"The Man" by Irving Wallace Is as Relevant as Ever

I believe it was in Civics class my freshman year that we were assigned to read The Man by Irving Wallace. Though I didn't know it at the time, Wallace was a bestselling author most notable for his political fiction. This novel, published in 1964, made such impression on me  that I recall the story and some of its scenes to this day. To a certain extent it has served as a lens through which I view the political games played in Washington D.C., and why so many of us are suspicious of the media's motives or reliability,

The central character is Douglas Dilman, a quiet and unassuming President pro tempore of the Senate who finds himself thrust into the highest office in the land after a series of unforeseen events leads to the sudden deaths of the President and Vice President. By default Dllman, for better or worse, becomes the first African American President of the United States. From the outset he faces unprecedented challenges, both from within the political establishment and the society at large.

Dilman is a reluctant leader who becomes a symbol of hope and change. Kermit Madigan, his chief antagonist, is a Senator who represents the old guard and embodies the entrenched prejudices, deep-seated racism and resistance to change that Dilman must confront. (EdNote: The book came out the year after Dr. Martin Luther King's March on Washington and before the assassinations of Malcolm X, Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy.

There are also a diverse array of secondary characters, each representing different facets of American society, from loyal aides and family members to political adversaries and ordinary citizens.

What remains fresh in my mind are the lengths to which President Dilman's enemies will go to discredit his character, including fabricating a bogus rape charge.  And the media goes right along with it, amplifying every aspect of this preposterous story.  

Wallace highlights the harsh realities of racism in America. Through Dilman's experiences, he hammers home the societal attitudes that African Americans have faced, both in politics and everyday life.

The novel examines the nature of power and the burdens of leadership. Dilman's ascent to the presidency forces him to confront his own doubts and insecurities, while also dealing with the expectations and prejudices of others. (I'm curious what kinds of doubts and insecurities President Biden and former president Trump wrestle with at the end of the day when they kick off their shoes.)

The Man underscores the potential for change and progress in society. Dilman's presidency, though fictional, serves as a beacon of hope and a reminder that progress is possible, even in the face of overwhelming odds. I'm curious how many of our 1960's classmates imagined that we would see a black president in our lifetimes,

I remember the book being engaging and accessible. Complex political scenarios and social issues were understandable and compelling. His writing kept me hooked  from start to finish, though I was too young to appreciate how he achieved this effect. I only know that it made an impact on me and I've had it come to mind numerous times while following Beltway politics over the years.

What books did you read in school that have remained relevant for you or opened your eyes in one way or another?

With the Oxford Incident Behind Us, Juneteenth Moves Us Forward

"How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?"

James Meredith, 1962. Library of Congress

Today, Juneteenth has officially become a National Holiday. What follows are some thoughts I shared in 2013 regarding Bob Dylan's "Oxford Town." 

We often hear people talk about the 50's as the "good old days." In reality, the very things that were wrong in the 50's are what led to the upheavals of the 60's, no issue moreso than racism.

The conflicts over race long preceded the Freedom Riders who put their lives on the line to draw awareness to this special problem of the Deep South. Poet/journalist Carl Sandburg shone a light on this issue when he wrote about the Chicago race riots of 1919 in which 38 people were tragically killed as a result of an incident that occurred on the segregated beachfront of Lake Michigan.

In a preface to the 1969 re-release of this volume Ralph McGill identifies WWI as one of the events that increased awareness of the racial divide. Black soldiers who put their lives on the line for America and freedom returned to the States as second class citizens.

World War II revived this same set of feelings for American blacks who served overseas only to return home to maltreatment and blatant injustice. The difference this second time around was the advent of television, by which means the rest of the country was made aware of the consequences of Jim Crow laws being enforced in the former Confederacy. Television not only made people aware of these problems, it also became a means for showing determined blacks the methodology of non-violent resistance.

Dylan's song "Oxford Town" was written in October 1962 in response to a call for songs by Broadside magazine seeking songs about James Meredith and his attempt to attend Ole Miss, which was his constitutional right. The governor exerted intense pressure to prevent Meredith from entering the school as a student. Meredith refused to back down and put his life on the line in an effort to get the Kennedys to respond to what was happening in the South.

Simultaneously the Kennedys were dealing with the Cuban missile crisis. Racial tensions and global tensions put tremendous pressure on JFK and Bobby who did everything in their power to keep the conflicts from escalating. The calls for action in Oxford were coming hard from Mississippi on the one hand and the calls for action from the Pentagon were being pressed from the other.

Oxford was a problem both Kennedys wanted to go away, but when riots broke out they ultimately took action and (according to Wikipedia, citing Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.) called in 500 U.S. Marshals to take control, who were supported by the 70th Army Engineer Combat Battalion from Ft Campbell, Kentucky. They created a tent camp and kitchen for the US Marshals. To bolster law enforcement, President John F. Kennedy sent in U.S. Army troops from the 2nd Infantry Division from Ft. Benning, GA under the command of Maj. Gen Charles Billingslea and military police from the 503rd Military Police Battalion, and called in troops from the Mississippi Army National Guard.

It was during this time that Bobby Kennedy, while looking at a map of Cuba asked his brother how far those Russian missiles could go. Then, tongue in cheek, he followed up with, "Do you think one of those missiles could hit Oxford?"

* * * 

It was against this backdrop that the young Dylan penned "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall," which appeared in 1963 on The Freelwheelin' Bob Dylan, his second album, his first to be all original material. Freewheeling is comprised of many songs that are now considered classics, opening with "Blowin' in the Wind," followed by "Girl from the North Country" and "Masters of War." "Hard Rain" is so dense that he purportedly stated that every line could be a song of its own. It's impossible for me not to hear the line "I saw a white man walking a black dog" as his indictment of America's unique form of racism.

