It was about 1:30 PM, twenty years ago, my lunchtime,
and I sat at my desk in an office looking toward The Tower and the Thames, at 1
Undershaft, near St. Mary Axe, in London.
This was when I usually chatted with friends back home in New
York City, five hours behind me, who were now starting their day. I was on AIM
with my friend Leeza, a florist in Manhattan who hadn’t yet left for work.
“Hold on a minute,” she said. “Something’s happening on the television.”
I don’t remember if she was watching CNN or NY1, but she
typed back: “Something’s going on downtown. It looks like there’s an accident
at the World Trade Center.”
We typed back and forth a few more times until she had to
go, and she said I should look at a television.
I walked down the hall to the managing partner’s office,
another American ex-pat, and told him something was happening.
We set-up a television in a small conference room and watched
the first tower ablaze. We decided to start contacting New Yorkers.It was about 8:45 AM and only a few people
were in the NY office, which officially opened at 9:30, and most people were
still commuting. I was sitting at my desk on the phone and various chat
applications when I heard yells that a plane had hit the other tower.
We knew this wasn’t an accident.
We started monitoring local news, and the City of London Police announcements,
awaiting guidance. There were concerns that London and other European cities might be next.
My wife was working a few blocks away at the old London Stock
Exchange, and we decided to sit tight until we heard something from our employers
or the authorities. London is a city that has experienced a lot of terrorism, and
I knew that there would be guidance about what to do, how to proceed, etc. My English
colleagues were upset and concerned but had a certain calm, a stoicism that was
reassuring to me. My thought was that we would get the next plane home.
We had televisions in the conference rooms and most staff
were gathered on the 18th floor. I joined them. I think I was the only American
in that room, the only New Yorker, when the first tower came down. I just
looked at everyone in the room with my mouth agape and said: “No! No!” I bolted
from the room, ran back to my office and tried to call friends back home. It wasn’t
long before the second tower came down.
We had friends and acquaintances who worked downtown, in and
around the towers. There was no way to know if they were OK. Nobody in NYC
answered their phone, NYC friends were no longer on chat services or listservs.
We could see video from the news services but couldn’t talk to anyone.
I let my siblings in Boston know I was OK in London. That
was the first time I felt angry that I was in London. I wanted to be in NYC, I
wanted to be in my city with my friends and my colleagues, I wanted to help. I felt
helpless, useless.
I started calling the parents of some NYC friends, but they
had no contact with them either. They couldn’t reach anybody in NYC. We didn’t
know yet that most of the phone companies, landline and mobile alike, ran their
primary transmissions from the Towers. With the towers compromised, there was no phone service.
The skies above London became eerily silent as all air
travel was cancelled. The tube was stopped, the trains and buses were stopped.
Eventually it was announced that the City was closing and everyone should make
their way home. My wife’s company told her to call a car service and go home. I
left my office, met her and we made our way back to our flat.
We lived in a busy neighborhood near Westbourne Grove and Notting Hill Gate, and like the
City, it was noticeably quite.
The ensuing hours were painfully void of information. The television
kept showing the same horrific videos over and over again.
I stopped calling NYC and sat helplessly in front of the
television. There was nothing to do except sit and wait.
It's the decades-old debate: is that rock and roll? This debate was exacerbated by the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Those who are most vociferous in the "that's not rock and roll" camp are often the same people in the camp of "a hall of fame is anathema to the mere existence of rock and roll."
The loudest voices are the white, mostly heterosexual, cis-men who have claimed rock music as theirs, having stolen it, as they have stolen everything, from African-American culture. On the one hand they dismiss the RRHOF and on the other hand they demand that rock and roll is a very narrowly-defined musical style that they get to define.
There is unanimity, even among the dull, that Little Richard and Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Bo Diddley, were the pioneers of rock music. The country artists began to participate: Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins. Then the pop singers squeezed in: Buddy Holly, Bill Haley, and Gene Vincent.
As we moved into the sixties there were two revolutionary musical movements that are the base of today's pedestrian argument that "it isn't rock and roll"! First, the creation of Motown Records, the sound of Young America, the sound of Detroit. Second, the British Invasion.
All of the English bands who invaded rock music declared that their primary influences were American rhythm and blues. Note that this British music was a completely white genre that proudly uses the term "invasion" to described what they did to American rock music. Perhaps the greatest rock band of all time, The Rolling Stones, declare proudly and often that the music of black America is the music most important to them and their success. Without the backing of the American soul and R&B industries, the Stones would have been ignored. Forever. The first Beatles record is rife with homage to American R&B and American songwriters, including covers of R&B classics. American music, in particular the roots of American modern music, is the only reason any of those bands were popular. Rock and roll is the marriage of R&B, country, and pop music. It does not exist in a vacuum, independently of those foundational genres.
The two musical acts that owned the charts in the 1960s were The Supremes and The Beatles. Until the insertion of NYC folk music and California hippie music, there was English music and Soul music, For many of us, those genres lived together in our little cardboard carrying cases of 7" 45-RPM vinyl records. Every guy I knew who had no soul music in his collection had the worst taste in music and helped create the biggest, most boring corporate rock bands of the next decade.
I know you have raised your hand to insert the conversation of surf music. If you're calling surf music rock and roll, but not calling soul music rock and roll, you can just stop reading now and leave the conversation. Personally, I do not exclude surf music from the overall definition of rock music; but I don't think it is an important influence: give me the Fifth Dimension and The Mamas & The Papas for harmonies.
So . . . if the English music that was derived completely from American R&B was rock and roll, then the Motown music (and other soul music) which is also American R&B, is rock and roll music.
Also, the 1960s saw the insertion of folk music and California music into rock music: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Beach Boys, Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead; and experimental music: Velvet Underground, John Cage, Yoko Ono. These were all part of rock and roll, yet deviated dramatically from the roots of rock music.
