Kevin Powell: "Fatherhood, Manhood, and Tupac Shakur"

Fatherhood, Manhood, and Tupac Shakur

by Kevin Powell | KevinPowell.net

NOTE: The following excerpt is taken from Kevin Powell’s 2003 best-selling essay collection, Who’s Gonna Take The Weight? Manhood, Race, and Power in America. The original title is “What Is A Man?” Kevin Powell interviewed Tupac Shakur on several occasions while he was a senior writer at Vibe magazine, including what are widely considered the definitive articles and profiles on the late Tupac Shakur. On June 16, 2011, Tupac would have turned 40 years old. Tupac’s life and music were a constant and loud conversation about fatherhood and manhood. Indeed, Kevin Powell is writing a book about Tupac and his short but significant journey entitled, simply, Tupac Shakur: A Biography. That book will be published in the next few years. Email Kevin at kevin@kevinpowell.net.

The death of a human being, particularly a human being one has come to know fairly well on one level or another, has a funny way of making one realize, in a hurry, one's own mortality and limitations. The presence of death remains, whether we care to admit it or not. That is because life is always, whether we humans care to admit it or not, one last and halting breath away from death. I personally have had, since I was a very bad and very foul-mouthed little Black boy, an extremely ambiguous relationship with death. More to the point, I just have never gotten it. Uh-huh, sure, the church(es) I attended offered the clichéd, knee-jerk interpretation: be good and you shall get to heaven; be bad and you shall bust hell wide open.. I wondered on those days I had off from da Lawd, What hell could be worse than the ghetto in which I was born? It is also utterly perplexing because we do not know what is out there once we are gone nor do we, ostensibly, have any control over “when,” as the old folks Down South like to say, “it is your time.” But if you happen to be poor and young and Black and male and very much surrounded by death at every corner you turn, you, sooner or later, don't wonder when you are going to go, but how you are going to go. For it is, as far as our environments proclaim, only a matter of time before the grim reaper steps to you. Which is why one of the more curious occurrences in inner cities across America at this hour is the sight of young Black males, especially those who have access to money, tons of it (ya know the deal: the not-so-holy trinity of drug dealers, rappers, and ballplayers), going to their local funeral parlors and paying, in advance of their anticipated deaths, for their coffins and funerals. Some heads actually purchase coffins to match the style and make of their late model cars or sports utility vehicles. Yes, I have seen this with my own eyes and, yes, excessive materialism knows no boundaries, not even the unexplorable frontier of death, and, yes, life expectations are simply that low.

Which brings me to the late Tupac Amaru Shakur. To be brutally honest, over seven years have passed and I still feel I have not properly mourned Tupac’s horribly tragic end. I don't know if it is because I was expecting his death, or if I simply have become numb to the death marches of Black men. Or perhaps it is because I linger in denial, thinking that Tupac, like Shango, one of the deities in the Yoruba philosophy, is such a regal spirit, such a warrior, such a master of the drum, the dance and the oration, that he will live forever—for no one ever really wants to believe that death is more of a certainty than life, although it is. What I have also done during this time is think long and hard about the status of boys to men who are Black, vulnerable, and, basically, walking timebombs. And about the wicked trajectory of my own life. And about the life and meaning of every single Black man who has crossed my path, as far back as I can remember. And I've absorbed a plethora of books, statistics, commissioned reports, documentaries, press clippings, and one-on-one and group conversations, each in its own way staking a claim of relevance to the real estate known as the state of the Black man, circa the present. No matter, for the questions I keep coming back to are “Who am I?” and “Who are we?” The first question is crucial because, logically, how can I seriously begin to account for someone else's life, like Tupac Shakur's, if I can barely account for my own life? Yet, I learned a long time ago, in accounting for my life I am in fact accounting for the life of other Black men. We are, after all, mirror reflections of each other and interconnected due to race, gender, culture, and that beleaguered battleship we christened history. Consequently, the questions of “Who am I?” and “Who are we?” are actually one in the same….