It seems strange to many of us who lived up North to think blacks had been playing professional baseball for more than a decade, and my football hero Jimmy Brown had been playing for the Browns more than five years at this point. Growing up in white suburbia, most of us in the North were oblivious to the realities of segregation. In this, and many other songs of that period, Dylan drew attention to that which we were failing to see.

Oxford Town

Oxford Town, Oxford Town
Ev’rybody’s got their heads bowed down
The sun don’t shine above the ground
Ain’t a-goin’ down to Oxford Town

He went down to Oxford Town
Guns and clubs followed him down
All because his face was brown
Better get away from Oxford Town

Oxford Town around the bend
He come in to the door, he couldn’t get in
All because of the color of his skin
What do you think about that, my frien’?

Me and my gal, my gal’s son
We got met with a tear gas bomb
I don’t even know why we come
Goin’ back where we come from

Oxford Town in the afternoon
Ev’rybody singin’ a sorrowful tune
Two men died ’neath the Mississippi moon
Somebody better investigate soon

Oxford Town, Oxford Town
Ev’rybody’s got their heads bowed down
The sun don’t shine above the ground
Ain’t a-goin’ down to Oxford Town

Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1992 by Special Rider Music

Nobel Laureate Sinclair Lewis Wrote About Race Relations While Living In Duluth

When Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, a lot of the news focused on whether he was the best choice to win that year. No doubt many of those who questioned were earnest but simply unaware of the breadth and depth of his catalogue, and global influence. 

One story that did not get much play, however, was this one. The first American Nobel Laureate, Sinclair Lewis, also lived in Duluth for a season--at the same time as young Bob Dylan. That's right. Bobby Zimmerman was born here in 1941. Six years later the family moved to Hibbing. During that same time period Sinclair Lewis lived in Duluth (1944-1946) and wrote an important novel about race relations which he titled Kingsblood Royal.  

What's of interest to me isn't simply the matter that both the first and latest Nobel Prize-winning authors lived in Duluth at the same time. Rather, it's that each of them had undoubtedly been influenced by an event that occurred here, an event that made each more acutely aware of justice issues and race relations in America. I'm referring to the lynching of 1920.

Nearly every Dylan fan is keenly aware of the opening lines of "Desolation Row": "They're selling post cards of the hanging..." Fewer by far are the number of people who know the story of Kingsblood Royal, which was published in 1947 after Lewis left Duluth.

The storyline was inspired by actual events, not here but in Detroit. An African American doctor, Ossian Sweet, purchased a house in a white section of town. A hostile white mob gathered to protest his having moved into their neighborhood. Rocks were thrown at his house, windows broken. When shots were fired from an upper window two whites were struck, one killed. Dr. Sweet, his wife and nine others were arrested and charged with murder.

Sweet, who was born in Florida, had headed North to escape the Jim Crow South. After having earned his medical degree at Howard University in 1924, Sweet moved to Detroit to set up his practice there. His success enabled him to purchase a middle class home. In the South blacks could be openly treated as second class citizens. In the North, the Sweets learned -- like others before them -- that these unjust rules were not as explicit, but still applied. 

After the arrests, the NAACP acquired Clarence Darrow to represent the Sweets. Detroit prosecutors (yes, this is their argument) said that the Sweets, having moved to a white neighborhood, "violated social norms." 

There were two trials, with the second resulting in an acquittal. The NAACP celebrated this as a victory, but the story had no happy ending. The family never lived in that house. Both his wife and daughter died shortly after. After several decades of frustration Dr. Sweet himself committed suicide.

* * *

Though Sinclair Lewis worked on Kingsblood Royal 25 years after the Duluth lynchings, it is a near certainty that the memory of that terrible event still wafted about in the air here. Lewis himself was a Minnesotan (Sauk City) and no doubt had been aware of what transpired here in the Northland. Perhaps the details of that mob's behavior helped add authenticity to the race riot that takes place at the end of Kingsblood Royal.

Here's an overview of the story's premise from Goodreads:

A neglected tour de force by the first American to win the Nobel Prize in literature, Kingsblood Royal is a stirring and wickedly funny portrait of a man who resigns from the white race. When Neil Kingsblood, a typical middle-American banker with a comfortable life, makes the shocking discovery that he has African blood, the odyssey that ensues creates an unforgettable portrayal of two Americas, one black, one white.

As timely as when it was first published in 1947, one need only open today's newspaper to see the same issues passionately being discussed between blacks and whites that we find in Kingsblood Royal, says Charles Johnson. Perhaps only now can we fully appreciate Sinclair Lewis's astonishing achievement.

* * * 

Those who have read the books state that it was miles ahead of its time. Unfortunately, the insights it offers will probably never be read nowadays because--like Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird--he uses the N-word.

You can read Goodreads Reader Reviews here.

* * * 

Related Links

The Ossian Sweet Story at BlackPast.com

Sinclair Lewis In Duluth

The Lynchings In Duluth

Relevant Reads for Wednesday, June 17

Two of the articles here were shared with me over the weekend, both being relevant to current events. The third is my own.

Photo: Angelo Cozzi. Public domain.
(L to R on podium: Peter Norman, Tommie Smith,
and John Carlos.)

A Life Informed By A Lynching
https://www.startribune.com/a-life-informed-by-a-lynching/571226292/
Michael Fedo, author of The Lynchings in Duluth, wrote a superb opinion piece that was published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It begins, "I wrote the book about the Duluth lynchings that took place 100 years ago this week. Some people thought the event didn't need to be revisited. Some people probably do still."