One of the most popular and powerful woman' voices in rock and roll was Janis Joplin. The reality is that she sang blues, jazz standards, and country music. She is held-up as a saint in the church of rock and roll; but, did she even sing rock music? No. My mother played records like "Summertime" and "Little Girl Blue" and then Janis Joplin recorded those. Her first hit was "Piece of My Heart," which is more blues than rock; and her final hit was "Me and Bobby McGee," a country song! But, Janis is rock and roll. If she was a woman of color, would she be afforded the same entrance into the hallowed halls of rock heaven?
One need look no further than the soundtrack from the movie "Woodstock" to see that moving into the 1970s, rock and roll was a massive umbrella under which a multitude of sub-genres would flourish. Richie Havens, Sly & The Family Stone, and Jimi Hendrix delivered rock performances in that move that have gone down in rock and roll history. Havens delivered a folk performance, Sly a funk/dance performance, and Hendrix' best work that day was the "Star Spangled Banner," where he paid homage to the military he served, admired, and respected. All of that is considered rock and roll.
I make special note here of Billy Preston, the African-American singer, writer, and keyboard player, who had major hit records and is the only musician to be a member of both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. He has been completely ignored by those who claim ownership of rock music. He was recently elected to the RRHOF, and the white, mostly heterosexual, cis-men who claim rock music as their own, are probably going to lose their shit when they find out he was also gay, so please don't tell them.
In the 1970s, the rock music umbrella was treated to one of America's greatest musicians, Miles Davis, whose record "Bitches Brew" was embraced by the rock world as he was joined by young, electronic musicians like John McLaughlin, to whom he was introduced by his wife Betty Davis (who was much more rock and roll than Janis ever dreamed of being). Many others continued to infuse jazz influences into rock music: Traffic, Chick Corea, Carlos Santana. It's all rock and roll.
In passing, let's just say that had Betty Davis (nee Mabry) been white, she would have been catapulted to heights unknown by women in rock music. If you are a rock music fan and are not familiar with her three excellent early-1970s records, do yourself a favor and listen.
The era of protest was upon us. Rock music was filled with anti-war songs from every corner: Motown, California hippie bands, NYC folk, British rock, country rock, Philadelphia soul all had major hit records in this genre: "Ball of Confusion," "Ohio," "Masters of War," "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag," "Bring The Boys Home," "Give Peace A Chance," "Fortunate Son," "Universal Soldier," "War," and many others were all rock songs.
Philadelphia soul hit the scene big-time in the 1970s, with The O'Jays, The Three Degrees, Harold Melvin, and TSOP simultaneous to the next British invasion of glam rock with T.Rex, David Bowie, Elton John, and Roxy Music. Again, English acts whose music was deeply rooted in American R&B and soul are hailed as rock music giants as their Philadelphian peers with the same lineage are dismissed from the rock music tent.
As the 1970s progressed, soul and R&B spawned "disco" music, while record company executives promoted "rock" mediocrity celebrated by white, mostly heterosexual, cis-men at record labels. I might argue that both genres were beyond boring, but at least you could dance to disco music! People dancing to mid-70s rock music is embarrassing to witness. Eventually, the revered Englishmen brought dance beats to their rock records, and enjoyed both condemnation and accolades; but the overall result of David Bowie's "Young Americans" rock album and The Rolling Stones "Some Girls" rock album was that the all-powerful white, mostly heterosexual, cis-men who claim rock music as their own, dismissed these works as 'experiments' or 'sell-outs.'
Both of those genres (disco and corporate rock) spawned a backlash that were much more closely related than most rock music fans want to admit: punk rock and rap/hip-hop. At the time, the two movements bubbling-up in NYC were very closely aligned and shared quite a bit of cross-over audience. Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash were as punk as The Dictators and The Ramones. They were both reactions to the dullness that rock music had spawned after the era of protest. DeeDee Ramone made a rap record, and Blondie dove deep into the dance/hip-hop arena. Future "punk" bands would embrace not just scratch and rap, but also reggae and ska. Those bands are considered solidly under the rock umbrella.
Let's add to this discussion the notion of technology. Both keyboards and record players are technological pieces of rock and roll. One is the basis for the synthesizer and the other for the turntable. In the 1970s, both devices became part of rock music. However, when The Clash added scratching to their records it was "innovative," and when non-white artists used scratch it was "not rock music."
The synthesizer brought us progressive rock (or prog rock) which is pop music infused with symphonic arrangements and instruments. Played by white men, primarily Englishmen, it was unequivocally considered rock music. Why? Then we got ambient music, a true innovation that was introduced by Brian Eno, who had once been in a rock band; and although ambient music has no aural relation to rock music, it was immediately folded into the rock music family, just as soul music and disco music were summarily dismissed. Why? There is nothing particularly rock and roll about prog rock, and nothing even remotely rock and roll about ambient music. Yet, here we are with both genres considered fundamental parts of the rock music scene while music of the same era by non-white musicians is "not rock music." Perhaps there is a common theme developing here.
When David Bowie embarked on what became known as his "Berlin Trilogy," produced by the inimitable Tony Visconti and heavily-influenced by Eno's ambient ideals, it was declared a seminal change in the entire rock genre. It is. Make no mistake, those records influenced most rock music that followed. But, listening to the "Low" record is hardly a rock experience. I would argue that Run-DMC made harder rock records during that era than Bowie's masterpiece. Yet, Bowie's work is considered rock music and Run-DMC is "not rock music."
Enter the next British influence: new wave. Unlike American new wave, the English version included a lot of racial and cultural cross-over. Tu-Tone records with its re-introduction of ska music, (Boy) George O'Dowd declaring that he didn't need to think-up anything new because there was all that great Motown music, Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe using all that 60s-style organ to make the soul record "Get Happy," Paul Weller leaving The Jam to attempt a new wave of blue-eyed soul, Rock Against Racism, and more. It seemed that the English didn't have the same hard and fast lines between "rock music" and music made by non-white musicians.
