Black History Month 2014

Here we are again, not really anywhere near February. However, last year I did not get started until June, so finishing in June is an improvement. This was probably my most ambitious reading month yet, and in light of many fairly recent events, I am still digesting what I want to say about everything, and what order to say it in, so this is just a brief bit on each of the books and movies.

The Quest of the Silver Fleece, W. E. B. Du Bois

Last year's Slavery By Another Name mentioned Du Bois researching a report of those practices in the South, and then the report was rejected so he turned it into a novel. This is that novel.

As it started my first thought was that this was the purplest prose ever, and maybe he was better at non-fiction, but it kind of grew on me. Then I begin to worry about who would go to jail and would they ever get out of the mine. As it turns out, the novel did not focus a lot on debt peonage, but more debt as a way of keeping labor attached, political machinations as Reconstruction got dumped for better relationships with the South, and even a lynching.

It ended up being more human than I expected, with a compassion for even some very flawed individuals, and some hope.

Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves, Art T. Burton

I read this because of an article about Bass Reeves that mentioned it, and the article was really fascinating. The book was a little more dry, so there were frustrating things about it. There was still a lot of information that was completely new to me. I had not realized how deadly being a marshal was, though it makes a lot of sense. I think his long career and retirement was only possible due to his being an unusually good shot. I did not know about the Lighthorsemen set up for maintaining law in Indian Country either. And, although I had read John Hope Franklin's autobiography, I do not remember anything about his Chickasaw blood, but it was in here.

Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson

In many ways it just reinforced what I already understood, but it also clarified. I knew it was political machination to find a black conservative to replace Marshall, I did not realize how egregious it was. I did not doubt she was telling the truth, but I did not - as a young college student - have as much of an understanding of the dynamics of sexual harassment. So that there could be people who truly never saw that side of Thomas is something I understand better now.

I did not know about how much corroborating evidence there was supporting Hill that was squashed, but I can't say I am surprised because I remember thinking at the time that it wasn't that they didn't believe her, they just didn't want to have to deal with it. However, the other thing that I see now, and that makes more sense now, is that when someone is saying what you don't want said, how vicious you can get.

To Keep The Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells, Linda O McMurray

I remember reading a newspaper article about Ida B. Wells in high school and just becoming enamored of her. Not only did this teach me more about her life, it explained why she had become somewhat unknown despite having once been very prominent, and how her daughter's fight for recognition led to a book and a stamp in the '70s, and it would appear to be this shift that led to a 1989 "American Experience" episode that I realize now led to the article that I read.

Countee Cullen: Collected Poems, edited by Major Jackson

These are really excellent poems. He pulls from a more classical tradition than Langston Hughes, so it's a different feeling. With Hughes I felt like I was hearing the rhythms of a specific time and place, and that does not happen with Cullen. However, there is still humanity. It works on a different level, but it does work.

The Harlem Hellfighters, Max Brooks, art by Caanan White

I found another relevant comic book. I should probably call it a graphic novel, not due to a lack of respect for the term comic book, but there are parts where it is really graphic. It is easy to forget how much warfare changed in WWI with the use of chemical weapons and other killing technology, and this makes you feel it. I don't even know how accurate it is - I don't know if you would really see someone's intestines unspooling that way - but the horror of war is there, and so the horror of the treatment and disrespect the soldiers get because of racism despite their service is felt.

Spies of Mississippi (2014) directed by Dawn Porter, Trilogy Films

This is based on a book, which I will probably get to eventually. It is a chilling example of how badly people will ignore decency for some horrible reasons. I will give two examples.

One is the story of Clyde Kennard, who was well on his way to integrating a university based on his good academic and war record. Phony evidence was planted on him to get him to jail for robbery. He wasn't released until a few months before he died from cancer.

Also, this bothered me so much I transcribed it from a news reel of the time that I believe was meant to be reassuring:

"The Jackson Police Department operates with the best demonstration deterrent of any city in the country. In addition to Thompson's Tank, armor-plated and equipped with nine machine gun positions, the arsenal includes cage trucks for transporting masses of arrested violators, searchlight trucks, each of which can light three city blocks in case of night riots, police dog teams, trained to trail, search a building, or disperse a mob or crowd, mounted police for controlling parades or pedestrian traffic, and compounds and detention facilities to hold and house 10000 prisoners.

Along with these ironclad police facilities are new ironclad state laws, outlawing picketing, economic boycotting and demonstrating. Other laws to control the printing and distribution of certain types of information, and laws to dampen complaints to federal authorities."

Black Indians: An American Story (2001), directed by Chip Richie, Rich-Heape Films

And getting back to John Hope Franklin, there are a lot of times when someone has both black and Indian blood, and it is not known, or hidden, and so for many of the people they talk to in the film it becomes about being free to embrace all of their heritage. It was touching, and it puts some other things into context for me.

There have been some additional things that don't relate directly, but felt like they might be relevant, so I also watched Erasing Hate, a 2011 MSNBC film about a former skinhead getting his facial tattoos removed, and I am reading How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev. It does pertain to race, but it looks like there are better books on the subject. And, because I finally got around to reading about Bass Reeves, I am going to read about Chang Apana.

That may not sound like it makes sense, but while I was doing some of my reading, I really wanted to bring in Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan. I thought it was because I was going to be drawing something with a lot of rats, which I actually have not gotten around to drawing yet. However, it reminded me about some important things about press and journalism that were relevant as the biographies sorted through newspaper accounts, and it will come up again. So things work out.