The Ox-Bow Incident and Fake News, A Cautionary Tale
https://medium.com/@ennyman/the-ox-bow-incident-and-fake-news-a-cautionary-tale-f56a3d49758d
I wrote this in 2012 in response to social media "virtual lynching." In light of the current upheaval in the streets, it remains relevant.
Share Friend Link


The White Man in That Photo
https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/the-white-man-in-that-photo/?fbclid=IwAR0VaNWtLHJjMUJlrjiUFfoKBT30BzigO3RBNjuyADu3FJzJBMzD4pEzI2E#.Xtz_hyZAayk.facebook

Many times we see something happen but never fully understand it. During the 1968 Olympics, two American medal winners lifted their fists in a Black Power salute. The repercussions were severe, but few if any of us were aware of the role that white Australian played, or the price he paid as well. Peter Norman was a white man from Australia, a country that had strict apartheid laws, almost as strict as South Africa.

* * * *

What White Privilege Looks Like (A First Hand Experience)

For years I never quite grasped the meaning of "white privilege." My father grew up in extreme poverty and worked his way out. This is America and others from all races, many who never even spoke a word of English, went from rags to a decent life in one generation.

Then I reflected on an incident from my life which I'd never viewed through the lens of privilege, a story which I share with you here.

* * * *
We moved to our rural home while our children were still young, 4 & 6. We had a little land, added a couple small shed-sized barns, and acquired some animals, geese, a duck, pygmy goats, rabbits. The kids learned responsibility and we all enjoyed the hobby farm experience.

We had a problem, however. One of the neighbors had a dog that was accustomed to running free, and he took an interest in visiting our critters. He was aggressive and they were intimidated, frightened. After several such incidents I began to wonder where the law stood with regard to shooting the dog if things continued this way.

Mind you, I do not own guns and would not have done such a thing, but it did make me curious as regards where the law stands on the matter.

It just so happened that as I was driving home from work the next day I was thinking about this question as I drove past a police car with two officers in it. (Proctor police have had a reputation of no mercy for people going faster than the 30 mph speed limit through town.) As I drove by I looked into the face of one of the officers and considered stopping to ask my question.

In the next instant, the red lights were flashing and it became quickly apparent that it was I whom they wanted to stop, so I pulled over. What happened next surprised me though.

Both cops got out of their car and pulled their guns. They made their way slowly along both sides of my car. I watched each in the two side mirrors, curious about what was going on. I was almost laughing because it seemed such an over-reaction. I had not been speeding. I could not imagine what was happening.

I rolled down my window and asked what was going on. He replied that they thought I was someone else.

I then said, "Oh, while you're here, I have been having a problem with the neighbor's dog," and I explained the situation.

He said, "You can shoot the dog."

* * * *

How does White Privilege relate to this story?

My REACTION to being approached by two cops with pistols drawn illustrates White Privilege. I thought it amusing, even funny as it was happening. It was such an obvious over-reaction that I couldn't take it seriously.

I'd be willing to bet money that there are not a lot of African Americans in most parts of the country who would have reacted that way. Two cops approaching with guns drawn? I'm guessing the heart would be racing a little faster, maybe even some praying. Possibly even a temptation to take off and try to get away. Just as a dog can sense our fear, the police might sense this man's fear, and emotions would escalate.

It's more than unfortunate that this situation exists in so many parts of the country, if not most. I do not know how to change it, but it's useful to have a clearer understanding of what people are trying to change. I didn't always "get it."

* * * *
ADDENDUM
We didn't have any more problems with the dog, only because the neighbors dealt with it themselves. And no, even if we did I would not have tried to shoot him. That's not who I am.

The Balance of Power Concept as Applied to Domestic Issues Today

Signing of the Constitution, Sept. 17, 1787 

As nearly all of us learned in our earliest Early American History classes, the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and other founding documents for our nation had been written primarily by a bunch of white males. White males with primarily good intentions put their lives on the line to create a nation built on the concept of Rex Lex, Latin for Law Is King, based on a document by Scottish Presbyterian Samuel Rutherford.

Lex Rex stated that The Law of God Is King, the idea here being that we have the right to exist as a nation under the jurisdiction of God's laws, not arbitrary laws based on the whims of monarchs or mobs.

Another feature of the Constitution and these early documents was the concept of limited government. One of the biggest threats to individual liberties was oppressive and intrusive big government, hence restrictions on government were set in place.

Though the ideals may have been right and good, it proved to be flawed in practice. Women, from the start, had no voice in the decisions of power. They could not vote. And slavery remained an institution that dehumanized the Negro to the extent that the Law treated slaves not as people but as property.

As for the Native peoples who inhabited this continent before our (Western caucasians) arrival, well, they certainly had no voice at the table of power.  Details of that forgotten story can be found in Dee Brown's Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.

* * * *

Early tanks and machine-age killing machines.

This weekend I have been listening to a series of lectures by Professor Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius of the University of Tennesseee titled World War I: The "Great War". In the second lecture he lays the groundwork for the war that could be cited as the century's first great catastrophe. The ruling principle that "maintained the peace" for those many decades previous, was the notion of a Balance of Power.

Having grown up during the Cold War, I believe the idea of balance between the superpowers was something we experienced ourselves in a real way. The tension created by means of the threat of nuclear annihilation was real. The Cuban Missile Crisis certainly made it visible and films like On the Beach and Dr. Strangelove gave it a visual//emotional/psychological tactile aspect that resonated with deep-seated anxieties.

Is "perceived powerlessness" the underlying cause of our current crisis?

As Professor L. outlined the manner in which the strengthening of Germany threatened the balance of power in the years preceding the war, I could not help but believe a primary fundamental issue today is derived, in part, from an imbalance of power.

Women's Suffrage was all about giving women a voice at the table of power. The Civil War certainly upended the power structures that dehumanized blacks and kept them powerless. After the war, however, the Ku Klux Klan and later Jim Crow laws strove to keep the balance of power imbalanced. That is, no balance at all.

It takes humility to relinquish a measure of power, something uncommon in a political culture more inclined toward Machiavellian values than virtuous ones. To craft solutions will also require honesty, listening, integrity and wisdom born of dialogue, a dialogue where all voices can be heard.