Let's not get too pro-English here. There is plenty of white English mediocrity in the post-punk era; bands who got big not because of the size of their talent but the color of their skin. Bands like The Police and U2 were catapulted into international superstardom by their record labels with material and performances that are most generously referred to as the creations of a "one-trick pony."
As New Wave fizzled into total mediocrity and the record labels were purchased by huge conglomerates that know nothing about music, the white, mostly heterosexual, cis-men who claim "rock music" as their own, doubled-down on their right to define rock music as narrowly as they want. It was at this time that the music industry created the RRHOF, and the battlefield was defined.
Over the past three-plus decades, the bitterly embattled white, mostly heterosexual, cis-men who claim ownership of rock music take each RRHOF election as their opportunity to narrow the definition of rock music, which basically comes down to a group of white guys, maybe with one white woman, who play guitars and drums (maybe a keyboard), and sing bluesy songs about their difficult lives, trials and tribulations. There is no room in this narrow definition for people of color to sing about their difficult lives, trial and tribulations using any other configuration, because that's "not rock music."
The people who have claimed rock music as their own are making it as irrelevant as they themselves have become. They will continue to remind us how they've been wronged and that their rock music is only what they say it is. They will continue to dismiss rap and hip-hop and explain very patiently to you that "don't think it's singing" and "it's not very creative" and "they are not bands" and "they just don't like it" and all other kinds of absurd bullshit that highlights not only their ignorance of non-white culture, but their complete ignorance of how the music is created and performed. This does not mean that those artists are "not rock music." Basically, they have a position based completely in racism.
In an approximately 50-year span that I will define from seeing The Grateful Dead perform at Boston Garden to seeing Wu-Tang Clan perform at Coney Island Amphitheater, I can confirm that Wu-Tang Clan rocked a helluva lot harder than the Dead (and many many other "rock" bands I've seen in that half-century). So, if rocking the house is part of rock music, we need to stop saying that some groups are not rock music if they are out-rocking everybody else. Saying a band like Wu-Tang Clan is "not rock music" betrays a level of racism that is almost as insidious as the blatant efforts of American conservatives to destroy people of color.
To know that rock music has morphed and changed over the decades and then decide that one branch is "rock music" and another branch is "not rock music" exposes a small-mindedness I imagine most of us do not embrace.
Post-script: There are many angles not covered here: singing groups versus bands, songwriters versus performers, Latinx influence, producers, market manipulation by labels, heavy metal, Michael Jackson, radio versus live performance, the internet, MTV, and more. I believe that any path you walk down while exploring the history of rock music will show you that racism has consistently pushed people of color aside with arguments that have no basis in actual fact or historical reference. Let's stop pretending that we get to define rock music in the narrowest of terms. I don't have to like U2 and you don't have to like Kendrick Lamar, but let's stop pretending they are not current incarnations of the very VERY broad category of rock music.
Gertrude of Nivelles was born around 628, in Landen, Kingdom of Austrasia (present-day Belgium), and died on March 17, 659.
During this time in history, marriage was used to forge political alliances. Gertrude was asked at 10-years-old if she wanted to marry a prince. She was adamant in her refusal and she was not forced to marry. When her father and brother died, she turned to a monastic life.
Gertrude gave her life to charity and abstinence and was in her early thirties when she died. It was written that she was "exhausted by a life of charity, fasting and prayer" at the end of her short life; and that "because of too much abstinence and keeping of vigils . . . her body was sorrily exhausted with serious illness."
Christianity was not widespread in Gertrude's time and she was a participant in the earliest days of of evangelism and the development of monasteries as cities began to grow in Europe. Against the wishes of the local royal family, she and her mother established two monasteries, one for women and one for men. Eventually, they relocated to Nivelles and at 24, she took over the running the monastery there.
To be canonized as a saint, one must have performed at least two miracles.
The first miracle attributed to Gertrude was a miraculous vision at the altar of the martyr Pope Sixtus II (referred to as the "Vision of the True Light") where a flaming sphere illuminated the entire basilica.
The second miracle is called the "salvation of the sailors" and it is said that when a ship at sea foundered, and the sailors called out to pagan gods, one cried out to Gertrude who immediately quelled the storm.
She was canonized and her feast day declared by Pope Clement XII in 1677.
St. Gertrude of Nivelles, O.S.B., is the patron saint of Nivelles, travelers, gardeners, and her grace is requested to ward-off mental illness, rats, and mice. In more recent times, because of a painting of her cradling a cat, she is also known as the patron saint of cats.
I chose to write about Gertrude today, March 17, 2021, not because of my personal religious beliefs, any endorsement of churches, or a belief in miracles, but because this day is generally reserved for the celebration of a man: St. Patrick, a Roman slave raised in Ireland. During Women's History Month, it is important to acknowledge that women played a role in the establishment of Christianity, for better or worse, and that they rarely receive any credit for their work.
Sojourner Truth was born enslaved as Isabella "Belle" Baumfree in Swartekill, New York, around 1797 and died in Battle Creek, Michigan, on November 26, 1883 of unknown causes, attended by her daughters. She was about 86 years old. She was an abolitionist, orator, and women's rights activist.
The State of New York abolished slavery as of July 4, 1827. Her captor promised to free her the year before, but changed his mind, claiming that she had not been productive enough to earn her freedom. She continued working to satisfy her obligation, and late in 1826, she escaped with her infant daughter, Sophia, sadly leaving her other children behind because they were not legally freed in the emancipation order which maintained they were bound servants until they reached their twenties.
A family in New Paltz, New York took her and her baby in, and offered to buy her services from her captor for the remaining year of her enslavement. He paid $20 and she and Sophia lived with that family until the New York State Emancipation Act was approved a year later.
