style of play – grinding trench warfare – Carlisle focused on speed, forward passing and offensive trickery.

This strategy was developed by Carlisle’s most successful coach, a white man known as “Pop” Warner.

Sally Jenkins focuses on a 1912 game between Carlisle and the U.S. Army team at West Point. Army’s star offensive player was halfback Dwight D. Eisenhower... a future president of the United States.

Carlisle’s star was one of the greatest athletes of all time, Jim Thorpe, who played running back, defensive back, kicker and punter.

The Carlisle Indians won.

The racial dimension of this game against Army is fascinating. Click here to hear a minute-long excerpt from the audiobook version of “The Real All Americans.”

Michael Eric Dyson’s fantasy interview with Martin Luther King, Jr.

Am I the only one who thinks Michael Eric Dyson is silly?

I know he’s rocking a Ph.D. from Princeton and has authored 16 books. But whenever I see Prof. Dyson on TV, he always confirms my earliest impressions of him as an attention-whoring gasbag and a paint-by- numbers ultraliberal.

Dyson’s latest book is “April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Death and How It Changed America,” which ends with a bizarre exercise of literary license. Dyson imagines himself interviewing MLK on the occasion of King’s 80th birthday.

That is to say, Michael Eric Dyson conjures a world where Martin Luther King wasn’t martyred in Memphis in 1968... so as to speculate on how Dr. King would’ve lived the latter half of his life.

Dyson, without inhibition, puts many words in Dr. King’s mouth. He fantasizes that Dr. King, during the 1980s, would have publicly acknowledged a long battle with depressive illness... complete with obesity and a drinking problem.

Also, Dyson imagines the elderly Dr. King being a full-throated advocate for gay marriage. (Seriously.)

I don’t know how this “interview” works on the printed page, because I downloaded the audiobook. In the audiobook, Dyson “acts” both parts of the Q&A. He literally speaks as an 80-year-old Martin Luther King.

I am streaming a 7½-minute excerpt on my Vox blog. Click here to listen. (This excerpt begins with Dyson speaking as Dr. King.)

It is mind-boggling.

Remember this lying beyotch?

Which lying beyotch? This lying beyotch.

Ahh, who could ever forget Peggy Seltzer?

Not Harry Allen, the hip-hop activist and “media assassin” who started his own politics-’n’-culture blog two months ago.

Yesterday, he uploaded and analyzed a 10-minute video of Margaret Seltzer (alias “Margaret B. Jones”)... a promotional video for her fantasy memoir “Love and Consequences,” all about growing up as a gun-toting foster child in gang-ridden South L.A. (Truth: total Valley girl.)

Good on you, Harry Allen.

Kinda reminds me to ask: Has anyone at Riverhead Books lost her job over this fraud?

Anyways, if you enjoy watching pathological liars lie pathologically, then crack open a 40, pour some off the top for your dead homies, and check out The Race Hustler Who Almost Got Away With It:

Richard Price reads from ‘Lush Life’

Here’s one for you book-reading types.

Novelist and screenwriter Richard Price – author of “Clockers” and a contributor to “The Wire” – has a new book out. “Lush Life” is a crime story set on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Below is Mr. Price reading a passage from it, courtesy of Big Think. (To hear Price talk briefly about his association with David Simon and “The Wire,” click here.)

Fucking liar: The early years

Before Peggy Seltzer’s fucking lies (about growing up white in a black gang) got her a big book contract, Peggy told her phantasmagoric tales to another writer – Inga Muscio (pictured).

Some of those lies ended up in Ms. Muscio’s 2005 book “Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil.”

Inga Muscio is a far-left feminist, a self-styled “anti-racist” and an atrocious writer. In the acknowledgments for “Blue-Eyed Devil,” Muscio wrote this:

“Peggy Seltzer, my platonic soulmate. I thank you for inviting me into your heart, for giving me books and music and laughter when I didn’t feel like there were any words or songs or happiness. You have single-handedly healed my heart in places where I did not know I was hurt. Thank you.”

You’re welcome, genius.

Here’s the relevant passage from the main body of Muscio’s book. She doesn’t mention Peggy by name... but the life details now make it obvious. Read it and wince.