I've thought about these issues a great deal since those sad moments when I was in Las Vegas covering what would be the last days of Tupac Shakut’s tragic story for Rolling Stone. It was otherworldly because up until that week, I had written about Tupac exclusively for Vibe magazine. But because I had been fired four months prior, I was now on assignment for another magazine. No matter; I knew I needed to be in Las Vegas. Why? I am not exactly sure. When I arrived in Vegas, three days before Tupac died, I said to myself that this was not the type of city in which I wanted to die. There are slot machines even at the airport, and you can literally get anything you want on the Strip: sex, drugs, cars, a lawyer, a marriage, or a divorce. It is little wonder Las Vegas is called “Sin City.” As I made my way around town, talking with cabdrivers, hotel maids, construction workers, card table operators, prostitutes, police officers, and others, it was clear that few knew or even cared to know about the life and times of Tupac Shakur.

Some thought he was a gangster. Others thought he was a gang member (some said he was a Blood, others said he was a Crip). Many also said that Tupac’s getting shot in Las Vegas was bringing unnecessary attention to a city already dogged by a seedy image. The more I explored Las Vegas (I couldn’t do much else until the day Tupac actually died because Suge Knight’s security team—or whoever they were—made sure that the media and other unknowns did not come too close to the hospital), the more I thought of Nicholas Cage’s Academy Award-winning role in Leaving Las Vegas. Hadn’t Cage’s character, an outcast, come to Las Vegas to die. Hadn’t Cage’s character succumbed to alcohol addiction and taking up with prostitutes? Hadn’t Cage’s character given up on life? How many times, I asked myself, had Tupac Shakur said to me he would not live a long time, that he in fact did not want to live a long time, and that he would probably go down in a hail of bullets? The thought of the fast-moving world of Las Vegas being a burial ground for those who had lived fast lives, like Tupac, unnerved me. Maybe, as many of his fans have suggested, Tupac did see it coming and knew when and where he was going to die. Hadn’t he achieved his very modest goals of “hearing myself on a record and seeing myself in a movie”? What else was there for him to live for if he was, as he said so often, in so much pain? So much pain, he maintained, that only his huge intake of weed allowed him to live as long as he had.

When I listen to some of the comments about Tupac Shakur, specifically, and about young Black men in America’s inner cities, in general, it is clear that many of those commenting are very much out of touch with reality. It is so easy to say, for example, “Well, Tupac had choices” or “Tupac knew what he was getting himself into.” What choices, really, did Tupac have? He was born poor, so he knew he had to survive. While middle-class White and Black children have the option of thinking about what they want to do with their lives, Tupac decided early on that being a rapper was his surest and perhaps only ticket out of the ghetto. And in the insulated world of ghetto culture, your Blackness, your manhood, are narrowly defined by how “real” you keep it, how hard you are, how much you represent the thug life. Move one step away from that and you are considered a sellout. And why would Tupac Shakur—who had been an outcast his entire life, who resented that when he was child his cousins said he was “too pretty”—position himself in any other way except as a “real nigga.” That does not suggest choice; it suggests doing what you have to do to survive in the ghetto world that produced you. Sure, Tupac could have assimilated easily into the realm of Hollywood (he did hang out with the likes of Madonna and Mickey Rourke) but that plastic, middle-class existence meant nothing to him. Nor was it real. What was real were the homies, from South-Central Los Angeles to the South Bronx, whom he felt he had to represent. So when you think of Tupac—the baggy pants with the boxer shorts peeking out, the numerous tattoos, the bald head, the bandana, the pimp limp, the jewelry, the women, the mouth, the attitude—you are essentially getting the average working-class Black male in America today. And last time I checked, there are more of us than the bourgeois variety we are told by some to be like. From the bebop era of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker to hiphop, Black men have always rebelled against the customs of the larger society through their art and their lives, through their beings. People like to say hiphop is just so harsh, so foul. Well, as Amiri Baraka once famously put it, you can always tell the station of a people by the music and culture they produce at any given time. To blame hiphop and the Tupac Shakurs of the world for what is wrong with Black youth is to ignore the blood on your own hands. Some of the more wishful among us like to say Tupac Shakur could have been “our next Malcolm.” Again, that kind of statement speaks to our fascination with icons and our propensity for deifying people who breathe and sleep and bleed and defecate just like the rest of us. Moreover, as far as I am concerned, the question is not whether Tupac Shakur would have been the next Malcolm X had he lived, but whether Malcolm Little would have become Malcolm X had he been born today. In other words, there is no organization or movement in place that could reach out to the Tupac Shakurs of America and uplift them the way the Nation of Islam did with Malcolm (those who believe the NOI today is what it was then must be on crack). Tupac, like many of us who are young, Black, and male, was pretty much out there on his own. Who was giving him direction? And who understood fully what he was going through? Not his mother. Not his family. Not his friends. Not his fans. Not his enemies. Not Suge Knight. Perhaps not even Tupac himself. And not his father, whoever that was.