Truth learned that her 5-year-old son Peter had been sold illegally to an owner in Alabama. With the help of the her new friends, she took the issue to court and in 1828 and won, making her the first black woman ever to file suit against a white man and win. Peter was returned to her and she learned the awful truth that he had been badly abused by his captors.
She gave birth to 13 children, most of whom were born into slavery and taken from her.
During this time, Truth had a religious awakening and she moved to New York City with Peter and worked as a housekeeper. Her spiritual awakening led her to a life of charity and activism.
Peter took a job on a whaling ship, but when the ship returned to port years later, Peter was not on board. He was never heard from again, and the story of his loss is unknown.
In 1843, Belle Baumfree changed her name to Sojourner Truth and began traveling the country speaking about abolition and women's rights. At the 1851 Ohio Women's Rights Convention she delivered her "Ain't I a Woman?" speech.
She settled in Massachusetts in the 1840s and continued her activism there until 1857, when she moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, and rejoined a religious community that was working on the abolition of slavery.
During the Civil War, she worked diligently to recruit black soldiers for the US Army.
Bravery is a word that barely describes Sojourner Truth. She stood up to be heard and counted in a country that saw her as less-than-human, and her eloquence forced the ear of all to hear her. She never backed-down and she lived fearlessly.
Anita Faye Hill was born in Lone Tree, Oklahoma, on July 30, 1956. She is a lawyer and educator. She attended Oklahoma State University and received her law degree at Yale. She is currently a professor at Brandeis University whose work focuses on social policy, law, and women's studies. She held positions at both the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
Hill came forward during Clarence Thomas' undeserved nomination to the United States Supreme Court, in 1991, to expose the sexual harassment by him that she endured at the DOE. She was condemned by men across the country, Republican and Democrat alike.
Hill maintains that Thomas asked her out socially many times during her two years as his assistant, and when she refused he began conversations about sexual acts such as gang rape and bestiality while bragging about his own sexual prowess and penis size.
She put up with this harassment because she believed, as we are taught, that if she did her best work, her career would progress and she would be out of this situation. This thinking almost always results in more abuse and a dead-end, and Hill learned this the hard way.
During the Congressional hearings, witnesses waited to testify on her behalf and due to the actions of now-President Joe Biden, they were never heard. Hill readily agreed, and took a polygraph test, but the men in Congress suddenly took the position that polygraph results cannot be relied upon. Of course, Hill's polygraph results supported her accusations. Thomas did not take a polygraph test.
Thomas claimed racism was at the root a "campaign" against him, because he was a "conservative." His supporters claimed Hill was delusional or had been spurned, leading her to seek revenge. These are standard tactics men use against women to this day.
In 1993, male supremacist hack David Brock wrote a book levelling charges that he eventually recanted. Brock is the worst kind of human being: profiteering off the suffering of another, knowing he is lying, and knowing that he can recant at a later date with no consequences.
Thomas maintains to this day that Hill was acting as an operative for pro-choice liberals fearing that he would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Another example of a powerful man covering-up his bad, even criminal, behavior by pretending he is a victim. This makes Thomas the most disgusting kind of perpetrator.
Men have been silencing women's accusations of sexual harassment for thousands of years, but since the latter half of the twentieth century, it is even more egregious because all men know it is wrong, no longer have the excuse of ignorance, and continue to abuse their power. Even on the left I heard men say that if Hill had remained silent, Thomas probably would not have been approved because he was totally unqualified for the position. All this proves is that men, like a pack of animals, always stick together to protect the privilege they believe is their right.
Anita Hill stood up against male supremacy and the most powerful men in the world and was reviled for it. Anita Hill is an American hero.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (nee Joan Ruth Bader) was born March 15, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York, and died on September 18, 2020, in Washington, D.C.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the associate justice of the United States Supreme Court who had the most significant cultural impact on American society, not just because of her interpretations of Constitutional Law, but her presence as an American woman in the workplace and in the media as a lawyer, mother, and intellectual. During her tenure, she became known as Notorious RBG, a moniker that paid homage to her toughness and resilience, as well as comparing her to another tough Brooklyn superstar, Chris Wallace, the rapper known as Notorious B.I.G. The significance of RBG being held in the same esteem as Biggie Smalls speaks to the level at which she transcended all cultural and socio-political boundaries.
Ginsburg was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1993, by President Bill Clinton. She was the second woman Justice and the first Jewish woman Justice. She earned her bachelor's degree at Cornell University, started law school at Harvard and transferred to Columbia, back in New York City, where she graduated first in her class. She was an unwavering advocate for gender equality and women's rights, as well as voting rights and the rights of indigenous people, and as a lawyer won many arguments before the Supreme Court. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
On the Supreme Court, her arguments in dissent of findings were often as significant as those in which she sat with the majority. For example, her dissenting opinion in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., inspired the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act signed into law in 2009 which cleared obstacles to employees making pay discrimination claims.
Her support of abortion rights was persistent and she condemned the tactics and methodology used by anti-abortion activists in Congress to reach conclusions, questioning the veracity, the basic accuracy, of their arguments. She had a keen eye for the way in which laws were written, especially when they were being presented as protecting women's health when they were in fact written to restrict access to abortion.
In her personal life, she married Martin Ginsburg after graduating law school and is survived by him, a son and a daughter. Despite her battle with cancer, she did not retire from the bench and attempted to hold on until the then-current president left office so her successor could be appointed by a person with some understanding of jurisprudence. Unfortunately, she died before the 2020 election, and she has been replaced on the bench by a young religious fanatic who will work over many decades to undo the remarkable progress made by Americans in the second-half of the twentieth century.
RBG embraced her role in popular culture, took very seriously her job as a Justice, and she is the most important face of American jurisprudence. The world died a little bit on the day of her passing. Her legacy is remarkable and it is up to all of us to ensure that we as a society do not erase the hard work done by RBG and her colleagues.
Dorothy Ann Richards (née Willis) was born in McLennan County, Texas, on September 1, 1933, and died of cancer on September 13, 2006.
