Grateful to have this happen in my lifetime
Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves
Blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
- sung by Billie Holiday
“The accusations against persons lynched, according to the Tuskegee Institute records for the years 1882 to 1951, were: in 41 per cent for felonious assault, 19.2 per cent for rape, 6.1 per cent for attempted rape, 4.9 per cent for robbery and theft, 1.8 per cent for insult to white persons, and 22.7 per cent for miscellaneous offenses or no offense at a 11.5 In the last category are all sorts of trivial “offenses” such as “disputing with a white man,” attempting to register to vote, “unpopularity”, self-defense, testifying against a white man, “asking a white woman in marriage”, and “peeping in a window.”
- as cited in The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States,1880-1950
So, I have been around for a while. I have seen a number of things in my life. I’m not yet ancient, but I have been around for a while and I know what things were like, not so very long ago.
We think the world is going to hell in a handcart. We think we have entered into some sort of era of hopelessness and despair, whiners and pansies that we sometimes can be.
And then I turn on my television and I see a black man, and I hear him talking and I hear him described by the title ‘President’. This black man is the President of the United States! Sorry, but I still get choked when the realization hits me. Not because I am a wishy-washy liberal (I mean, I can be, depending on the situation, but can also be a wishy-washy conservative), or because I hero-worship, or fawn. I do none of the above because people are mainly just people, not gods. But, for crissake, A Black Man is the President of the United States! I find that amazing – and arguably and symbolically one of the most wonderful things I’ve experienced in my life.
I was a child in the comedy age of Amos ‘n Andy – loved that old Kingfish: “Holy Mackul dere, Sapphire!” Saw nothing wrong with it back then. The mindset was different. Jack Benny’s sidekick and retainer was lovable old Rochester
with his gravely voice. Nat King Cole, as widely viewed as his delicious velvet voiced croonings were, could not get a sponsor for his show, so it was dropped.
“Mel Torme, Nat Cole and I walked into the bar at the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco in the early 1950s,” jazz pianist George Shearing told me in a newspaper interview I conducted some years ago. “We were refused entry because Nat was with us. I never set foot in that hotel again.”
Uber white-bread singer Pat Boone sang sanitized versions of Little Richard songs and made more money than the original artist (and songwriter). “Can’t have decent white kids listening to them jungle beats, now can we. Who knows how may girls’ll get knocked up as a result.”
Reactionary sleazeball columnist Walter Winchell launches a personal crusade against Josephine Baker, forcing her to close in New York and go back to Paris, whence she stayed.
Singer extraordinaire Paul Robeson is accused of communism and his career is destroyed.
Eartha Kitt is refused entry by the front door of the White House.
English songstress Petula Clark gets viewer flack in 1968 for daring to affectionately place her hand on the arm of Harry Belafonte during a TV special.
And there was Selma, and there was Birmingham, and Little Rock and Rosa Parks and Authorine Lucy and top cop Bull Connors with his snarling dogs and Medgar Evers and, of course, Dr. King. ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ indeed, as much as I love the song.
And so it went.
And now the President of the United States is a Black Man!
Excuse me for being astonished.
And grateful. Hey, he may even turn out to be a lousy president.
That has nothing to do with anything.
It’s the everything else that counts. And, in my lifetime, yet.
- sung by Billie Holiday
“The accusations against persons lynched, according to the Tuskegee Institute records for the years 1882 to 1951, were: in 41 per cent for felonious assault, 19.2 per cent for rape, 6.1 per cent for attempted rape, 4.9 per cent for robbery and theft, 1.8 per cent for insult to white persons, and 22.7 per cent for miscellaneous offenses or no offense at a 11.5 In the last category are all sorts of trivial “offenses” such as “disputing with a white man,” attempting to register to vote, “unpopularity”, self-defense, testifying against a white man, “asking a white woman in marriage”, and “peeping in a window.”
- as cited in The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States,1880-1950
So, I have been around for a while. I have seen a number of things in my life. I’m not yet ancient, but I have been around for a while and I know what things were like, not so very long ago.