INGA MUSCIO: South Central Los Angeles is right under our noses, and we don’t spend much time considering, or even seeing, the lived realities of people who reside there.

A friend of mine grew up in South Central Los Angeles. At a very young age, she figured out that the best way to insure that she’d wake up in the morning was to sleep with a pit bull curled up at her feet and a .38 under her pillow.

She learned to shoot a gun when she was eight, started carrying one every day when she was eleven, and can’t presently imagine life without one in her home, even if it is fully dismantled and locked away.

She once asked me if I had a heater.

“Yeah,” I said, not understanding why she was asking me about how I kept my home warm in the context of the discussion we were having, “but I prefer to use my woodstove.”

After a pause in which she momentarily wondered if “woodstove” was a slang term she wasn’t familiar with and promptly rejected this possibility, she cackled over in a fit of laughter.

“A heater is a gun,” she said. ...

My friend has post-traumatic stress disorder, which is frequently exacerbated by the need, just about every weekend of her adult life, to attend funerals of friends shot down in gang warfare.

She was in her late twenties when she realized that, when asked, most people who did not grow up around gang violence will say of course they have attended funerals.

When their grandparents died.

Which roughly adds up to about the same number of funerals my friend has attended on any given month of her life.

“What does it do to a person’s psyche,” she wonders aloud from time to time, “when they spend almost every weekend at a funeral.”

I do not know how to respond to this statement, which is never meant to be a question, but she knows I am listening.

That is very often all I have to offer my friend who grew up in South Central Los Angeles.

My listening, I mean.

Fucking liar

“[T]he fact is that people are going to give a light-skinned girl more opportunities than dark-skinned boys. People fear black boys. By the time my brothers were in high school they were six feet tall. I’m five foot nothing and weigh 100 pounds. ... I honestly believe that’s what made the difference.”

Those are the words of Margaret B. Jones, a 33-year-old woman – half white, half Native American – raised by a black foster mom in South Central Los Angeles. Her book, “Love and Consequences: A Memoir of Hope and Survival,” just came out.

It’s the story of how young Margaret used to run with the Bloods – along with her foster brothers – and sell drugs... until she turned her life around and left the gang-banging behind.

Guess what?

Fucking lies. All of it.

Her real name is Margaret “Peggy” Seltzer. She’s white. Just plain ol’ white. And she grew up comfortable in white-ass Sherman Oaks with her natural family.

Matter fact, her own sister snitched her out after she saw Margaret’s picture in the New York Times last week.

Oh, the New York Times raved about this book and its “colorful, streetwise” slang. (Margaret didn’t use the letter ‘C’ in dialogue; she always replaced it with a ‘K’ because Bloods hate the letter ‘C.’ Because it represents Crips.)

“She captures... the brutal realities of a place where children learn to sleep on the floor to avoid the random bullets that might come smashing through the windows and walls at night,” wrote Times book critic Michiko Kakutani.

Kakutani wasn’t the only sucker. Alice Walker’s daughter – writer Rebecca Walker – called “Love and Consequences” “a must-read for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of contemporary American culture. ... Margaret Jones uses her own life to tear down the walls between South Central and the world beyond.”

Here’s a taste of Chapter One (as excerpted by the New York Times last week), in which Margaret describes seeing an “OG” get gunned down on the street when she was 12:

“[T]he more I thought about it, the more I just hated the Crips. I thought about the homies speeding off after the Crip car. ... I vowed to be like those Bloods, to get even. We were on our own in the City of Angels, and we were smoking [epithet], sending them to heaven every day just to keep the name.”

(That unfit-to-print “epithet” must be niggas. I’d bet any amount of money.)

Fuck me, this shit makes me sick.

Wanna know what’s worse? In a confessional phone interview yesterday with a New York Times reporter, this lying bitch had the nerve to say that she did it to help black people... like the ones she met while working in a gang-prevention program. Margaret Seltzer says black folks wanted her to write this book!

“I was in a position where at one point people said you should speak for us because nobody else is going to let us in to talk,” she said. “Maybe it’s an ego thing – I don’t know. I just felt that there was good that I could do and there was no other way that someone would listen to it.”

Sick lying bitch.

The Penguin Group, which published “Love and Consequences,” has recalled all copies of the book.

That’s not enough.