Richards was an politician who came to the national spotlight while the Democratic State Treasurer of Texas who delivered the rousing keynote speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Two years later, she was elected the Governor of Texas and is the last Democrat to hold that office since. She was an outspoken and unapologetic feminist, who was a brilliant thinker with an edgy intellectual wit.
She raised four children while building her enormously successful career. In 1980, she sought help for alcoholism and lived the remainder of her life as a sober person.
As governor, Richards faced the economic slump in Texas with revitalization programs that showed growth for Texas while the rest of the nation's fortunes were shrinking. Her efforts to reform the Texas bureaucracy resulted in a half-billion dollar savings (back in the days when a billion dollars was a lot of money).
She reformed the prison system by establishing recovery programs for inmates living with addiction and alcoholism. She promoted the control of semi-automatic guns. She also instituted the first Texas Lottery as a way to finance schools, which were a key issue for her.
To her detriment, she re-instituted laws that criminalized homosexuality, in spite of the fact that her campaign platform included a promise to repeal those laws.
After leaving electoral politics, she remained active in political and cultural campaigns including the development of "Austin City Limits" and the "SXSW Music Festival."
The Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin has been renamed to "Ann Richards Bridge."
A few years after her death, the one-woman show "Ann: An Affectionate Portrait of Ann Richards" began performances staged in San Antonio, Washington, D.C., and New York City. Eventually, the show was reworked and re-titled "Ann" and enjoyed a run on Broadway followed by a national tour.
Although still reviled by conservatives, Ann Richards became a no-nonsense American hero. She was smart, funny, hard-working, effective, and larger than life. The world was a better place when she was in it.
Yoko Ono Lennon was born on February 18, 1933, in Tokyo, Japan. She is a multimedia and performance artist, singer, songwriter and peace activist. She is the widow of English singer-songwriter John Lennon, who was murdered in 1980. Ono grew up in Tokyo and moved to New York in 1953 to live with her family, where she became involved with the Fluxus group.
Her early works that have stood the test of time include "Cut Piece," performance art where attendees were invited to cut away her garments; and her book "Grapefruit."
During her marriage to John Lennon, she became an activist for peace and women's equality. The couple famously spent their honeymoon staging a Bed-In (a take-off on the popular cultural phenomenon of a "Be-In") at a Toronto hotel to raise consciousness about peace and war. They were joined by artists, musicians, and journalists across the socio-political spectrum. The song "Give Peace A Chance" is a product of that work.
She was reviled for her relationship with Lennon, and misguided people (both consumers and media professionals) treated her miserably. Much of the baby boom generation still dismisses her, talks of her derisively, and are completely closed-minded about her talent, her impact on Western Civilization, and respond only with racist, misguided pettiness when they discuss her. The couple was so dogged by media hatred of Ono that they fled London to take-up residence in New York City.
The couple formed Plastic Ono Band, with a core of Klaus Voorman, Jim Keltner, and Eric Clapton, often joined by some of the era's most influential musicians. Yoko recorded the album "Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band," a companion release to "John Lennon Plastic Ono Band" which was the starting point of her ongoing decades-long solo music career. Her album "Approximate Infinite Universe" is grossly under-appreciated and should not be ignored. Her song "Death Of Samantha" has been covered by many artists.
The biggest disappointment of her recording career has to be the "Some Time In New York City" double-LP she recorded with Lennon. It is a collection of deeply political songs performed and produced brilliantly. It was released in 1972, as the world was fatigued by the Vietnam War and the media exposés of military suppression throughout the free world. America was ready for dance music and Yoko was still delivering a vital message of peace and justice. It was the couples' worst-selling record.
Her later works include "We Are Plastic Ono Band," which she formed with her son, Sean Lennon, and bandleader Yuka Honda. Like the original Plastic Ono Band, the new iteration has featured many of this era's most influential musicians and performers. A show by WAPOB in Brooklyn included Bette Midler, Paul Simon, Scissor Sisters, Ween, Sonic Youth, and others. The show ended with a reunion of the original POB Clapton, Voorman, and Keltner with Sean Lennon. Recent collaborations also include records released with Iggy Pop and RZA (Wu-Tang Clan). Ono continually delivers new variations on important themes in her music and her art.
Her "Wish Tree" was installed at MoMA, in New York City, for a period of time. Viewers were invited to write a wish on a tag and tie it to the tree. Its popularity was another huge success in Ono's efforts to restore humanity to every facet of human life. The "Imagine Peace" Tower, a memorial to John Lennon and his desire for world peace, is installed on Viðey Island near Reykjavík, Iceland. I hope to see it one day.
The best story (fact or fiction matters for nothing) about Ono's influence on popular music is that John Lennon was riding in a car when a B-52s song came on the radio. When he heard it, he insisted the car pull over, and he called Ono from a pay phone to tell her there was a band on the radio singing exactly like her. The band subsequently explained that Ono was a huge influence, and she has appeared on stage with them.
Yoko Ono is one of the smartest, most influential artists and activists of two centuries. There is no denying her impact on history.
That Tweet came through my feed last week, and I didn't know the answer. So today I present Marla Gibbs.
Marla Gibbs (born Margaret Theresa Bradley) was born June 14, 1931, in Chicago, Illinois. She is an actress, comedian, singer, writer and television producer.
Gibbs started her career in the in blaxploitation movies (a term I find more and more disquieting each time I see it); but is best known for her role as Florence Johnston, George Jefferson's maid in the hugely popular and successful primetime television show "The Jeffersons" (which enjoyed an 11-year run). She received five Emmy nominations in that span.
She also appeared in television roles on 227, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Touched by an Angel, Judging Amy, ER, Southland, The Hughleys, Station 19, and her own short-lived Jefferson's spin-off, Checking In. Her film credits include The Meteor Man, Lost & Found, The Visit, The Brothers, Madea's Witness Protection, Grantham & Rose, and Lemon. A more complete filmography can be found at IMDb (see below).