On the evening of Tupac’s death I drove with my journalist friend to the intersection of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane, where Tupac had been shot. As my friend called in her story I just stared at that intersection, wondering why there were no witnesses in such a well-lit and heavily traveled area. I called my homegirl Tracy Carness in Los Angeles, and her first words to me, before we could even exchange greetings, were “Kevin, he’s dead. I can’t believe he is dead.” Neither could I. Tupac was, in a phrase, a “bad nigga.” That scared a lot of people, and excited just as many. I was, through the years, somewhere in the middle. I was not scared of Tupac. I was scared for him. But I also loved the fact that he had no problem throwing up his middle finger anywhere and anytime it suited him. As he rapped once, “I was given this world, I didn’t make it.” And as far as Tupac was concerned, this world had been giving him and people who looked like him the finger all along. So Tupac’s life was an exacting sort of revenge, on White people, on snobby Black people, on the rich, on anyone who had no sympathy for the oppressed and voiceless on this planet.

After I spoke with my friend Tracy, I went back to my hotel room, got drunk, poured some liquor on the carpet in Tupac’s memory, and recalled the last time I saw him in person. It was late November 1995. Tuipac had been bailed out of an upstate New York prison by Suge Knight (he had been incarcerated for a sexual assault charge stemming from that hotel room encounter with the young woman) and was now back in Los Angeles shooting a video for the first single from his double CD album. The $600, 000 “California Love” video was being shot a hundred miles north of Los Angeles at a dry lake bed in the desert. I milled around for a while checking out the imitation Mad Max set, then made my way to Tupac’s trailer. I knocked on the door, and someone on the other side pushed it open, releasing a powerful gust of marijuana smoke. And there he was, the big eyes shining brightly, the smile still childlike and broad as an ocean, his exposed muscles—probably because of his eleven-month prison bid—bigger than ever. Clearly this was not the same Tupac who had, only ten months earlier while in jail, told me that he was no longer going to smoke weed, that he was not a gangsta, that “thug life is dead.” Or maybe it was. Whatever the case, from that day in November until his death Tupac became in my mind an exact replica of the character he played in Juice. It was shocking to hear his new album, it was shocking to see him in television interviews, and it pissed me off that he helped to escalate the tensions between East Coast and West Coast rappers (born on the East Coast, Tupac had gone back and forth with his sentiments until he signed to Death Row Records in October 1995). For sure, when I asked Tupac what was going to come of the East Coast-West Coast rift, he said, as he was being whisked away to do a television interview, “It’s gonna get deep.” How prophetic were those words, as first Tupac then The Notorious B.I.G. were blown away, both murders still unsolved all these years later. I watched Tupac for the next few hours as he shot scenes and paraded in front of cameras, counting wads of money, as the hulking persona of Suge Knight stood in the background.