This in and of itself is a challenge. Social media gives a megaphone for the loudest, drowning out much of the wisdom that resides in the quiet people who are less assertive about speaking up, sometimes for fear of being on the receiving end of a smackdown.

Gardens produce their best yields when the conditions are right. What we need is to create a culture committed to working together to produce the best solutions for all. There are a lot of good, caring people in this country, but many don't feel safe speaking out.

The problem seems mountainous. And yet, Jesus once said, “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.”

Can this really be so? Right now I am searching the pockets of my heart for that mustard seed.

* * * *

The Chicago Race Riots of July 1919

One of the best ways to find good books cheap is at spring garage sales near college. Graduating students are oft in a hurry to discard some of the belongings they accumulated. If you're lucky, and it happens, you'll find some real gems for pennies on the dollar.

Last night I started re-reading a short volume called The Chicago Race Riots, July 1919 by Carl Sandburg. It was one of a dozen books I picked up for a dime each from a Hamline grad when we were living in the Midway in St. Paul.

If the Sandburg name sounds familiar, it may be because of the two Pulitzer Prizes he won as a poet. Or it may be because of the Pulitzer he won for his renowned biography of Lincoln. I had not realized at the time I picked up this volume that he was initially a journalist. This printing includes a preface by Ralph McGill and an intro by the legendary Walter Lippmann.

I fetched the book off my shelf after reading a section of Don't Know Much About History pertaining to the post-WWI South. It's painfully depressing to read about the raw treatment blacks have received at the hands of whites.

* * * *

In the Deep South cotton was king, until the boll weevil came along. Few of us today realize how devastating the boll weevil infestation was. If you're like me, you may have thought boll weevils were a problem cotton growers had always had to contend with.

The weevil had been a plaque in South America but over time came north through Latin America and Mexico to become a major problem after the First World War. The way this critter works is that it lays its egg in a cotton boll. The newly hatched baby weevil then chews up the inside a bit and thereby kills the boll. Farms that produced thousands of bales of cotton were soon producing hundreds of bales. While the Roaring Twenties roared up North, the Southern economy was in a tailspin.

This, combined with Jim Crow laws, now set in stone, led to an exodus of workers seeking employment in Northern Rust Belt cities.

This led to another problem. Racism in the North wore a different face. If you were black, you couldn't live just anywhere you wanted. The Chicago black population had been 50,000 at the beginning of the century, but with this influx of families thru the decade there were 125,000 blacks in the Windy City by 1919. (It took more than four decades to place laws on the books that would permit a black family to choose where they could live.*) The lack of housing, Chicago politics and post-war psychology all contributed to the events that happened in July 1919.

There were also riots in other cities. (Photo: East St. Louis)

For blacks who stayed in the South at this time, prospects weren't exactly comforting. Ralph McGill, in his preface to this book, cites three incidents. In Blakely, Georgia, April 5, 1919, A Private William Little returned to his hometown after the war via train. He was "met by a band of whites who ordered him to remove his uniform and walk home in his underwear." When he continued to wear his uniform (because he had no other clothes), he was found dead, "his body badly beaten, on the outskirts of town. He was wearing his uniform."

A few weeks later, in Shreveport, Louisiana, a train was held up by an armed mob in order to lynch a black man who had written a note to a white woman. Only after he was shot did anyone seek to find out whether he could read or write. He could not.

Another example from two weeks after that was cited in McGill's preface but it was so horrible I'm not even going to share it. The account begins, "Lloyd Clay, Negro laborer, was roasted to death last night." A mob of 800 to a thousand men and women removed him from a jail...

McGill's preface was to the re-issued 1969 publication of Sandberg's account, 50 years after its original publication. He laments that race relations, in spite of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, were not wholly better. This (1969) was only a year after the  assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the race riots that shook more than 100 cities.

* * * *

The event that triggered the Chicago race riot of July 1919
A black youth accidentally floated on a raft across an invisible line at a segregated public beach shared by whites and blacks. The boy was stoned for his mistake by whites, knocked off the raft and drowned. Blacks rushed to get help from a policeman to address what had happened. The policeman refused to do anything. Fighting broke out  that spread throughout the overcrowded black neighborhoods which Sandburg called the Black Belt. After three days 20 blacks were dead and 14 whites, plus hundreds of injured.  (The Encyclopedia of Chicago states 23 African Americans and 15 whites.)

* * * *

Sandburg's book is more about the conditions that set off the riot so that it went viral through the black community. This is why the book discusses lynchings in the south. Chicago was a receiving station connected to every southern region. After every lynching somewhere in the south, Secretary Arnold Hill of the Urban League said, about two weeks later there would be more "colored people from that community" arriving. "You can depend on it."

It was this feature of Sandburg's story struck especially close to home when I read it. In my New Jersey hometown of Bridgewater we had a small section that was known as Hobbstown which consisted of two parallel streets about four blocks long. Bridgewater was a mid-to-upscale developing suburb when our family moved there in 1964. As I understood it Hobbstown started somewhere around 1920 or so.

As it turns out, this spring I discover a book about the community called Hobbstown: A Forgotten Legacy of a Unique African-American Community. As it turns out, Sandburg's description of how more blacks came north each time there was a lynching down south is precisely what triggered the birth of Hobbstown. The Hobbs brothers lived in Georgia (if I recall correctly) and worked as sharecroppers. One of the brothers was a reverend. At year's end their pay, minus expenses, came to nothing. After a lynching, and this ridiculous financial arrangement, one of the Hobbs brothers decided to go north to New York.

The New York situation was as overcrowded as Chicago, but as luck should have it, a woman showed up who said there was land in New Jersey. Hobbs sprang for it. He and his brothers were soon building a future in Bridgewater.