Her awards include 8 NAACP Image Awards, and the Essence Woman of the Year.
For two decades she owned a jazz supper club in South Central Los Angeles, and she released several albums as a singer.
Reading about her long career, I wonder how much more attention she would receive if she was a man, especially if she was a white man. Her comedic skills, singing voice, and acting abilities are top-notch, yet we never hear of her. It is not as if she was slotted into one industry: singer, television actress, movie actress, and entrepreneur, show that this is a dynamic, talented woman who in our society has been relegated to the second class.
This has to stop. We need to celebrate the women of the world. Learn about Marla Gibbs. Talk about Marla Gibbs. Ask why she isn't celebrated by late-night talk show hosts and social media barons.
Judy Chicago (f/k/a Judith Sylvia Cohen) was born on July 20, 1939, in Chicago, Illinois. She is a feminist artist, educator, and writer. Her parents were progressive. Her father was a labor activist whose employment was hindered by the insanity of the anti-Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s. Her mother had been a dancer and instilled in her children a passion for the arts.
Judy Chicago attended UCLA, where she became politically active in the NAACP as its corresponding secretary. She moved from LA to New York City in 1959, and returned to Los Angeles and completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in 1962, and her MFA in 1964.
Early abstract works represented male and female sexual organs, and were controversial for the time and the school. Her first show was at Rolf Nelson Gallery, in 1965. Her political position during this time of her life was to eschew labels that categorized her art and, thus, although invited, she did not participate in the 1968 "California Women in the Arts" exhibition.
I first learned about Judy Chicago in the late 1970s, when her piece "The Dinner Party" toured and I saw it installed at the Boston Cyclorama. The work is a triangular dining room table with 39 place settings, each representing a female mythical character or woman from history. The place settings start as simple, almost naïve pieces and become more dimensional and dynamic as the timeline progresses. The Dinner Party is a significant piece of feminist art, in my view, perhaps the most significant piece of feminist art in the world. It is now part of the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum, and I highly recommend a viewing.
Judy Chicago is one of the most important artists in history and has taught or been in residence at Vanderbilt University, Western Kentucky University, Duke University, University of North Carolina, Indiana University, College of St. Catherine, California State University - Fresno, UC - Irvine, and the UCLA Extension Program, among others.
Ti-Grace Atkinson was born November 9, 1938, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and is an author and theorist whose writings and activism in the early days of the National Organization of Women (NOW), in New York, defined the foundations of American radical feminism.
In the years before her political activism, she earned a BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, helped found the Institute of Contemporary Art, and worked as an art critic. She then moved to New York City where she earned a Ph.D. at Columbia.
As a member and president of NOW-NY, her radicalism was met with skepticism when she defended the theories presented in the "SCUM Manifesto," whose author, Valerie Solanas, shot New York artist Andy Warhol. In 1968, Atkinson left NOW because it would not confront issues like abortion and marriage inequality. That same year she founded The Feminists, an active radical feminist group.
She wrote several pamphlets on feminism, and advocated lesbianism as a political action. Many of her pamphlets and speeches are collected in the book "Amazon Odyssey." The book can be difficult to find, but it is an amazing look into the nascent stages of radical feminism, and I highly recommend it.
One of her speeches, delivered at Catholic University, is infamous because Atkinson discussed the Catholic Church of profiteering off the Virgin Mary. Her talk so disturbed Patricia Buckley Bozell, the sister of William F. Buckley, that Bozell leapt to the stage and slapped Atkinson across the face during the speech (further proof that conservatives are the most dangerous people in the world). Bozell posited, in that insane way that radical Christian conservatives always do, that Atkinson's clear and concise presentation was "an illiterate harangue against the mystical body of Christ."
Atkinson has continued her activism as a private citizen and a lecturer at schools as diverse as Pratt Institute, Case Western University, and Tufts University.
Learn about Atkinson, she is one of the people helped shape the progressive and meaningful America that conservatives are destroying.
Contemporary women are establishing America's history today and I will start this month's women's history posts by celebrating Andra Day.
Andra Day was born Cassandra Monique Batie on December 30, 1984, in Edmonds, Washington, and hails from San Diego, California.
She is a singer, songwriter, and actress who yesterday was awarded the Best Actress (Drama) Golden Globe for her magnificent, breathtaking portrayal of Billie Holiday in the movie "The United States vs. Billie Holiday."
Her 2015 album "Cheers to the Fall" reached #48 on Billboard 200 charts and was nominated at the 2016 Grammy Awards as Best R&B Album. The single "Rise Up" was nominated for Best R&B Performance.
She has worked with Stevie Wonder, Common, and Lenny Kravitz, has appeared in television commercials, and is building an impressive collection of awards. Her records have received critical acclaim, and her concerts are regularly sold-out.
Andra Day is becoming a major force in the American entertainment industry, and I expect her to be a massive influence on women's roles in the entertainment industry.
If you have neither seen nor heard her, please purchase her music, get a concert ticket and watch her movie.
Andra Day is the future of American entertainment.
Contemporary black men and women are making history today and will change the world, as people have before them.
Shaun King was born in Franklin County, Kentucky, on September 17, 1979. He is a journalist and activist who has leveraged social media to effect remarkable change. Some of his accomplishments are listed below.
Early in his online activism, he helped raise $1.5 million for Haitian earthquake relief, in 2010.
After 12-year-old Tamir Rice was murdered by Cleveland police in 2014, and his devastated mother moved into a homeless shelter, it was publicized that the boy's body remained unburied five months later. King raised over $80,000 to benefit Rice's estate and family.
DeAndre Harris was beaten by at least three men in 2017, during the infamous "Unite The Right" white supremacy rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Shaun King's social media campaign to publicize this injustice is credited with leading to the arrest of Daniel P. Borden, Alex Michael Ramos, and Jacob Scott Goodwin for the beating. King's campaign highlighted the ease with which white citizens can have black citizens arrested for alleged crimes, while black citizens struggle to have law enforcement agencies even investigate white criminals whose crimes are documented.