A few weeks later I spoke to Tupac for the last time when I conducted a follow-up telephone interview with him. Apparently much had changed in Tupac’s mind since our last interview, and he let it be known how angry he was, it seemed, with everyone. But, he maintained, he could at least trust Suge Knight and the Death Row family because they could protect him from his enemies. I remember hanging up the phone after that interview, on December 2, 1995, and feeling very sick. I know what it is to be angry because I have a very short fuse. And I know what it is to feel paranoid, to believe in your heart that no one is your friend and that everyone is out to get you. But Tupac displayed a side of himself, a darker, more menacing side. I thought, Damn, maybe I never really knew him. I didn’t want to speak to Tupac Shakur anymore. I guess a part of me knew it was only a matter of time before he would get his wish and be gone from us forever. I never stopped following Tupac’s life, and whenever I heard someone mention his name, I listened as carefully as I had done back in 1992. ‘Pac once told me he wanted me to be Alex Haley to his Malcolm X, to be the official biographer of his life. And that is precisely how I felt at times, like the one writer who was attempting to present a broad picture of Tupac Shakur, who was making an effort to understand him because, hell, Tupac was me, and I was him, ghetto bastards from birth, living until it is our turn to die. So, in a way, the “new” Tupac made me feel as if I had lost a friend, and there was nothing I could do about it. He was gone.

I met Tupac’s natural father, Billy Garland, a few weeks after Tupac died. Tupac had been so adamant about not knowing his father that I did not believe that this man was in fact his father until I saw him in person. But the moment I saw him, I knew he was: There was the tall, lean body, the flat-footed walk, the girlish eye-lashes, the long nose, and, yeah, the bushy eyebrows. To be honest, I had mixed feelings about the meeting. While I was glad to meet this man Afeni Shakur had referred to in my first Vibe article on Tupac as “Billy,” I thought of how long it took Billy to reconnect with his son. And that was only after he had seen Tupac in Juice. What, I wondered would have been different about Tupac’s life had Billy been there? What would have been the same? Did Billy only become interested in his son once he became famous and, presumably, rich? Did Billy realize Tupac had spent his entire twenty-five years searching for father figures in the form of teachers, street hustlers, fellow rappers like Ice-T and Chuck D., and men as different as Suge Knight and Quincy Jones? I didn’t ask Billy Garland any of these questions but they were definitely on my mind. No matter: I sat and talked with Billy Garland for two or three hours in his Jersey City apartment, about his life, about Tupac’s life, and about his absence from Tupac’s universe. Billy showed me pictures of himself with Tupac, of the letters ‘Pac had written him from prison, of the many cards he had received since Tupac’s untimely death. Tupac had barely known this man, I thought, just as I barely knew my father. Was Billy Garland one of those Black men I had described previously, one of the damaged souls from the civil rights era, an ex-Panther and now a broken-down warrior trying to get a grip on his life via his dead son? Billy even asked me if he should sue Afeni Shakur for half of the Tupac Shakur estate. I was both astounded and appalled. This man had really been nothing more than a drop of sperm, and now he wanted to reap the benefits of the money a dead rapper as iconic as Tupac was sure to bring. But for some reason I was not angry with Billy Garland. A part of me understood exactly where he was coming from because, hell, he is a Black man in America and he has nothing to show for it except a tiny apartment, and a dead, famous son. Billy had had a hard life himself, in the 1970s and 1980s, as he struggled to come of age as Tupac was coming of age. There had been no blueprint for Billy Garland, just as there had been no blueprint for Tupac Shakur, or for me, for that matter. We were-are—simply thrown out there and told to swim, although most of us do not know how and are too terrified to learn.

But it is something to see older Black men as I do, as a man myself. I will be completely candid here and say that I have carried around a great deal of resentment toward older Black men since my father disowned me when I was eight years old. Indeed, I have had little tolerance, little respect, and and very little interest in what most of them have to say for themselves. It is the worst form of cowardice to bring a child into the world and then abandon that child either because you cannot cope or because you and the child’s mother are not able to get along. How many Black boys and Black girls have had their emotional beings decimated by that father void? Certainly Tupac, and certainly me.