For starters, Seltzer’s ignorant, tone-deaf editor – Sarah McGrath – owes an apology to the black community of South Los Angeles.

(Ms. McGrath also ought to make amends to Rebecca Walker – whom she has edited – for getting Walker to endorse these lies.)

McGrath’s bosses at the Penguin Group should make some gesture of contrition and good will also. They were probably already counting the money they expected to make... peddling black pain and death to white readers.

Before the hustle went wrong, Margaret Seltzer said her agent had also sold the book to a Danish publisher. “I keep thinking to myself why would someone in Denmark want to read what I have to say?,” Margaret said (in an interview recently pulled from Penguin’s website, but archived here).

Why would somebody in Denmark want to read about black ghetto pathology? Come on, homegirl... you know the answer to that one.

If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of cooking up just the right batch of bullshit.

(The title was originally announced as “Blood and Consequences: Coming of Age in an L.A. Gang.” But the pimp-daddies at Penguin no doubt figured that having “Love,” “Hope” and “Survival” in the title would better suit it to Oprah’s Book Club.)

Joe Morton reads from ‘Invisible Man’

My Black History Month festivities here in the House of Love will include a long-overdue focus on African-American literature.

I posted on Arnold Rampersad’s biography of Ralph Ellison back in August. Now, I’m pleased to present another cool audio bite for you literate folks.

The 1999 Random House audiobook edition of Ellison’s great novel, “Invisible Man,” features actor Joe Morton reading the complete text.

I’m streaming a 4-minute excerpt on my Vox blog.

In this excerpt, the narrator boards a bus in South Carolina, bound for New York City. He is surprised to see “the vet” – a trash-talking, “shellshocked” war veteran he’d met in a seedy black bar called the Golden Day. That earlier encounter had ended with the narrator witnessing a violent beating.

Click here to enjoy Joe Morton’s lively reading.

One more week, y’all...

A week from tonight, “The Wire” returns to HBO for its final 10 episodes.

To whet your appetite even further for that, check out Felicia “Snoop” Pearson on YouTube, walking through her old East Baltimore neighborhood and talking about her life. This video was made to promote her book, “Grace After Midnight: A Memoir.”

The 10th anniversary of ‘The Corner’

On September 2, 1997, one of the best books ever written about ghetto life was published: “The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood,” by journalist David Simon and ex-cop Edward Burns.

To fans of good television, Simon and Ed are now heroes for their work on HBO’s “The Wire.” To a large degree, that show grew out of the many months they spent on the streets of West Baltimore, observing the chaos of human lives and telling people’s stories.

I’ve known David Simon for nearly 30 years. And the best thing that ever happened to me was when he brought me on as a screenwriting partner for the HBO version of “The Corner.”

So I’ll honor this anniversary by pointing you to a 17-minute radio piece that aired on NPR’s “Weekend Edition” in January of 1998. It includes interviews with some of the people featured in the book – DeAndre McCullough, Fran Boyd and Ella Thompson.

To hear it via NPR’s online archives, follow this link. (Word of warning: You might need to experiment to find the right combination of media player and Web browser to stream this audio. RealPlayer on Firefox worked for me.)

Ella Thompson, who operated a neighborhood youth center, is now dead. But her spirit and good works live on through the Ella Thomspon Fund, a charity set up and supported by Simon and Ed Burns. Click here to visit the website for the Ella Fund, see what it’s about. Contributions are always welcome.

The real Petey Greene

In the new movie “Talk to Me,” Don Cheadle is generating much buzz as Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene, Jr., the real-life D.C. street hustler who became a local media star in the 1960s and ’70s.

I wish only good things for director Kasi Lemmons. And Cheadle’s performance is entertaining; it’s the main reason to buy a ticket. (Aside from Support-a-Sister politics, which I’m all for. So support the sister and buy a ticket!)

But this film is being way overpraised. White critics seem to love seeing an A-list black actor do the “brash, streetwise strut” thing... the “jive-talkin’... free-swinging braggadocio” thing... the “mouthy, swaggering, over-the-top” thing... the “fast-talking huckster” thing.