Seven-year-old Jazmine Barnes was killed in a drive-by shooting in Houston on December 30, 2018. King used his social media accounts a to spread the story, collect information from witnesses, and raise $60,000 as a reward for the arrest of the killer. Police acknowledge that information from King led to the arrests of Eric Black Jr. and Larry Woodruffe.
Shaun King is changing the world. Follow his activism and consider supporting the work he does.
Andra Day was born on December 30, 1984, in Edmonds, Washington. She is a singer, songwriter, and actress whose work is more impressive with each project.
If we could put Ella Fitzgerald, Amy Winehouse, Billie Holiday, Eartha Kitt, and Lizzo into a blender, the resulting magnificence would be Andra Day!
She has worked as a performer and recording artist in the music business, and recorded songs for movie soundtracks. Her acting credits are the foundation of an impressive filmography.
Her youtube.com channel is a wonderful collection of her work.
Recently, she starred as Billie Holiday in the movie "United States vs. Billie Holiday." Her Oscar-worthy performance is breathtaking. Her beauty, skill, and determination are present in every breath of every scene in the movie.
Day has worked with Stevie Wonder, Common, and Lenny Kravitz. She performed at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, has appeared in television commercials, and is building a collection of awards.
Her records have all received critical acclaim, and her concerts are regularly sold-out.
Andra Day is slowly and surely becoming a major forcve in the American entertainment industry.
If you have neither seen nor heard her, please purchase her music, get a concert ticket and watch her movie.
Andra Day is the future of American entertainment.
Andra Day mashes-up Notorious B.I.G.'s "Big Poppa" and Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On": https://youtu.be/9OyCd__Ty9E
Gail Ann Dorsey was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 20, 1962. She is a vocalist and bass player who has worked with David Bowie, Gang Of Four, Boy George, Seal, The National, Tears for Fears, Gwen Stefani, Lenny Kravitz, among others, and has released three albums as a solo artist.
She currently resides in New York, and continues to create music and work with some of the world's biggest talents. Gail Ann is one of today's internationally acclaimed artists that you can see perform both in the largest arenas and the most intimate nightclubs.
If you are not familiar with her work, today is the day to start; and I highly recommend her live performances.
Rashid Johnson was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1977. He is a conceptual artist whose work was the beginning of the Post-Black Art genre, which was coined after his acclaimed show at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2001. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
In his mid-thirties, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art curated Johnson's first major museum solo exhibition; an amazing and hard-earned feat.
He works with paint, sculpture, photography, and audio and video installations. Johnson's work is dynamic, bold and totally accessible. In his 2016 show "Rashid Johnson, Fly Away" an installation of metal shelving and living plants pushed forward a dialog of science and black culture.
In 2020, he produced "Untitled Anxious Red Drawings" as a benefit for the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund of the World Health Organization.
Rashid Johnson's work is changing the art world, and therefore is changing the world.
I love his work and am sad to say I do not have any in my collection. Pay attention to the museums and galleries in your area and see one of his exhibitions. You will not be disappointed.
Phillis Wheatley was born a free woman c.1753, somewhere in West Africa, and died of unknown causes on December 5, 1784, in Boston, Massachusetts. She was 31.
Phillis Wheatley was purchased by slave traders in West Africa, and enslaved by John Wheatley and his wife as a servant, in Boston. Unlike most enslaved Africans, she learned to read and write, and her captors encouraged her talent for poetry. In 1773 she travelled with her captors to London to find a publisher for her work. Her "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral" was published that year, received with enthusiasm and brought her fame (and money) in both England and the Colonies. Wheatley was emancipated after the publication of her book.
Hers is an unusual story, because her captors educated her and she became fluent in Greek and Latin by the time she was a teenager. Her skills were recognized by the Wheatley's and she was relieved of her household duties so she could write. During the time she was with the Wheatleys, she enjoyed the attention of patrons and benefactors, but shortly after her freedom, all support stopped, she married, lost two children at birth, became impoverished when her husband was sent to debtor's prison, worked as a maid, and died in 1784. Her third, surviving infant child died shortly thereafter.
The years of her success were not easy. Colonists refused to believe that an African could write poetry and she was required to defend her work in court. Her testimony resulted in a finding by her judges, including John Hancock, that she had indeed composed her work. That attestation was included in the preface of her book.
There is much controversy about her legacy, but none of the criticisms and critiques of her history diminish the fact that she was the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry and earn payment for her literary work.
Her poem "A Hymn to the Evening" is posted here here, without permission:
Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main
The pealing thunder shook the heav'nly plain;
Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr's wing,
Exhales the incense of the blooming spring.
Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,
And through the air their mingled music floats.
Through all the heav'ns what beauteous dies are spread!
But the west glories in the deepest red:
So may our breasts with ev'ry virtue glow,
The living temples of our God below!
Fill'd with the praise of him who gives the light,
York was born enslaved some time in the 1770s, the son of Old York and Rose. He died of unknown causes around 1830.
York was born to Old York and Rose, slaves of explorer William Clark's family. He grew-up as the "body servant" to the future explorer, and accompanied Clark and Merriweather Lewis on their famed expedition across North America. York was the only African American on the trip, making him the first African American to cross the continent.
York was an extremely valuable member of the expedition, negotiating with indigenous people along the route who were more inclined to negotiate with a man of color than the white men leading the group.
Upon their return from the expedition all members of the team received money and land, except for York, who returned to a live of enslavement under Clark. After years of relative freedom on the journey, York was ill-prepared and unhappy to return to enslavement and although he requested his freedom many time, Clark kept him enslaved and hired him out to a brutal slave driver in Kentucky.
