James
Brown: The Man
Who Named A People
By Glen Ford
09 January, 2007
Black
Agenda Report
In death, James Brown this past
weekend vied for headlines with two other passing luminaries: a former
U.S. president, Gerald Ford, and the man a generation of Americans have
been taught to hate, Saddam Hussein. That’s world class celebrity
– no doubt about it. However, despite all the accolades, I believe
the historical James Brown has been short changed. Even Brown’s
many, mostly self-authored titles – “Hardest Working Man
in Show Business,” “Godfather of Soul,” “Soul
Brother Number One,” to mention just a few – fail utterly
to convey the Barnwell, South Carolina native’s seismic impact
on the modern age. James Brown can arguably be credited with a feat
few humans have achieved since the dawn of time.
He named an entire people:
Black Americans.
More accurately, James Brown
was the indispensable impresario who chose the moment and mechanism
that allowed Black Americans to name themselves. He was the Great Nominator
who in 1968 put forward for mass consideration the term that the descendants
of former slaves would voluntarily and by acclamation adopt as their
proud, collective designation. “Say It Loud, I’m Black and
I’m Proud” set in motion a tsunami-like process –
breath-taking in speed and scope – that for the first time in
their North American history created a mass social forum through which
slave descendants could loudly register their ethnic-name preference.
Overnight, it seemed, the great bulk became “Black” people
– with an attitudinal clause: get used to it.
The uniqueness of the Brown-impelled
nomenclature change lay in its referendum-like character. With “Say
It Loud,” Mr. Brown, who had earned a powerful bullhorn by forging
direct, cultural connections to the masses – which is, of course,
what popular entertainers do – cracked open the social space in
which a whole people could quickly affirm or reject their Blackness.
The phenomenon built upon, but was more far-reaching than, Stokely Carmichael’s
popularization of “Black
Power,” two years earlier. Carmichael’s slogan called
for – demanded – power for Black people. But James Brown’s
anthem actually empowered ordinary Black folks to signal to their leaders
and oppressors – the whole world, in fact – the fundamental
terms of any dialogue: how they were to be addressed.
“Everybody got a chance to declare whether or not they were
‘Black and proud.’”
To be sure, group nomenclature
had been a near obsession among Africans/Negroes/Coloreds/Blacks as
far back as intra-Black debates have been recorded. But the late Sixties,
the point in history seized by James Brown to introduce his plebiscite,
was a time of both unprecedented mass Black political action (including
urban rebellions) and the emergence of Black-oriented media that could
reach into every nook and cranny of the national Black polity. For the
first time, the Black call-and-response could be national – that
is, people-wide – and, in political terms, near-instantaneous.
Through the medium of Black-oriented radio – which was then a
one-sound-fits-all Black demographics affair – the Black call-and-response
was no longer limited to the literate classes, or to the realm of the
church. Thanks to Black radio, everybody got a chance to declare whether
or not they were “Black and proud.” Most voted, “Yes.”
It was a landslide. The skeptical minority were drowned out by the Black
and newly-Black, or borne along by the back-beat of James Brown and
the Famous Flames.
A Name is No Game
One vastly beneficial effect
of the James Brown Black popular referendum, was to clear away the historical-rhetorical
nomenclature underbrush that had built up over generations – to
collectively say, in effect: We’re Black now, let’s get
on with more productive discussions. Until James Brown definitively
split Black history in two – BB and AB; Before Black and After
Black – the terms Colored, Negro, Black and some variant of African
had coexisted (though not necessarily capitalized), with varying degrees
of friction and tolerance. Clearly, the folks that founded the African
Methodist Episcopal and African Methodist Episcopal Zion churches were
not repelled by the term African, despite the fact that “The Race”
was despised by the broad masses of whites. By taking their faith in
their own hands, building their own church, these early congregations
empowered themselves to speak on their own terms – at least with
one another. More important than what folks called themselves, was the
effective right to decide the question. Within the proscribed parameters
of Black life in AME and AME Zion – and later, Colored Methodist
Episcopal and other denominations – Black folks could by voluntary
association “name” themselves.
“The power to name
a people was only an extension of the real sources of power.”
However, Black preferences
– or Negro, Colored or African preferences – meant nothing
to whites, who called Blacks by whatever terms or epithets they chose
because they had the power to do so. Emancipation did not break the
white monopoly on power, yet the post-Civil War freedmen’s nomenclature
debate seemed to escalate, to take on a life of its own. Frustrated
by the death of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow, many Blacks
got caught up in a current of thought that argued, in chicken vs. egg
fashion, that Black powerless was caused by failed nomenclature. If
only Black folks would take on an identity that best befitted their
heritage and aspirations, they might find a way out of the tightening
racial vice.