On the other hand, a prominent black critic – Armond White in the New York Press – attacked the movie bitterly, lumping “Talk to Me” with “Dreamgirls” and “Ray” as “the new cinematic chitlin’ circuit”... shallow and full of stereotypes. He says Cheadle’s Petey Greene reminded him of Tim Meadows in “The Ladies Man.” (Harsh but kinda true.)

Mr. White shit-talks (literally) the director’s previous films (“Eve’s Bayou” and “The Caveman’s Valentine”), suggesting that “Lemmons doesn’t know enough about [the] African-American experience to fill a chitlin’.”

My feelings are in line with those of Invisible Woman, the cinema blogger who wrote: “I feel bad for Don Cheadle and Kasi Lemmons...they tried to do something different and it didn’t quite work out...that’s OK guys, keep it movin’!” We’re supportive, but we ain’t fooling ourselves.

The big problem with “Talk to Me” is that it doesn’t dig deeply into Petey Greene as a real human being. He is written as an idea of a street player, all attitude and lip.

Weirdly, the film halfway through stops being about Petey’s adventures in broadcasting and becomes an old-fashioned show-biz fable about his rise and fall as a standup comic.

“Talk to Me” cares nothing about Petey Greene’s real role at WOL. For one thing, he never spun records. He wasn’t a morning-drive deejay, let alone a “pioneer shock jock” as Ms. Lemmons is trying to sell him. Petey hosted a weekend talk show.

But I guess that’s not sexy enough for Hollywood...

To learn about the actual Petey Greene, you need to read Lurma Rackley’s self-published book, “Laugh If You Like, Ain’t a Damn Thing Funny.” It includes extended quotes from the man himself, who died in 1984 – just short of age 53 – after a lifetime of hard drinking.

Very little of this book deals with Greene’s broadcasting career. Most of it is a hustler’s memoir, detailing his youthful delinquency, his prison-yard antics, his heroin addiction, and so forth.

But he does tell the tale of how he got started in radio. Inside Lorton Reformatory, Greene became friends with Sam Hughes, whose brother, Dewey Hughes, worked at WOL-AM. (Dewey is portrayed in the movie by Chiwetel Ejiofor.) I’ll let Petey take it from when he was released from prison:

PETEY GREENE: When I met Dewey at the station on Wisconsin Avenue, he wasn’t even a jockey or nothing. He was more or less of a handy man around WOL. But he was a ambitious cat, so in turn he used to work for days and nights, sometimes without even going home, and learning all he could about the machinery, the mechanics of radio.

When I went over to see him... I told him about the radio show I had in the reformatory. And I did some rhymes and he put them on a tape and he was impressed, you know. After Dewey cut the tapes of me, he played the tapes around in the station for the Vice President and General Manager, John Pace, a white man. ...

Dewey wasn’t a big man at the station but he got a chance to get involved in radio when a white boy left, called Sherwood Ross, who was public affairs director. Dewey got that job. At that time, the station was trying to go all-black. It was in the 60s and blacks were beginning to move.

When they gave Dewey that job, Dewey started doing a lot of innovative things, as opposed to just bringing on big people to be talking about the problems. It was the right time to bring on the little people, the welfare recipients and things like that. And I had started an organization called EFEC, Efforts from Ex-Convicts. And money was being allocated for the help of ex-offenders, welfare recipients and so on.

Dewey knew I could rap, so he, at that particular time, didn’t give me a show, but he would get me to bring on five or six ex-offenders. In fact, Dewey was doing a show of his own then. It was called ‘Speak Up.’ And he would bring us on and we would talk about the ex-offender problems and what was needed. Came on at 6 on Sunday evenings. ...

In late ’67, I started on the radio. Looking back on Dewey, Dewey was a very cunning guy. And he saw that I was very talented, and that I liked him. He saw I really, really liked him. And Dewey wanted to be a star himself.

I can understand. He was a handsome fellow, young, talk like a white boy. People who had never seen Dewey used to think he was white. They used to call him on the radio and think he was a white boy.

So, Dewey saw me as an asset. He started letting me come and sit with him on Sunday, so it would be him and me. He named the program, “Rappin’ with Petey Greene.” Dewey and I would be there and he would push the buttons and we would both talk. People started saying, “You don’t need that white boy on there with you, Petey. Why don’t you get that white guy off there?” ...