* * * *

It's been a hundred years since the Chicago race riots of 1919 and the book it spawned. Next summer Duluth will be having a remembrance event of its own with regard to the lynching which took place here in 2020. Much has changed over the past century, yet much has not. There is still a lot of pain and anger, frustration and fear.

The promise of social media was that it would bring us all together, but it seems to have done more to drive us apart. It was a false hope.

What is needed is imagination and love, and a willingness to step outside our comfort zones. And a decision to become our better selves.

Related Links
Tamara Tabel, Historical Novelist, on the Race Riots of 1919
The Lynchings in Duluth by Michael Fedo


*Even with the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, racist attitudes made it difficult for black families to buy homes in many areas of the country. When I was in college at Ohio U (1970-74) a black family bought a home in the county adjacent to Athens County. They were the first black family in the county, and their welcoming went something like this. Windows broken with rocks. More windows broken and vandalism. I do not know the end of the matter, only that to hear of it was pretty darn sad.

For a Surprisingly Powerful Film About Race Relations and Life: Green Book

A variation on Driving Miss Daisy, another
film about race and class.

I’m really not sure who to give the greatest credit to, but Green Book is an exceptional film that I highly recommend. Initially I would give credit to Viggo Mortensen. This is such a totally different role than I’d would expect, easily worthy of an Oscar.  Then again, why not Mahershala Ali? The interplay between the two reveals so much.

Then I thought of the screenwriters who conceived of this story. The three listed in imdb.com are Nick Vallelonga, Brian Hayes Currie and director Peter Farrelly. It’s a remarkable story, because whoever created this reveals so much about what it means to be human. This is a story of race in America that we don’t often see. Or rather, what we have not seen if we’ve lived life as whites in the North during the 50s.

It’s a funny, sad, beautiful, and rewarding contribution to film history. And a story well told.

Viggo plays the role of an Italian tough guy Tony Lip who’s been a career bouncer. The Copa closes for two months for renovations and Tony Lip needs to find work, and as it turns out he’s sought out to be the bodyguard/valet for world famous black pianist Dr. Don Shirley who has been booked for a series of concerts in the Midwest and Deep South. Just before they leave the record execs hand him a Green Book, a directory that will help him find lodging for the black Dr. Shirley when they go deeper into the Jim Crow south.

Mortenson as Tony Lip.

There are so many great lines, great moments, and great insights about relationships in this country. In addition to the racial divide, there is a economic divide. Dr. Shirley (a wealthy performer, not medical doctor) is paired with the working class Italian.

Great films have great moments and great lines and this one has plenty. “Being a genius is not enough. It takes courage to change people’s hearts” is one line that had me reaching for my pen to keep it from slipping away. Here’s another: “You never win with violence. You only win when you maintain your dignity.”

Based on a true story and what a story. Several times my eyes were moistened. This Amazon.com review by martindonovanItaly sums it up pretty well:

Ali as Dr. Shirley.

A journey of reawakening in a Country like ours - Gore Vidal called it the United States Of Amnesia - the absurdity of the behavior in the Southern communities even the kindest ones have a jarring effect. Viggo Mortensen is sheer perfection as the all American Italian. The opening of his heart and of his mind is a total joy and Mahershala Ali provides another magnetic character to his already rich list of magnetic characters but what makes this film fly so high is the humanity that Mortensen and Ali infuse their characters with. I loved them and Green Book provided me with one of the most satisfying endings of 2018. It leaves you with the hopeful thought that perhaps we're not there yet but that we are on our way.  

I liked this review by Hitchcoc too:

I saw Don Shirley perform in college in 1966. At the time I simply thought he was a hell of a pianist, using that bass and cello to come up with a unique sound. So when this movie came along, I thought "I saw that guy!" I know the critics are being hard on this film, but I sat for two hours, totally captivated. I know there are stereotypes. Could that be because the repeated actions against minorities and the actions of racists have become so commonplace they seem like stereotypes. I believe the performances of these two fine actor made the show. There is a subtlety to this movie that transcends many others of its type.

I can’t say enough got this film, so I will just say this: See it!

The Death of Emmett Till -- Dylan Places Spotlight on American Shame

Tomorrow evening there will be a community forum gathered to discuss Carla Hamilton’s current art exhibit at the Duluth Art Institute. The show is titled Gezielt (Targeted). It addresses issues of race and community policing. The discussion will be led by the DAI Artist Services Director, Amber White. Panelists will include Hamilton; the City of Duluth Human Rights Officer Carl Crawford; Chief of Police Mike Tusken; and the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)-Duluth, Stephan Witherspoon.

The rewards of any artistic engagement, from poetry to music to the visual arts, are directly related to the personal investment of time and reflection we put into it. Carla Hamilton's Gezielt, therefore, becomes an opportunity to reflect once more on race relations in America. Hamilton's exhibit serves to help us simultaneously think about how far we've come and how much progress is still needed.

Initially, when she told me about her experience last year it struck me like a poke in the eye. But then, her response was not only creative, but also revealing. We really have made progress.

In January, I reflected again on Dylan's early protest songs about race relations in the Deep South. Songs like The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol and Only A Pawn In Their Game have always remained riveting reminders of systemic injustice. Another very early song Dylan recorded, but never released was a grimly disturbing The Death of Emmett Till.

This past week I discovered an audio version of a book written fifty years after this 1955 incident titled The Blood of Emmett Till, by Timothy B. Tyson. A unique feature of Tyson's book is this: Carolyn Bryant, the white woman in whose name Emmett was lynched for having somehow having violated, gave her first interview in her life and told a different story than the one she initially told.

Anyone familiar with Duluth's lynching of three Negros in 1919 can't help but hear echoes of our own experience. "They're selling postcards of the hanging..." Audacity.