Others saw somewhat more
clearly that the power to name a people was only an extension of the
real sources of power: wealth, a savage white citizenry willing to kill
for the sake of perceived privilege, and the might of the state. Such
Black citizens saw that use of language was simply an acting out of
actual power relationships, not the cause – or even a significant
contributing factor – in racial disparity. Words, names, can be
wielded as whipping sticks against those who are already powerless to
resist. It is the power and intentions of the word-wielder – his
ability to define the Other as he sees fit – not the word, that
is operative.
Respect, the need to show
or withhold it, is an outgrowth of power relationships, not the other
way around – a real world fact well understood by Black lawyer
Ferdinand Lee Barnett, founder of the Chicago Conservator. In 1878,
the newspaper’s first year of operations, Barnett wrote an editorial
titled, “Spell It With a Capital.”
“We have noticed an
error which all journalists seem to make. Whether from mistake or ill-intention,
we are unable to say, but the profession universally begins Negro with
a small letter. It is certainly improper, and as no one has ever given
a good reason for this breach of orthography, we will offer one. White
men began printing long before Colored men dared read their works; had
power to establish any rule they saw fit. As a mark of disrespect, as
a stigma, as a badge of inferiority, they tacitly agreed to spell his
name without a capital. The French, German, Irish, Dutch, Japanese,
and other nationalities are honored with a capital letter, but the poor
sons of Ham must bear the burden of a small n.
“To our Colored journalistic
brothers we present this as a matter of self-interest. Spell it with
a capital. To the Democratic journals we present this as a matter of
good grammar. To the Republicans [the party to which most Blacks were
allied at the time] we present it as a matter of right. Spell it with
a capital. To all persons who would take from our wearied shoulders
a hair’s weight of the burden of prejudice and ill will we bear,
we present this as a matter of human charity and beg you SPELL IT WITH
A CAPITAL.”
Note that Barnett uses the
capitalized term “Colored” twice, but “Negro”
– the subject of his editorial – only once, an indication
that he may have been more comfortable with the former. But Barnett
did not quibble over the use of either. Rather, he asked – begged
– that his people be accorded at least the nominal respect of
a capital letter, whether as Negro or Colored. Barnett recognizes that
the lower case is reserved for people who can be treated as lower beings;
that non-capitalization is intended as “a mark of disrespect…a
stigma…a badge of inferiority.” It is not the relative merits
of “Negro” or “Colored,” but the small n (or
small c) that is meant to diminish The Race as a whole – a reinforcement
and reminder of Black powerlessness.
By today’s standards,
Barnett’s editorial may seem groveling, but that is a misapprehension.
He was simply informing Power that he knew what they were up to. In
the absence of countervailing power, there could be no expectation that
whites would be forced to change their behavior. Barnett was not one
to grovel, by the way; he later became the husband and collaborator
of Ida B. Wells, the crusading journalist and anti-lynching activist
whose militancy often worried her colleague W.E.B. DuBois’ “last
nerve.”
“Blacks periodically
expended precious time and energy engaging in name-disputes largely
disconnected from actual power relationships.”
For a century after Emancipation,
the terms Negro, Colored, Black, variants of African, plus periodic
outbreaks of obscure, short-lived and now-forgotten nomenclature, were
cohabitants of the ghetto. (The Baltimore Afro-American
newspaper began publication in 1892, preceding by more than 70 years
Malcolm X’s Organization of Afro American Unity.) None of the
group-names was enforceable as a standard, not even among Blacks, who
nevertheless periodically expended precious time and energy engaging
in name-disputes largely disconnected from actual power relationships,
and without benefit of a movement strong enough to make the conversation
relevant to the Black masses.
Fifty-two years after editor
Barnett’s appeal, the New York Times finally deigned to upgrade
“Negro”
to capital status. “[This] is not only merely a typographical
change, it is an act in recognition of racial self-respect for those
who have been for generations in the 'lower case',” the paper
announced to its readership in 1930.
Of course, this was the Times’
decision to make, in keeping with the spirit of what Barnett called
“human charity” – not to be mistaken as some great
victory for “Negro” self-determination. That would come
almost two generations later, and the word would be “Black."