I’d say, “He’s not white.” But I had my confidence up and I knew I didn’t need Dewey there with me. And so he phased hisself out. The show got hot. ...

I used to bring guests in, but them people in the community... they always used to say, “You don’t need no guests. We like to talk to you by ourself.’ See, when I first started out, they used to call me up with they problems. “I got a boyfriend, Petey Greene, and my boyfriend, you know, he goes with my best girlfriend, Petey, what should I do?”...

One time I almost got in some trouble. A guy called me and said, “Hey man, this broad I got, everytime I look around she’s over there with another dude, and he act like he disrespect me.” I said, “Well, man, just get a gun and go kill that nigguh.”

Boy, I got in serious trouble. People at the station told me, “Petey, you got power. These people don’t just call you and ask you these questions just to be calling. These people believe in you, man. Somebody called and told us that you told a man to get a shotgun and kill another man.”

I didn’t say nothing like that again.

When Detroit burned

In the early hours of July 23, 1967, a riot jumped off in the black part of Detroit. One week later, 43 people were dead, more than 7,000 had been arrested, and 2,500 stores had been looted or burned.

The city never did bounce back from it.

Here’s how the riot began, as vividly described in the pages of “Nightmare in Detroit: A Rebellion and Its Victims,” a 1968 book by two Chicago Daily News reporters, Van Gordon Sauter and Burleigh Hines.

VAN GORDON SAUTER and BURLEIGH HINES: Early Sunday morning, Twelfth Street is vibrantly alive. The sound of the street is Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding and the Miracles, rolling from car radios and transistors and juke boxes. The smell of the street is $1.95 “Soul Food Specials” – pigs’ feet, mustard greens, baked yams – in all-night restaurants.

But the feel of the street is energy – energy fired by an unwillingness to surrender the weekend, to give up and go home when there is still the chance for another drink, another laugh, or an invitation to fall into another bed. ...

Everybody was out for a good time, except Sergeant Arthur Howison and his clean-up crew from the Tenth Precinct.

They were out to knock over what Detroiters call a “blind pig” – an illegal, after-hours drinking establishment. When the bars close at 2:00, the crowds descend on the numerous “pigs” along the street....

Howison had been watching the United Civic League for Community Action, whose offices were above the Economy Printing Company in a soot-stained two-story building at 9125 Twelfth. The Civic League claims numerous goals, including the ambition to “fight... for housing for disadvantaged people.”

But social uplift was at a minimum Sunday. The bar in the Civic League headquarters was crowded with boisterous members and guests, and the juke box boomed out the latest Motown hits.

Howison had raided the building last in August, 1966, and picked up fourteen offenders. It was time to call again.

Patrolmen Charles Henry and Joseph Brown, Negro plainclothesmen attached to Howison’s unit, had made their first pass at the Civic League about 10:30 p.m. Saturday.

When the peephole clicked open, Henry identified Brown as a basketball player from Cincinnati looking for some action. The eye behind the peephole told the two men to move on.

About 3:45 a.m. Sunday, Henry posted himself outside Economy Printing looking for a break. He saw three women turn into the entranceway to the Civic League and quickly followed them up the steps. Again the peephole opened, but this time the door opened too. Henry made his way to the bar, glanced at his watch, and ordered a beer.

On the street below, Howison checked his watch. If [Henry] doesn’t come out within ten minutes, the men on the street are to presume that a buy has been made and that there is sufficient legal evidence for an arrest. About 4:00, Howison and three men stormed up the steps. They didn’t bother to knock. Using a sledgehammer, one of the men pounded open the door.

“We heard these noises,” said a woman in the club. “Pow. Pow. Pow. We thought it was gunshots. Then we heard glass breaking. Then somebody shouted, ‘It’s a raid.’ ”

“You couldn’t hardly move for everybody getting under the tables,” recalled the club’s director.

Howison was surprised by his catch. He had expected about thirty persons but there were more than eighty; he called the precinct to ask for assistance in transferring the prisoners to the stationhouse.

The shuttle service took nearly half an hour; in the meantime, the raid provided some live drama for the people on the street. Negroes clustered around the printing shop. Passing traffic slowed, and this in turn attracted gawkers from farther down Twelfth.

Under the best of circumstances, the relationship between the police and the Twelfth Street regulars is edgy. Each side is ready to believe the worst about the other. Rumors, gossip, and charges are generally accepted as facts.