Perhaps it is for this reason that I cannot readily recall all that Billy Garland said to me on that day after he asked my advice about suing Afeni Shakur. I was disgusted and saw in him my father and my grandfather and my uncle, my mother’s only brother, and undeniably I saw myself and what I could possibly become. The predictability horrified me, because I could hear the echoes of my mother’s caveat from my childhood: Don’t be like your father. But what did my mother mean, precisely? If not like him, then like whom? In seeking to raid Tupac’s grave for dollars, Billy Garland showing the worst attributes of Black manhood, but also of White manhood, of American manhood. So what would the alernative be? How does one break the vicious cycle, begun on the plantations, of Black man as stud, as Black male body forced to tend someone else’s land and property, as Black man torn away from his family, moved to and fro, of Black man being beaten down to the point that his woman and his children no longer know his name. Again, what of slavery, which lasted 246 years and lingers still in the collective bosom of Black men in America, particularly since we were slaves a hundred years longer than we have been free? So how could I really be mad at Billy Garland—or my father, for that matter—anymore? Garland, via Tupac’s death, was getting more attention than he had ever gotten in his entire rotten life and he needed Tupac’s death to validate his existence. How twisted a concept! But it is true. And what of my father, that no-good do-for-nothing, as my mother often referred to him? I may never see the man again in my lifetime, don’t care to, really, but I know wherever he is, he is not free. He is wounded; he is, like an older Black men and like a lot of younger Black men, in a state of arrested development, suspended above the fiery coals of his unstable journey here in America. But, with all of my being, I have to muster the nerve to forgive him, my father, for impregnating my mother, for not being there at the hospital when I was born, for not marrying my mother and leaving her to the whims of the welfare agency, for only showing up sporadically the first eight years of my life, for declaring to my mother on that damp, rainy day that she had lied to him, that I was not his child, that he would not give her a “near-nickel” for me ever again—and he has not. Oh, how I suffered, as Tupac suffered, without a male figure in my life, someone whose skin felt like mine, whose blood beat like mine, whose walk pounded the earth for answers, like mine. But alas, poor Tupac, it was not meant to be, and you are dead, and I am here, and we both have fathers, yet we both are also fatherless. The only thing I can say at this moment in my life journey—because, unlike Tupac, I did get to make it past twenty-five, into my thirties—is that I have to stay alive any way I can, and I have to be my own father now.

***

Kevin Powell is an activist, writer, public speaker, and businessman and, in 2010, was a Democratic candidate for Congress in Brooklyn, New York. A product of extreme poverty, welfare, fatherlessness, and a single mother-led household, he is a native of Jersey City, New Jersey and was educated at New Jersey’s Rutgers University. Kevin is a longtime resident of Brooklyn, New York, and it is from his base in New York City that Kevin has published ten books, including his new title, Open Letters to America (Soft Skull Press). This book is a collection of essays that examines American leadership, politics, and various social issues in the era of Barack Obama. Next up for Kevin is his long-awaited memoir of childhood and youth, the boy with a mother and no father. The highly anticipated Tupac Shakur: A Biography will follow this. Atria Books/Simon & Schuster will publish both.

We Are Malcolm X

We Are Malcolm X

by Lamont Lilly

“It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of black against white, or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter.”—El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, 1964

Brief, yet exhaustive, the following passage best represents the Malcolm X America doesn’t want you and I to know—the more complete post-Mecca Malcolm who could certainly once again ignite an entire nation if only he were properly revisited. It seems like just yesterday, as a young adolescent, that the life and times of Malcolm Little were resurrected through Spike Lee’s 1992 cinematic production, Malcolm X. Bold, vivid and vulgar, Spike’s production wasn’t only a history book for the hood; it was the artistic catalyst of a new cool: the infamous black “X” hat.

How unfortunate though that such a revival was short lived among a generation of budding hip hoppers who were never lucky enough to meet George Wallace or Lincoln Rockwell—who were never exposed to the White Citizens’ Council. What Spike’s X did impress upon me however, was a martyr of resistance Mr. Charlie somehow failed to mention when I was in school. Not one time was I really taught of Malcolm X. And once I discovered him I clearly understood why. Could you imagine all the Black men America has incarcerated converting into disciples of Malcolm X, all the political prisoners? Why, the oppressed would have their own nation by now!