Black Power
By the early Sixties, “Black” was clearly in ascendance
among some activist circles of former Negroes. The emergence of a roiling
national Freedom Movement, the African decolonization process, the observable
fact that the descendants of slaves were now poised for numerical dominance
of cities across the country – a multiplicity of world-altering
factors – had converged to make a new day imaginable; some thought,
inevitable. The imminence and necessity of a great change in power relationships
required new nomenclature, both to clarify emerging realities and to
accelerate the movement that was making these new realities possible.
“The imminence
and necessity of a great change in power relationships required new
nomenclature.”
But the new word was not…new.
“Black” is as ancient a part of the American racial lexicon
as “Negro,” a derivative of the Portuguese word for “black.”
Both terms crossed over long ago from descriptive adjectives, to nouns
denoting an entire people who were articles of commerce or social proscription.
Only the deliberately obtuse could deny that Coloreds, Negroes and Blacks
were proper nouns for what Barnett maintained was one of the “nationalities”
resident in the United States. What set “Black” apart from
its foreign-derived counterpart “Negro,” or from the ambiguous
“Colored,” was the sheer weight of racist, victim-internalized
cultural values embedded in the English term. Black was bad, incorrigibly
bad, bottomlessly bad – bad to the bone.
Certain elements of Black
folks (by any name) have always deployed an inversion formula to turn
their racist-dominated world right-side-up. “Bad” became
“good.” They embraced “bad” – “bad”
as you wanna be! The Stagger
Lee philosophy of life in the ghetto boiled upward through the thin
layer of “Renaissance” Negroes in Harlem,
March 19, 1935, the “civil disturbance” widely recognized
as the beginning of the modern Black urban riot (or rebellion) cycle
– an historical break from the pattern of murderous white mob
invasions that had punctuated Black folk’s previous existence
in the U.S.
The Negro, formerly pictured
as a lone, mindless brute or passive “uncle,” was now perceived
in his growing numbers as a “time bomb” ticking away in
the nation’s cities. By the Sixties, Stagger Lees were assembled
on every street corner, a palpable political presence. The massed Negro
had acquired the power to frighten the rulers in America’s centers
of commerce. Watts,
Los Angeles, 1965 confirmed that there were now multitudes of “bad”
Negroes eager to break out of the old racial paradigm. Somehow, the
old nomenclature didn’t fit anymore.
It was past time for a popularizer
to synthesize – sloganize – the objectively transformed
relationship between slave descendants and the majority culture and
its rulers. Finally, after so many generations of near irrelevance,
the never-ended nomenclature discussion could occur in the presence
of a vibrant national political movement, amidst a radically changed
urban environment. Most importantly, the conversation was now connected
to concrete questions of power relationships, questions of direct relevance
to an entire people.
“The massed Negro
had acquired the power to frighten the rulers in America’s centers
of commerce.”
“We
want Black Power,” Stokely Carmichael declared in 1966. Carmichael
was by no means the first to define both a people and their aspirations
in the two-word phrase. “Black Power” had been around for
awhile, promulgated by Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and author
Richard Wright, among others. But the time was now right, and the cameras
were rolling. Many future historians would note that the Black Power
Era had begun.
But not quite. The various
branches of the movement were not in agreement – not about the
nature of the “power” that was sought, and not about “Black.”
And nobody had effectively
posed the question to the people.
R.I.P. Negro and
Colored
James Brown was uniquely
situated in the new media environment that had evolved since Memphis
radio station WDIA became the first to employ an
all-Black announcing staff, in 1949. By the late Sixties, Black-oriented
radio had penetrated every city with a substantial Black population
– and lots of smaller ones, as well. James Brown, constantly on
tour and always on the charts, delivered his unadulterated sound to
everyday folks who worked up almost as big a sweat during the performance
as he did. Brown also generously greased the palms of disc jockeys and
program directors throughout the land, securing a permanent place on
nearly every R&B station’s playlist. In 1967, Brown bought
radio stations in Knoxville, Tennessee, Baltimore, Maryland, and
Augusta, Georgia, making him the biggest radio mogul of his race at
the time.
Brown was the ultimate hook-master,
musically and lyrically – a genius that came to full flower with
his 1965 release, “Poppa’s Got a Brand New Bag.” Brown
dropped hooks like Einstein dropped science, with perfectly integrated
musical and lyrical phraseology that embedded itself in the mind and
body more indelibly than any commercial advertisement. Had he lived
in a more just world, James Brown could have earned tens of millions
of dollars on Madison Avenue, outclassing so-called classic ads like
“Flick my Bick,” “Sometimes you feel like a nut…sometimes
you don’t,” and “Coke – it’s the Real
Thing” with his far more elegant, concise and powerful “I
feel good (I knew that I would), I got you,” “This is a
man’s world” and “I break out in a cold sweat.”
