Authors: Gil Scott-Heron
As of January 15, I could look back ten weeks to Halloween since I’d been working on the
Hotter than July
tour. It was a project that, when taken as a whole, was set up to cover
sixteen weeks, or four months, a third of a year. The endeavor was cut into two six-week halves with a break, a rest period, that lasted a month. Since the tour had gone on break from the West
Coast in mid-December, my life had not been free of upset and disruption, but businesswise and musicwise things were on schedule. My new album, called
Real Eyes
, had been released around the
first of December; some support for our performances over the next two months or so could be expected. That meant everyone would get paid and some of the music I was writing and arranging for our
virtually new configuration with the horn section was starting to fit. That was good.
In essence, this rally was the halftime show before the second six-week half. But if you’ve ever seen the Florida A&M marching band, just how long do you think it takes to perfect
those steps, formations, baton tosses, improvisations, and instrument playing?
So nobody that I could see up there seemed likely to jump up and start majoretting up and down Constitution Avenue, but I was pleased to see how many people thought Stevie was worth
supporting.
One thing that knocked me out looking at this halftime show was how much I had not thought about. Like how much work was involved in organizing a fucking rally. That was what Stevie had done and
what had to have taken up so much of his offstage time when we were playing and what must have consumed what I was calling a “rest period,” the month off between December 15 and today,
Dr. King’s birthday. This had to have dominated a great deal of his time and probably much more of his thoughts. The rally. Ways to publicize it, ways to dramatize it, ways to legitimize
it.
Some of it was obvious. You had to have permits, like a license to have a parade. That seemed bizarre, but it took a necessary number of police to close certain streets or divert traffic or just
stand around looking like police. And on the monument grounds there were wooden saw horses and security and crowd restraints and a stage and sound equipment and technicians to set it all up and run
it. And I was enjoying another piece of equipment I felt was necessary: a heat-blowing machine to warm my chilly backside.
I had no idea what this was costing, what the total expenses were. Nor did I ever ask about it and have the expenses incurred by Stevie neurotically concealed from me. I didn’t have any
way to justify saying, “Hey, just what the hell is this gonna cost?”
I considered that this information was probably something that was being distributed on a need to know basis, and apparently I did not have that. I didn’t worry about why.
My respect for Stevie Wonder expanded in every direction that day. I was following his lead like a member of his band, because seeing as he had envisioned was a new level of believing. It was
something that seeped in softly, and when you were personally touched by someone’s effort and genuine sincerity, your brain said you didn’t yet understand but your soul said you should
trust.
We had been to Mayor Marion Barry’s office earlier in the day. There I was introduced to the winner of a citywide essay contest that had run in the D.C. school system. The theme of the
essay was why Dr. King’s birthday should be a national holiday, and the contest was open to middle and high school students. A seventh grader won, and I thought the fact that he was in the
seventh grade was the headline out of that. After they introduced us, I took a few minutes to read his essay so I would know what to be listening for—my cue when he came to the end, because
now, at the rally, I would present him to the crowd.
It was a gray winter day, the type of gray that looked permanent, not bothered with clouds or memories of blue. Gray, sullen, not threatening but sporting an attitude. Somebody was organizing
things, checking out how many speakers were on hand who wanted to say a few words.
When we got to the part of the program where the kid was to read his essay, I introduced him and walked back offstage. I kept one ear on the loudspeakers because I had to be on it when he was
through. That would be no more than five minutes, max.
At some stage, I heard the kid having trouble reading his own essay. I thought he might have been nervous with the big crowd and the TV audience, it must have felt like everybody in the world
was watching him. I could hear the crowd getting restless and a couple of folks started giving the kid a hard time. Suddenly, mid-sentence, or maybe in the middle of a word, the kid stopped. He
turned around and went back to his seat. It was a seat of honor, right behind the podium in the middle of the stage.
It was quiet now, just a sprinkle of sympathetic applause. I found my list of speakers and introduced the next one, but I realized something had gone wrong. As the next speaker approached the
podium, I went over to the kid and said, “Let me see that essay there, brotherman.”
And sure enough, he had stopped at the top of his second page, a good five or six paragraphs from the end. He had been reading from a mimeographed copy of his essay, and the ink was
faded—I would have needed night goggles or some shit to see what was on that paper.
I waited until that next speaker was through, then went up there and explained to the audience that I was going to introduce the kid again, and that he was going to read his essay to the end,
and that they were going to listen. Yeah, I knew it was cold, I said, but it was cold for this kid, too, and he was reading from a faded copy, and I didn’t want to hear nothing from the crowd
but applause, period. “Have some patience with the young brother, please.”
After I introduced him, I walked backstage again. He started to read again, and I heard him coming to the point where he had faltered, the part on the page that was damn near invisible. He
started to falter again, and I listened for some wiseass to say something. But then it started to go smoothly, and I looked over and there was Diana Ross standing next to him with her arm around
his shoulder. Without being in the way, without making it her essay, she helped him over those rough spots. My man’s confidence got a lift and the crowd started to appreciate what he had
written. I stood there thinking,
There must be thirty or forty adults up here on this stage, and she’s the only one of us who thought to go up there and help the brother!
Jesse Jackson spoke, too. His attitude was about changing the laws and about people needing to know more about Thurgood Marshall and needing to know more about what happened, because the way to
change America was through the law. You see, if you don’t change the law, you don’t change anything. You could burn your community down and somebody else would build it up; all you were
doing was burning down some houses. But if you changed the law, then you had done a whole lot to change the foundation of society.