Thus it came as no surprise to people in the crowd when an onlooker told of seeing a policeman manhandle a Negro woman coming down the steps to a paddy wagon. Someone else heard a woman yell, “Brutality!”

And it came as no surprise to the police that the bystanders began to “jive” the authorities. From the anonymity of the crowd, people hurled taunts and insults at the cops.

“We had no trouble with [the] prisoners,” said Howison. “Just those loudmouthed onlookers. They were across the street and bunched up on both sides of the building.”

At 4:45, just forty-six minutes after the raid began, an unidentified person hurled something more than an insult from the crowd. A bottle arced into the air. Rolling lazily and glinting in the light of the streetlamps, it fell on the back window of a squad car just as the last prisoners were being loaded into cars.

The crowd cheered as the window shattered.

The angered policemen looked at the more than two hundred persons and knew it would be impossible to get anyone to step forward and identify the bottle thrower. ...

When the police departed without any further investigation of the incident, the crowd, jubilant and anxious for more fun, suddenly realized the source of its excitement was gone. But the sound of the bottle hitting the glass seemed to live on. To the crowd, it was a good sound. It had produced a delicious response.

Without leader, plan, or direction, the crowd began to break up into smaller groups and surge down the street. Teams of men shredded metal screens off windows. Bricks, bottles, and ashcans were hurled through the exposed glass, and hands shot into display window cases and yanked out merchandise.

Minutes after the bottle had been thrown, it was open house on Twelfth Street.

Creole racial proverbs

In the comment thread regarding “Brazilian racial proverbs,” a new UBM reader – Vaucanson’s Duck – pointed me to an 1885 book titled “Gombo Zhèbes: Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs,” by Lafcadio Hearn.

Turns out that this cool volume – like many fascinating old books now unprotected by copyright – has been digitized and put up on the World Wide Web, where it can be downloaded for free. (Click here and you can download the “Little Dictionary of Creoloe Proverbs” as a PDF file from Internet Archive.)

Most of these folk sayings from the former French slave colonies concern life in general. For example, “He who laughs on Friday will cry on Sunday.” And this: “Lying isn’t as bad as speaking badly about people.”

My fave is a Haitian saying, which you whip on somebody who tells you an unlikely tale of woe: “You pretend to die; and I’ll pretend to bury you.”

Snap!

A few proverbs, naturally, deal with race. Such as the following. (I’ll provide only the English translations, not the Creole originals.)

“Just put a mulatto on horseback, and he’ll tell you his mother wasn’t a negress.” [Louisiana]

There’s a harsher version of this one from Martinique: “As soon as a mulatto is able to own an old horse, he will tell you that his mother wasn’t a nigger.”

Ouch!

“The negro carries corn in his pocket to steal chickens; the mulatto carries a rope in his pocket to steal horses; the white man carries money in his pocket to deceive girls.” [Louisiana]

“The monkey is sly; it was he that first taught the black man how to steal.” [Mauritius]

“The good white man dies; the bad remains.” [Haiti]

“When the master sings, the negro dances; but when the overseer only whistles, the negro jumps.” [Louisiana]

“Coal will never make flour.” (That is, “You can’t wash a negro white.”) [Mauritius]

“The roach has come out of the flour barrel.” (Said to colored women who powder their faces white.) [Mauritius]

“The horse remains in the stable, the mule in the field.” (According to a footnote: “Here the mule seems to represent the slave; the horse, the master or overseer.” The lesson being, one must know one’s place.) [Martinique]

“The white man’s eyes burn the negro’s eyes.” [Martinique]

I have no idea what that last one is supposed to mean.

Remembering Alex Haley

I had forgotten (if I ever really knew) the important role of Reader’s Digest in the creation of “Roots,” Alex Haley’s epic book from 1976. The Digest’s co-founder, Lila Acheson Wallace, underwrote Haley’s research. And the magazine published the very first excerpts of “Roots” in 1974.

Two months ago, The Reader’s Digest Association published a paperback titled “Alex Haley: The Man Who Traced America’s Roots.” With the publisher’s permission, here is an excerpt. It deals with a key phase in Haley’s writing process:

ALEX HALEY: There’s something about a ship. Usually I go out on freight ships, cargo ships. (I wouldn’t get caught on a liner. How can you write with 800 people dancing?) But the freight ships carry a maximum of 12 people, and they tend to be very quiet people.