Increasingly, the James Brown sound came to be defined by his magnificent
hooks – his inimitable and irresistible people-catchers.
“’Say It
Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud’ sealed the fate
of ‘Negro’ and entombed ‘Colored’ in its moldy
crypt.”
Four months after Martin
Luther King’s assassination and the resulting rebellions in more
than 100 American cities, Brown would drop the hook that definitively
and inarguably named a people. Appropriately beginning with the
words “uh…with your bad self,” “Say It Loud
– I’m Black and I’m Proud” sealed the fate of
“Negro” and entombed “Colored” in its moldy
crypt.
The linguistic sea change
wrought by “Say It Loud” was made possible by the confluence
of a genuine national political Movement, the swirling global currents
of decolonization, concentrated urbanization, unprecedented mass civil
rebellion, and a new and dynamic radio and records communications network
with near-universal reach – factors that had never before in Black
American history existed, collectively or severally. But it took the
unassailably authentic, “super-bad,” quintessentially “Black,”
hook-master supreme James Brown to seize the moment, and set it off.
Self-Determination
Brown’s greatest gift
was to allow masses of Black people to participate in the process of
self-determination. Nothing like it had happened before, or since. By
submitting the declaration “I’m Black and I’m Proud”
directly to the people, for them to affirm or reject, Brown took the
name issue out of smoke-filled strategy rooms and away from the machinations
of self-selected “spokespersons.” James Brown called out,
and the people responded – democracy in action.
The effects of Brown’s
plebiscite were far more profound than a simple change in ethnic appellation.
By embracing “Black,” the people stripped the term of its
historical negative baggage – something only the people themselves
can do, not their “leaders” or preachers or soothsayers.
Coming only months after the dramatic crescendo of the Sixties –
King’s death and cities in flames – the popular response
to Brown’s referendum can also seen as an affirmation of the previous
decade’s struggle.
“Brown took the
name issue out of smoke-filled strategy rooms and away from the machinations
of self-selected ‘spokespersons.’”
Ten years later, an entirely
different exercise was imposed on Black America, one that had no relationship
to self-determination or any notion of democracy. Seventy-five self-selected
“representatives” of the race locked themselves in Washington
hotel meeting rooms in December, 1988 for a conference that was supposed
to hatch a political agenda for the Nineties. After two days in secret
conclave, Rev. Jesse Jackson emerged to inform the press that a decision
had been reached. Henceforth, Black folks would be known as “African
Americans.”
Was that it? A unilateral
name change declaration? From the press coverage, it appeared to
be so, although the usually well-informed Richard
Prince, columnist for the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education,
later insisted that “one reporter – Lillian Williams of
the Chicago Sun-Times – made the so-called ‘name change’
the news story from the meeting.” Whether Ms. Williams was capable
of manipulating the Washington press corps or not, the following decade
saw no evidence of the existence of any “African American Agenda”
except the name imposition.
The whole sorry process was
emblematic of how far Black politics (yes, “Black” with
a capital “B”) had devolved since JB’s referendum.
In the absence of a real movement, with no mandate from the people directly
concerned, no mechanisms for popular review, and in total secrecy, less
than 100 mostly unelected people conspired (yes, that’s the appropriate
term) to substitute their own choice of name for an entire people, who
had only a decade before affirmed by acclamation their preference for
“Black.”
The merits of “African
American” are irrelevant. The conferees had no right to impose
their preference on Black people. By their secretive and monumentally
presumptuous actions, these self-selected spokespersons proved beyond
doubt that they do not respect those they claim to represent, and have
not a clue as to the meaning of self-determination. Nearly 20 years
later, there is no reason to suspect that the surviving conferees have
learned a thing about popular democracy.
“The conferees
had no right to impose their ‘African American’ preference
on Black people.”
James Brown had many flaws,
but he respected his audience – which, at the time, was damn near
all of us. He submitted his contributions – lyrical, musical and
political – to the judgment of the masses. He treated Black people
as active agents in their own lives, with full knowledge that his personal
fortunes were always subject to the people’s verdict.
The term “Black”
remains the people’s default preference, overwhelmingly so in
Black informal speech.
Thank you, Mr. Brown, for
giving us the opportunity to choose.
BAR Executive Editor Glen
Ford’s first full-time radio news job was with James Brown’s
Augusta, Georgia radio station, WRDW. He later worked at Brown’s
Baltimore station, WEBB. Ford can be contacted at [email protected]This
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