To be sure, I looked at the appearances there and then as a tribute for respect for Dr. King. But they were also an indication of respect for a brother for taking a step to bring a positive idea
forward, to remind some of us that we could hardly criticize congressmen and other representatives for inaction if their attempts to push ideas important to us out in the open received no visible
interest from those it purportedly would benefit most.
Yeah, this piece of legislation to make Dr. King’s birthday into a national holiday looked like a long shot, especially being raised just after America had elected Ronald Reagan, who would
be inaugurated at the other end of the Mall in five days. But if our community was to make valuable contributions, then those who made them had to be recognized as offering something of value. Why
would the next one of us feel that he or she should make the effort, marshal the strength, and somehow fortify him or herself against the opposition that always seemed stronger, longer, with more
bonified, bona fide other side, if even a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize was ignored where those efforts for peace had done the most good?
Something was wrong with ignoring a man here that the world had acknowledged everywhere. To bring about a change inside the minds of people is difficult. That’s why there are books and
teachers and laws. A change in people’s hearts is even more difficult to gauge. There has to be some sign from those who represent them in a society where folks live together without
touching. There has to be some assurance that we have learned that those who showed the world did not present offerings that only people outside our country needed. Certainly recognition of a
Desmond Tutu or a Martin Luther King by panels of objective individuals pointed out the value of those they honored beyond the constrictions of geography; that the work they did, in essence, came
from this or that community but was of value to all mankind. How could this country purport to lead mankind and ignore what mankind needed and respected? Any American, raised in an atmosphere of
abuse and violence, who suggested that centuries of deliberate discrimination could be overcome without responding to the oppressors in kind was not just valuable, but invaluable.
This was what Dr. King signified and this was what Stevie Wonder was calling on America to honor. All holidays should not be set aside for generals. To have the country honor men for doing what
they did at a time when difficult personal decisions made their actions worthwhile for the overall good meant the same thing for all citizens.
That had been both the point and the ultimate disappointment of what had once been called “the Civil Rights movement.” What was special about the 1960s was that there was only one
thing happening, one movement. And that was the Civil Rights movement. There were different organizations coming from different angles because of geography, but in essence everybody had the same
objective. It came so suddenly from so many different angles, things happening in so many different towns and cities at once, that the “powers that be” were caught off guard.
The powers had taken control when Eisenhower was elected. He held office while they secured a grip around our throats. He even spoke about it before he left office. But there was a fuckup. An
oversight. They overlooked the same folks that they always overlooked. See, this was not long after Ralph Ellison had summed us up in
Invisible Man
. We were the last item on the last page of
the last program. But that didn’t last. Because the last thing they had counted on was active dissent. Until the 1960s “the movement” had been the exclusive property of middle
aged and old people. Then it became a young people thing, and as the 1960s opened up, the key word became “activism,” with Stokely Carmichael and the SNCC, “Freedom Rides,”
and sit-ins. There was a new feeling of power in Black communities. And once it got started, it was on the powers like paint.
But at some point a difference was created between “equality,” “freedom,” and “civil rights.” Those differences were played up because something had to be
done about the sudden unity among Black folks all over the country. Folks got more media attention whenever they accentuated the differences. There were media-created splinters. Otherwise the Civil
Rights movement would have been enough, and would have been more successful. Accomplishing the aims of the movement would have made “gay rights” and “women’s rights”
and “lefts and rights” extraneous. But divide and conquer was the aim of programs like COINTELPRO. And even though it ended up working damn near backward, it worked.
They separated the fingers on the hand and gave each group a different demand; we lost our way. Separated, none of us seemed to know to watch out for COINTELPRO. J. Edgar Hoover was dead, but in
D.C. they honored what he had said: Fuck every one-a-them.
There I was at the halftime show, looking up and down the field, and
I could see
for the first time. I could see what this brother had seen long before, what really needed to be done.
We all took the stage.
The crowd continued to chant, “Martin Luther King Day, we took a holiday!”
Stevie stepped up to the mic and addressed them:
“It’s fitting,” he said, “that we should gather here, for it was here that Martin Luther King inspired the entire nation and the world with his stirring words, his great
vision both challenging and inspiring us with his great dream. People have asked, ‘Why Stevie Wonder, as an artist?’ Why should I be involved in this great cause? I’m Stevie
Wonder the artist, yes, but I’m Stevland Morris, a man, a citizen of this country, and a human being. As an artist, my purpose is to communicate the message that can better improve the
lives of all of us. I’d like to ask all of you just for one moment, if you will, to be silent and just to think and hear in your mind the voice of our Dr. Martin Luther King . . .”
In the summer of 1985, my daughter Gia, who was five at the time, was visiting my mother for a few weeks in New York City. As can happen with diabetics, grandma ran too hard
one day, ran down, and then ran out. It was up to her granddaughter to run over to the phone, hit the 911 buttons, and tell the operator where to go—like where she was calling from.
That was the part that most impressed me and everyone else upon hearing about the save Gia made, that a five-year-old, just visiting New York, knew what street she was on (East 106th) and what
apartment number they were in (19A). Not only did that take a good memory, it took a good set of nerves not to panic—at five or fifty-five. Since they had the right angle on what and where,
the EMTs were able to beam in with the glucose and said it was “too close” to black out and urged mama to sack out for the rest of the evening before the next session of 911
roulette.
The incident proved how smart the daughter Brenda and I had produced was. She was intelligent, and turning out to be a nice person. The parents could not dictate or direct the intellect; they
couldn’t make a lick of difference in terms of whether their offspring had one of their IQ scores or the other’s, one minus the other’s, or both of their IQ scores added together.
But they did have a lot to do with what kind of person or how kind a person their child became.