We think the world is going to hell in a handcart. We think we have entered into some sort of era of hopelessness and despair, whiners and pansies that we sometimes can be.
And then I turn on my television and I see a black man, and I hear him talking and I hear him described by the title ‘President’. This black man is the President of the United States! Sorry, but I still get choked when the realization hits me. Not because I am a wishy-washy liberal (I mean, I can be, depending on the situation, but can also be a wishy-washy conservative), or because I hero-worship, or fawn. I do none of the above because people are mainly just people, not gods. But, for crissake, A Black Man is the President of the United States! I find that amazing – and arguably and symbolically one of the most wonderful things I’ve experienced in my life.
I was a child in the comedy age of Amos ‘n Andy – loved that old Kingfish: “Holy Mackul dere, Sapphire!” Saw nothing wrong with it back then. The mindset was different. Jack Benny’s sidekick and retainer was lovable old Rochester
with his gravely voice. Nat King Cole, as widely viewed as his delicious velvet voiced croonings were, could not get a sponsor for his show, so it was dropped.“Mel Torme, Nat Cole and I walked into the bar at the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco in the early 1950s,” jazz pianist George Shearing told me in a newspaper interview I conducted some years ago. “We were refused entry because Nat was with us. I never set foot in that hotel again.”
Uber white-bread singer Pat Boone sang sanitized versions of Little Richard songs and made more money than the original artist (and songwriter). “Can’t have decent white kids listening to them jungle beats, now can we. Who knows how may girls’ll get knocked up as a result.”
Reactionary sleazeball columnist Walter Winchell launches a personal crusade against Josephine Baker, forcing her to close in New York and go back to Paris, whence she stayed.
Singer extraordinaire Paul Robeson is accused of communism and his career is destroyed.
Eartha Kitt is refused entry by the front door of the White House.
English songstress Petula Clark gets viewer flack in 1968 for daring to affectionately place her hand on the arm of Harry Belafonte during a TV special.
And there was Selma, and there was Birmingham, and Little Rock and Rosa Parks and Authorine Lucy and top cop Bull Connors with his snarling dogs and Medgar Evers and, of course, Dr. King. ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ indeed, as much as I love the song.
And so it went.
And now the President of the United States is a Black Man!
Excuse me for being astonished.
And grateful. Hey, he may even turn out to be a lousy president.
That has nothing to do with anything.
It’s the everything else that counts. And, in my lifetime, yet.
posted by Ian Lidster at
4:12 PM
9 Comments:
Wow. This post conjures up emotions that I cannot begin to put into words.
I feel grateful to finally see a black person in office. I was beginning to doubt that it would happen in my lifetime.
I doubt he'll be a lousy president, and even if he is, it would be hard to outdo the hideousness of the last eight years.
I was a Civil Rights worker in the 60's doing voter registration in Harlem so for me, Obama's presidency is a coming full-circle.
And I actually believe that he will be a wonderful president for so many reasons which have nothing to do with race.
Like you, I never thought I'd see the day. Perhaps the times they are a-changin'. And not a minute too soon.
I remember when Frank Sinatra boycotted certain places because Sammy Davis Jr wasn't allowed entry.
I remember too the riots in Alabama and Virginia and was so devastated people were treated like this. I remember too here in Canada a black friend was refused an apartment - many times because of his color. For me too to have Obama as president is an unbelievably welcome event.
Ya know what? No matter how bad a president he turns out to be, there's no way he can be as bad as Dubbya.
Now, can we have someone like him in Canada? Harper, Iggy and all the others have the charisma of wet mops.
On a daily basis I am brought up sohrt when I hear "President Obama." I am profoundly grateful to have seen this happen, too.
I am so with you on this. Growing up in the south, unspoken Jim Crow stuff was still going on as late as the 60's. My parents, fortunately, were more advanced than most of our neighbors and I am very glad for that. Yay for us and yay for the whole world.
I love this post, Ian. I'm still not "over" it or past the newness of it. I am so grateful too. Such a wonderful, wonderful thing.
I am not sure why, but the knowledge brings joy to me every time I think of Obama being the President.
If ever there was good reason to despise 'whiteness' the past 8 years are testimony!
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