Emmett Till grew up in Chicago, but had come down to Mississippi for the summer with two other boys. One day the kids got into a car and drove into town to go to the store. Carolyn Bryant worked at this little drifter store and after some of the boys had been inside they told Emmett she was pretty and he should also fetch a look. Emmett and another went inside. His friend went outside again and for about a minute he was alone in the store with her. What she claimed happened next resulted in his death.

In The Blood of Emmett Till Timothy Tyson spends five chapters laying the groundwork for "the incident." Bryant's response may have seemed as insignificant as a spitball thrown over the edge of a cliff, but once events are set in motion there's not much one can do to stop it. The power of an avalanche can be devastating.

In the Jim Crow South there were two kinds of laws, the spoken and the unspoken. Perhaps this is true in most cultures, but in the South violating an unspoken law was a matter of life a death. In Emmett Till's case, the latter.

Some people would say that growing up in Chicago he didn't know any better. They speculated that it's is possible, for example, that when he paid her (if that occurred) he touched her palm when he put the money in her hand, not realizing he should have put it on the counter.

But even Chicago had its unwritten rules and the blacks knew their place there, too. Years ago I purchased and read Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Carl Sandburg's book about the Chicago race riots of 1919 which was triggered by an incident involving a black boy crossing an imaginary line from a black swimming area into a white swimming area in Lake Michigan. Whites essentially stoned him to death, setting in motion a riot that resulted in 38 deaths and more than a hundred injuries. In other words, each race was to know its place.

Tyson uses the first five chapters of the book to set up the context before telling the incident in chapter 6. What happened next is what led to the young Bob Dylan producing a song about it.

Dylan wrote The Death of Emmett Till in 1962, performing it but once, on July 2. He was barely 20 years and forty days old. A recording of this performance was released on the 1972 album Broadside Ballads, Vol. 6: Broadside Reunion, under the artist name Blind Boy Grunt. Dylan did a studio recording the song as well, which was finally released in 2010 on The Bootleg Series, Volume 9: The Witmark Demos.

The song is not a feel-good. Nor is the book, which ends on the note that although lynchings are no longer the threat that they once were racism in America is still alive and well.

The Death of Emmett Till

’Twas down in Mississippi not so long ago
When a young boy from Chicago town stepped through a Southern door
This boy’s dreadful tragedy I can still remember well
The color of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till

Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up
They said they had a reason, but I can’t remember what
They tortured him and did some things too evil to repeat
There were screaming sounds inside the barn, there was laughing sounds
out on the street

Then they rolled his body down a gulf amidst a bloody red rain
And they threw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain
The reason that they killed him there, and I’m sure it ain’t no lie
Was just for the fun of killin’ him and to watch him slowly die

And then to stop the United States of yelling for a trial
Two brothers they confessed that they had killed poor Emmett Till
But on the jury there were men who helped the brothers commit this
awful crime
And so this trial was a mockery, but nobody seemed to mind

I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see
The smiling brothers walkin’ down the courthouse stairs
For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free
While Emmett’s body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea

If you can’t speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that’s so unjust
Your eyes are filled with dead men’s dirt, your mind is filled with dust
Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood
it must refuse to flow
For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!

This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man
That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan
But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give
We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live

Copyright © 1963, 1968 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1996 by Special Rider Music

* * * *
Both the song and the story can make us uncomfortable. Nevertheless, becoming uncomfortable is a first stage of personal growth, laying the foundation for community growth. Tomorrow evening's Community Forum at the Underground may have some uncomfortable moments. Addressing issues of race and injustice can seldom be characterized as "fun" but it can give us an opportunity to learn more about who we are, what we believe and what we want our future to look like.

Meantime, life goes on all around you...

Oxford Town, Oxford Town

"How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?"

We often hear people talk about the 50's as the "good old days." In reality, the very things that were wrong in the 50's are what led to the upheavals of the 60's, no issue moreso than American racism.

The conflicts over race long preceded the Freedom Riders who put their lives on the line to draw awareness to this special problem of the Deep South. Poet/journalist Carl Sandburg shone a light on this issue when he wrote about the Chicago race riots of 1919 in which 38 people were tragically killed as a result of an incident that occurred on the segregated beachfront of Lake Michigan.

In a preface to the 1969 re-release of this volume Ralph McGill identifies WWI as one of the events that increased awareness of the racial divide. Black soldiers who put their lives on the line for America and freedom returned to the States as second class citizens.

World War II revived this same set of feelings for American blacks who served overseas only to return home to maltreatment and blatant injustice. The difference this second time around was the advent of television, by which means the rest of the country was made aware of the consequences of Jim Crow laws being enforced in the former Confederacy. Television not only made people aware of these problems, it also became a means for showing determined blacks the methods of non-violent resistance.

Dylan's song Oxford Town was written in October 1962 in response to a call for songs by Broadside magazine seeking songs about James Meredith and his attempt to attend Ole Miss, which was his constitutional right. The governor did everything in his power to prevent Meredith from entering the school as a student. Meredith refused to back down and put his life on the line in an effort to get the Kennedy's to respond to what was happening in the South.

Simultaneously the Kennedys were dealing with the Cuban missile crisis. Racial tensions and global tensions put tremendous pressure on JFK and Bobby who did everything in their power to keep the conflicts from escalating. The calls for action in Oxford were coming hard from Mississippi on the one hand and the calls for action from the Pentagon were being pressed from the other.

Oxford was a problem they both wanted to go away, but when riots broke out they ultimately took action and (according to Wikipedia, citing Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.) called in 500 U.S. Marshals to take control, who were supported by the 70th Army Engineer Combat Battalion from Ft Campbell, Kentucky. They created a tent camp and kitchen for the US Marshals. To bolster law enforcement, President John F. Kennedy sent in U.S. Army troops from the 2nd Infantry Division from Ft. Benning, GA under the command of Maj. Gen Charles Billingslea and military police from the 503rd Military Police Battalion, and called in troops from the Mississippi Army National Guard.