Those who would re-write history, apologists for slavery, are emboldened by words written by Washington Irving pretending that Clark freed York with six horses and a wagon to start his own business in Nashville. There is no evidence that this was true.
York's contribution to the Lewis & Clark Expedition was invaluable, likely more valuable than many of the others on the trek. However, he was denied the same rewards and stands as a symbol of the injustice that black people have suffered, and continue to suffer today, in the United States.
Recently, an anonymous artist installed a bust of York in a public park in Portland, Oregon, with the inscription “the first African American to cross North America and reach the Pacific Coast.” (See link below.)
After years of service to this nation, York was denied the same compensation as his white peers. African Americans in the United States are still treated differently than white people, are still compensated at lower rates, and punished at higher rates; and until more white people stand up and say this must stop, it will continue.
Jane Matilda Bolin was born in Poughkeepsie, NY, on April 11, 1908, and died in Queens, NY, on January 8, 2007, at the age of 98, of unspecified causes.
Jane Bolin was the first black woman to graduate from Yale Law School (1931), the first to join the New York City Bar Association (1932), the first to join the New York City Law Department, and became the first black woman judge in the United States (1939).
Bolin was on the board of the National Urban League, the NAACP, and the Child Welfare League
Her concerns for the women and children of New York led to social justice breakthroughs in her efforts to eradicate racism from public policy. She mandated that children of color receive the same consideration for public funds as their white counterparts. She worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to decrease juvenile crimes with her work in support of the Wiltwyck School. Wiltwyck was as an alternative to incarceration for emotionally disturbed boys of color who were disproportionately sentenced to prison. As we know today: despite her noble efforts, boys of color are still incarcerated at a much higher rate than their white counterparts.
As a judge, Bolin eliminated the assignment of probation officers based on ethnicity, and she required private child-care agencies to help children regardless of their background.
Hardly a flamboyant representative of black American history, she was a very successful woman who effected much change, and inspired many women in the legal field.
Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks was born in Fort Scott, Kansas on November 30, 1912, and died of cancer on March 7, 2006, in New York City.
Gordon Parks was a photographer and film director, who started his career as a portrait photographer in Chicago during the 1940s. In 1942 he was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship that provided him a monthly income and led to a job as a government photographer for the Farm Services Administration and the Office of War Information. In the late 1940s, Vogue hired him to do a fashion shoot, where he remained for some time and began having his work published as books.
In the 1950s he began doing Hollywood work, directing documentaries for NET. In 1969, Warner Bros. hired him for "The Learning Tree" and he became the first mainstream black filmmaker. He found a groove in this industry and basically created the "blaxploitation" genre with the film "Shaft," starring Richard Roundtree.
Although his most commercial success was likely his filmmaking, it is his work as a photographer that leaves the most indelible mark on American history. His photograph "American Gothic" (named after the famous painting) is an iconic image.
He documented many of the important events of his times. He photographed and befriended many of the most important black Americans of the 20th Century, including Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali, and others. Parks was the godfather of Qubilah Shabazz, Malcolm X's daughter.
Parks was a renaissance man: as well as his work as a photographer and filmmaker, he was a painter, writer and musician. If you are not familiar with his work, find it today.
Dennis Davis was born in New York City on August 28, 1949, and died of cancer on April 6, 2016, in New York City. He was a drummer, percussionist, and session musician.
Davis was a true New Yorker and as a young man studied with drummers Max Roach and Elvin Jones before joining the Clark Terry Big Band.
During the Vietnam War, he joined the U.S. Navy and was discharged in 1970. During his military service, he honed his skills playing with the Navy's Drum and Bugle Corps.
While playing with Roy Ayers in the 1970s, he was hired to work on David Bowie's "Young Americans" album. He became Bowie's go-to percussionist on records and tours for many years as a member of rhythm section nicknamed the "DAM Trio" for Davis, Carlos Alomar, and George Murray.
After the commercial success of the work he did with Bowie, Davis was integral to creating the radical sounds for Bowie's "Low" album, a major breakthrough in recorded music. Unlike many musicians who worked with David Bowie, Davis snagged a songwriting credit for "Breaking Glass" on the "Low" record.
As well as his success with Bowie, Dennis Davis worked with the aforementioned Roy Ayers, as well as George Benson, Jermaine Jackson, Garland Jeffreys, Iggy Pop, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder.
Davis' son Hikaru Davis has produced a series of interviews with musicians who worked with his father (see link below). His son T-Bone Motta has been the drummer for Public Enemy since 2012.
History often ignores musicians who are not front men or lead singers, divas or pop stars. Dennis Davis was a major talent who was recognized by some of his era's biggest stars, making him a vital part of American music history.
Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, on June 7, 1917, and died of cancer on December 3, 2000, in Chicago, Illinois. She was 83.
Brooks was a poet whose first published piece Eventide was printed when she was 13-years-old, and in high school she became a regular contributor to The Chicago Defender newspaper. She is one of the most respected and revered poets of the last century.
In November, 1944, two of her poems, which she submitted unsolicited, were published in Poetry magazine. Unsolicited poems were historically not published by Poetry.
In 1950, she became the first African-American author to win a Pulitzer Prize, for her book Annie Allen.
In the 1960s, Brooks met political activists and artists working to further black cultural nationalism. Although left-leaning throughout her life, pursuing a black nationalist posture helped distance her from the McCarthyism that plagued so many American intellectuals. She taught creative writing to Chicago's Blackstone Rangers, who were known as a criminal gang. She remained a voice for progress throughout her life.
Brooks was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and held that honor for 32 years, until her death in 2000. In 1976, she became the first African-American woman inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1988, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame
She was named the Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress for the 1985–86 term.
Brooks taught at the University of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago State University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Elmhurst College, Columbia University, and the City College of New York.
Faced with racial bias, bigotry and discrimination throughout her life, Gwendolyn Brooks never wavered from the love of her craft and her desire to make an impact on the world around her. She is an American hero.
