Bob Dylan's recent and rare interview with historian Douglas Brinkley covers sensitive history and sacred ground and does so at this time when the history we are creating shakes us to the core.
The rebellion against racism is global. The outcry about killer police and the culture of inadequate training and profiling is also world wide. It seems people of reason are fed up with the enabling of racist attitude. Non-Black people are the majority of this universal movement. This may be one of those "inflection points in the arc of history."
"...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..."
Dylan wrote the lyrics to the Death of Emmett Till in 1963, 8 years after the bright eyed 14 year old Chicago youth was savaged into a grotesque corpse in the Mississippi delta.
"...For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!"
Years later a white woman admitted she lied about the incident that sent her husband and his half brother into a rage where they grabbed the youth from his uncle's home, beat and mutilated him, shot him in the head and put him in the Tallahatchie River.
An all white jury acquitted Roy Bryant and J.W. Millam. A year later the men admitted they killed Till.
"...This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man
That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost robbed Ku Klux Klan."
Till's family wanted an open casket. The gruesome truth helped launch what we call the Civil Rights Movement.
Dylan's song came in the midst of the push for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed segregation. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited discrimination in elections.
We know those rights did not come without bloodshed, police violence, massive marches and demonstrations.
The extension of those freedoms were born of courage and faith.
The extension of those freedoms were born of courage and faith.
And, it seems, we are back to the start, though now everything is accelerated. The 21st century struggle against racism and repression is world wide.
People around the globe are demanding better training and less violence from their cops.
Too many men and women, black and white are killed by police without cause and for crimes that are minor, not serious and would never carry a death sentence.
Whites do not walk out of their homes with the daily fear that accompanies Blacks; will this be a day when a police encounter ends my life? Being white in America offers a safety. Being Black in America brings jeopardy. Still, all these years later!
Things must change and the momentum has filled our screens, dominated government attention, and provoked something new and powerful.
This has happened more rapidly than any political movement I've witnessed. But the grievances are centuries in the making.
Something seems different. There is a kind of spiritual momentum. Justice and equality seem to be getting breath, bringing a multitude of races and ethnicities together and into the streets and halls of government with a common purpose.
But racism does not die and it's congress of dunces do not go easily into the night, here or anywhere in the world.
Ignorance is a powerful strain in humankind. While some refuse to see and understand, resisting all the while proclaiming they are not racist, others conspire to keep a knee on the neck of equality. We need only look at what Georgia did in their recent primary, suppressing black votes, as they did earlier in electing a racist governor denying hundreds of thousands of votes to a Black woman, the likely winner.
The Republican strategy of voter suppression is in full overdrive, now trying to eliminate vote by mail, even in the midst of the pandemic. There continues a deliberate attempt to deprive people of the right, because of the color of their skin.
The Republican strategy of voter suppression is in full overdrive, now trying to eliminate vote by mail, even in the midst of the pandemic. There continues a deliberate attempt to deprive people of the right, because of the color of their skin.
It is dead wrong, but not surprising as the two most powerful racists in the US are the President and his partner Mitch McConnell.
People of conscience should note, some of the harshest critics of the racist Trump and McConnell are Republicans, former Republicans now. They are a bit like the Germans who fled as the world watched the rise of a fascist regime.
Those who stay loyal to this President will be marked by history as ignominious fools.
Those of us who thought the legislative acts of the 1960's fixed the problem, were naive and racist in our way, because we refused to see the truth.
Racism is a human stain, it is ours to eliminate. It does not happen with one election, or a congressional action, or better testing of the psychological fitness of cops.
My dad used to say, equality cannot be legislated, but discrimination can be outlawed. Real equality is the work of the heart.
"...but if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all that we could give,
We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live.
from The Death of Emmett Till- Bob Dylan
beautiful diversion
Jacaranda trees are in bloom on the California central coast
Take care, stay well.
See you down the trail.
See you down the trail.
Ignorance stirred with stupidity yields----???
ReplyDeleteNice to see you noted the jacarandas.
ReplyDeleteLike you Tom, I've never seen anything like this.
ReplyDeleteOur backyard jacaranda is just starting to bloom.
So sad what it takes for people to finally "get it". Such a painful, tedious process. Even symbols of the Confederecy are falling lately and that in itself is pretty remarkable. I hope we're at a real turning point. To quote JB -- "say it loud". We all need respect -- we're all in this together.
ReplyDelete"Real equality is the work of the heart." Unforgettable.
ReplyDeleteThank you! Your writing is valuable and important.
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