It was during this time that Bobby Kennedy, while looking at a map asked first how far those Russian missiles could go, and followed up with, "Do you think one of those missiles could hit Oxford?"

It was against this backdrop that the young Dylan also penned A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall, which appeared in 1963 on The Freelwheelin' Bob Dylan, his second album, and first to be all original material. Freewheeling is comprised of many songs that are now considered classics, opening with Blowin' in the Wind, followed by Girl from the North Country and Masters of War. Hard Rain is so dense that he purportedly stated that every line could be a song of its own. It's impossible for me not to hear the line "I saw a white man walking a black dog" as his indictment of America's unique form of racism.

It seems strange to many of us who lived up north to think blacks had been playing professional baseball for more than a decade, and my football hero Jimmy Brown had been playing for the Browns more than five years at this point. Growing up in white suburbia most of us in the north were oblivious to the realities of segregation. In this, and many other songs of that period, Dylan drew attention to that which we were failing to see.

Oxford Town

Oxford Town, Oxford Town
Ev’rybody’s got their heads bowed down
The sun don’t shine above the ground
Ain’t a-goin’ down to Oxford Town

He went down to Oxford Town
Guns and clubs followed him down
All because his face was brown
Better get away from Oxford Town

Oxford Town around the bend
He come in to the door, he couldn’t get in
All because of the color of his skin
What do you think about that, my frien’?

Me and my gal, my gal’s son
We got met with a tear gas bomb
I don’t even know why we come
Goin’ back where we come from

Oxford Town in the afternoon
Ev’rybody singin’ a sorrowful tune
Two men died ’neath the Mississippi moon
Somebody better investigate soon

Oxford Town, Oxford Town
Ev’rybody’s got their heads bowed down
The sun don’t shine above the ground
Ain’t a-goin’ down to Oxford Town

Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1992 by Special Rider Music

Are Blacks And Whites Treated Differently In This Country?

In the summer of '73 Pluckemin Presbyterian Church participated in a program in which inner city black youth were brought out to live with suburban families to get experiences you don't always enjoy in Newark or the Bronx. My parents signed on and "adopted" one such child for a week or two. I was away at college so my recollection of the details is sketchy. All my brothers can probably tell you his name, but for me he was the eight-year-old kid from Newark who stayed in my room, enjoyed our pool and became part of our family for a small space of time.

At the end of his stay my dad bought the boy a new bicycle. Evidently the kid liked riding our bikes and didn't have one of his own. I imagine that it must have been a thrill to bring that bike home with him.

To my parents' shock and surprise, two days later the police confiscated that bike from this boy on the assumption that he had stolen it. Little black kid in the ghetto + shiny new bike = suspicion of crime. That must have been the math the police used to draw this conclusion, as if everything is black and white. Unfortunately, they did not see the full picture because they did not have the facts.

I think of my own youth, riding my bike to the park and to the school and to the drug store for candy. And I wonder how many times the cops were thinking, "Better check this kid out. Might be a stolen bike." As we know, that never happened. I was a white boy with that innocent Leave it to Beaver look.

All this to say that Duluth's controversial Un-Fair Campaign this past winter caused quite the uproar here for a couple months. The Mayor was threatened. Editors received scathing hate mail. Protestors came in from out of town to make a statement. In short, it got ugly around here.

There are few issues more controversial than race in this country -- you probably know what they are – and one way to learn exactly how controversial a topic has become is to talk about it openly.

The Un-Fair Campaign began as a billboard campaign featuring white folk with messages on their faces, and the theme, “It’s hard to see racism when you’re white.” Was the campaign aiming to say whites are racist? I don't think so. Were they saying other races are not racist? No, I don't believe so. I think their point was that our personal experiences lead us to take it for granted that everyone else's experience is like our own. Unfortunately, like the boy from Newark, normal for him has been a very different experience than what was normal for me.

Afterward I was able to discuss the campaign with a couple members of Swim Creative, the agency that helped develop the campaign pro bono. The campaign objective was to start a dialogue about white privilege and raise awareness of the sensitive issue. Though successful in getting attention, there were many in the community who took offense and failed to get the point.

I myself even became the object of a vicious email for having interviewed Naomi Sundog-Yaeger Bischoff on a totally unrelated topic (writing) the year before. Bischoff, as editor of one of our local papers, wrote a favorable review of the concept of the campaign, and some hate-filled person who was out to get her slathered me as well. (I did not post the comment because it was wholly unrelated to the topic in the interview and too vile for public reproduction.)

For what it's worth, I work with someone who likes to throw a smiley face at the end of any email that might be perceived as having something of an edge on it. So I decided to do the same here by sharing a Saturday Night Live skit with Eddie Murphy that addresses this same issue. Are blacks and whites treated differently in America? Eddie Murphy goes undercover to find out.

For more information visit unfaircampaign.org/

Mixed Marriage Flap Provides Food For Thought

This week a justice of the peace in Baton Rouge, Louisiana resigned because he refused to marry a mixed race couple. I think this incident made national news because it is so out of line with the trends of the past forty years.

It is true that mixed race marriages have not been popular in America, nor readily embraced for some reason. In my own life I once had a crush on a black girl in New Jersey while in high school. Her dad did not approve of her dating me, and my dad did not approve of me dating her. In short, we never really dated, though we saw each other at high school dances and in the school hallways. But I especially remember the reactions of our dads. On one level it was possibly not racism that caused these reactions but a belief that their children were unaware of the hardships that would faced if the relationship ever went somewhere. Our mixed race acquaintances can tell stories of the difficulties of this path. But what's the root of it?