I work my principal hours from about 10:30 at night until daybreak. The world is yours at that point. Most all the passengers are asleep.

I had written from the birth of Kunta Kinte through his capture. And I had got into the habit of talking to the character. I knew Kunta. I knew everything about Kunta. I knew what he was going to do. What he had done. Everything. And so I would talk to him.

And I had become so attached to him that I knew now I had to put him in the slave ship and bring him across the ocean. That was the next part of the book. And I just really couldn’t quite bring myself to write that.

I was in San Francisco. I wrote about 40 pages and chunked it out. When you write well, it isn’t a question so much of what you want to say, it’s a question of feel. Does it feel like you want it to feel? The feel starts coming in somewhere around about the fourth rewrite.

I wrote, twice more, about 40 pages and threw it out. And I realized what my bother was: I couldn’t bring myself to feel I was up to writing about Kunta Kinte in that slave ship and me in a high-rise apartment. I had to get closer to Kunta.

I had run out of my money at The Digest, lying so many times about when I’d finish so I couldn’t ask for any more. I don’t know where I got the money from. I went to Africa. Put out the word I wanted to get a ship coming from Africa to Florida. I just wanted to simulate the crossing.

I went down to Liberia, and I got on a freight ship called appropriately enough the African Star. She was carrying a partial cargo of raw rubber in bales. And I got on as a passenger. I couldn’t tell the captain or the mate what I wanted to do because they couldn’t allow me to do it.

But I found one hold that was just about a third full of cargo and there was an entryway into it with a metal ladder down to the bottom of the hold. Down in there they had a long, wide, thick piece of rough sawed timber. They called it dunnage. It’s used between cargo to keep it from shifting in rough seas.

After dinner the first night, I made my way down to this hold. I had a little pocket light. I took off my clothing to my underwear and lay down on my back on this piece of dunnage. I imagined I’m Kunta Kinte. I lay there and I got cold and colder. Nothing seemed to come except how ridiculous it was that I was doing this. By morning I had a terrible cold. I went back up. And the next night I’m there doing the same thing.

Well, the third night when I left the dinner table, I couldn’t make myself go back down in that hold. I just felt so miserable. I don’t think I ever felt quite so bad. And instead of going down in the hold, I went to the stern of the ship. And I’m standing up there with my hands on the rail and looking down where the propellers are beating up this white froth. And in the froth are little luminous green phosphorescences. At sea you see that a lot.

And I’m standing there looking at it, and all of a sudden it looked like all my troubles just came on me. I owed everybody I knew. Everybody was on my case. Why don’t you finish this foolish thing? You ought not be doing it in the first place, writing about black genealogy. That’s crazy.

I was just utterly miserable. Didn’t feel like I had a friend in the world. And then a thought came to me that was startling. It wasn’t frightening. It was just startling. I thought to myself, Hey, there’s a cure for all this. You don’t have to go through all this mess. All I had to do was step through the rail and drop in the sea.

Once having thought it, I began to feel quite good about it. I guess I was half a second before dropping in the sea. Fine, that would take care of it. You won’t owe anybody anything. To hell with the publishers and the editors.

And I began to hear voices. They were not strident. They were just conversational. And I somehow knew every one of them. And they were saying things like, No, don’t do that. No, you’re doing the best you can. You just keep going.

And I knew exactly who they were. They were Grandma, Chicken George, Kunta Kinte. They were my cousin, Georgia, who lived in Kansas City and had passed away. They were all these people whom I had been writing about. They were talking to me. It was like in a dream.

I remember fighting myself loose from that rail, turning around, and I went scuttling like a crab up over the hatch. And finally I made my way back to my little stateroom and pitched down, head first, face first, belly first on the bunk, and I cried dry. I cried more I guess than I’ve cried since I was four years old. ...

[Edited from a talk at Reader’s Digest, October 10, 1991, four months before Alex Haley’s death. Excerpted from the book “Alex Haley: The Man Who Traced America’s Roots,” by Alex Haley. Copyright © 2007 The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.]