In other parts of the world this line of demarcation between races seems much less pronounced. For example, in Mexico the Spanish and native peoples became so mixed that the county itself became mexclado, which means mixed. When I lived in Puerto Rico I saw a very mixed race culture that ran the gamut from white-white redhead who spoke no English (Melvin) to black-black friend from Chicago who spoke no Spanish, and everything in between. This is the true origin of the Rainbow People, people of every shade of skin color.

It wasn't really the Baton Rouge resignation that stimulated my thinking on these matters, but rather the maps and charts on this site here which was developed based on information culled from 2000 U.S. census data.

The 2000 Census questionnaire was the first to allow respondents to select more than one race. Nationwide, approximately 2.4 percent of the population, over 6.8 million Americans, marked an identification with two or more races.

As is the case with many racial and ethnic groups, the multiracial population is not evenly distributed across the country. Hawaii has the largest multiracial population with 24.1 percent of its population identifying with two or more races. Alaska follows a distant second with 5.4 percent identifying as multiracial. The five least multiracial states (Mississippi, West Virginia, Maine, Alabama and South Carolina) all have multiracial populations of less than 1 percent.

So my question today is, why did Mexico become such a mixed race culture and this nation has such rigid lines between races?

I am not an authority on these matters, but just curious. Check out the stats in this site which was developed based on information culled from 2000 U.S. census data.

Interestingly, I am sitting in an internet cafe in Las Vegas as I write this and the Hispanic fellow at the next monitor is looking at a slide show of images of Abraham Lincoln, who with the stroke of a pen declared all slaves to be free in 1863. The freedom was legal, but not really a true freedom as long as our attitudes, ignorance and fears keep us in shackles. As Rodney King was widely quoted, "Why can't we all just get along?"

In Defense of Lincoln

“The key to understanding Lincoln's philosophy of statesmanship is that he always sought the meeting point between what was right in theory and what could be achieved in practice.” ~Dinesh D’Souza

When the news broke it was really quite a surprise. This month Duke Ellington became the first black ever minted on U.S. currency. What surprised me is that I’d never noticed the absence before. In January we inaugurated our first black president, which escaped no one’s notice. With Ellington’s image now imprinted on a quarter, one wonders what we'll see in March.

What I found especially interesting is that when I Googled it, the story was in British, Netherlands, and a host of other European news feeds. I didn’t realize this was an event of such global significance. But it’s a good move and probably overdue.

I doubt there’s any relationship but it did make me think once more of how this is the month of Abe Lincoln’s birthday bicentennial. He of the five dollar bill fame would also probably be saying, “It’s about time.” If he’d lived another hundred years I wonder what he’d have thought of the birth of jazz. It doesn’t take much for me to picture the tall lanky Lincoln tapping his foot to the rhythm of a big band.

Lincoln’s importance was never questioned when I was a kid growing up in the fifties and sixties, but like everyone else who ever achieved anything, the detractors will have their day. Throughout my life I have in my readings run across Lincoln anecdotes that helped define him as a wise, sensitive leader who was driven more by conviction than ambition. His wise words and carefully considered actions have provided inspiration for millions. And he never flinched from making known where he stood on the slavery issue.

As he built his cabinet, President Obama let it be known that he was in league with the pro-Lincoln camp. At least this was the image he sought to project by carrying around the latest Lincoln bestseller Team of Rivals. To be pro-Lincoln is not only a pro-black position, it is pro-humanity. The book touts the genius of Lincoln in selecting a cabinet comprised of men more likely to get into a barroom brawl than run the ship of state, but as history has shown, the backwoodsman from Illinois achieved his aims thereby.

In keeping with this Lincoln theme, I commend to you an insight-filled article by Dinesh D’Souza. D’Souza is a deep well of experience and knowledge, and his observations on our times cannot be easily dismissed. Here in this article, which appeared in the April 2005 issue of American History Magazine, he defends Lincoln against his critics. Be sure to read Lincoln: Tyrant, Hypocrite or Consummate Statesman?

Strange Fruit

For the past couple weeks I've been watching and listening to Ken Burns' ten part film series called Jazz. This is a remarkable piece of work. I have enjoyed jazz since introduced to various artists through friends in college, from John Coltrane to Chick Corea, and Miles Davis to Charles Mingus and Pharaoh Sanders. More recently I listened to an eight part lecture series on the history of jazz, which was insightful and informative. But Burns' live footage from the earliest days of twentieth century jazz to the present is an amazing retrospective of the contribution of blacks to Americana.

From the raucous Twenties to the depression era Thirties, jazz was evolving, and reflecting all facets of the culture. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman... all of their stories are here.

Purportedly a film series about music, this is really a series about race relations. Some amazing footage of musicians, dancers, and singers has been captured here including the remarkable Billie Holiday. Every once in a while a song cuts through you though, and tears something in your heart. That's what happened to me when Burns gave us raw footage of Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit. What a daring song for 1939. What heart wrenching lyrics by Lewis Allen.

Strange Fruit
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

The tragedy is not simply that a man lost his life unjustly. The tragedy is the signal such events would send to every black man in this cultural situation... that he dare not challenge "the Man," dare not himself be a man, raise his head and look into a white man's eyes with defiance, raise the fist. It is difficult to impossible to understand the black power movement of the late Sixties, early Seventies, without understanding the context of Strange Fruit.

The photo at the top of this entry is from a memorial here in Duluth, MN, a photo I took this evening in our City by the Lake. Most people associate racial violence as a Southern phenomenon. The memorial here is a remembrance that it can, and did, happen here. In 1920, three black circus workers were lynched downtown by an irate, irrational mob. Hepped up by hearsay, they broke into the jail and brought these men's lives to a sudden end. Historians believe they were almost certainly innocent, but the tragic affair demonstrated that "it can happen here."

Race relations in America are a complicated affair and, like Lewis Allen's evocative lament, so very sad.

May we never forget.