Malcolm’s teachings were simple: Black is beautiful, love your roots, family and community, feed the mind and atone within—know thyself and the rest will follow. Though quite the humble type and gentle giant you might say, Malcolm was [The Hate That Hate Produced]; he did possess an unwavering commitment to Black liberation. And what’s wrong with that? Was it true that Malcolm openly declared war against imperialism, colonialism and white supremacy? Damn right!! But understand that Brother Malcolm wasn’t just a Negro leader, he was a global figure for the entire African Diaspora, for the working, for the poor and oppressed worldwide—an NOI (Nation of Islam) apostle turned international Pan-Africanist and Human Rights advocate.

Malcolm wasn’t a racist, not even a “reverse racist,” as often depicted, but he did love The People—his people and all people. And as for any institution, organization or government that wasn’t for The People, yes, Malcolm called them out! To Brother Malcolm, one was either [for] the oppressed or [against] the oppressed, regardless of race or social class. He would tell you in a minute, “We got some Black devils running around here, too!” This from a man so complex, that at times, he would even check himself. To Malcolm, NO ONE was exempt from being accountable to the masses. No one was exempt from being accountable to the truth. Malcolm Little was the story of true redemption, a man who hated, learned to love, and then learned to re-love. That was Malcolm, a mercenary for justice unadulterated.

In James Baldwin’s dagger of a memoir, No Name in the Street (1972), Baldwin meticulously dedicates five pages to Minister Malcolm—intimately reflecting upon their few interactions and the qualities of a man he fiercely admired. Even in disagreeing with certain points, one couldn’t help but to marvel at such tenacious and articulate “plain talk,” particularly from the lips of an ex-convict without even a high school diploma. But Malcolm was sharp—so sharp that long time veteran and Civil Rights organizer, Bayard Rustin, eventually refused to publicly debate with him. For not only was Malcolm an avid reader, he was equally the profound listener.

Brother Malcolm would take your own words and hang you with them if you weren’t careful, especially when engaging enthusiastic integrationists as James Farmer (founder of CORE). Yet, unlike many of today’s Uncle Tom Black spokesman, Malcolm never spoke and wrote to impress folk. This self-proclaimed “field negro” would instead communicate in a language all could understand—from the highest to the lowest—from the youngest to the oldest. What most formal academicians fail to realize, or better yet acknowledge, is that Malcolm was The People’s Champ—a street prophet who could relate to Oxford University’s most esteemed professors just as sincerely and effective as with Kenya’s Revolutionary Wing, the [Mau Mau]. Malcolm would extend the common street hustler just as much dignity as he would Jomo Kenyatta, Patrice Lumumba or Kwame Nkrumah.

In examples as these, and in many regards, Malcolm was long before his time. While the majority of Black political figures of this era sought freedom and liberation through social inclusion—through public toilets and white hamburgers, it was Malcolm who charged Human Rights over Civil Rights—Workers’ Rights over capitalism. Why, he even championed Women’s Rights. You see, it was okay that our mothers and sisters march The Edmund Pettus—be sprayed with hoses and bitten by dogs, but to have an opinion and given a microphone was crossing the line at this time. Well, not so to Brother Malcolm. In organizing his OAAU (Organization of Afro American Unity), Malcolm systematically sought strong sisters who could play equal roles in planning and teaching, in helping to build a revolutionary movement. His adoration for women like Fannie Lou Hammer, Shirley Graham Du Bois and elder sibling, Ella Collins, was nothing short of a personal denouncement of male chauvinism. Indeed, Minister Malcolm would have loved Shirley Chisholm. He poignantly articulated upon his return from Ghana, Guinea and Algeria that “Africa will not be free until it frees its women.”

I state the above to say this, brothers and sisters: more so now than ever, it will be critical amidst our mounting struggles that people of all nations thoroughly re-explore the full range of Malcolm’s thoughts and analyses—his actions and his deeds—his personal evolution and stages of development; for many of his ideological building blocks are just as relevant today as they were in February of ‘65. While today we may have a ‘dark man’ in office, there’s far too many in prison. Job loss and ‘Urban Renewal’ continue to wreak havoc; while pig brutality seems to have gone UP in the Black community, at least from Oscar Grant’s perspective. Not to mention, the NAACP is back fighting resegregation, right here in Raleigh, the state capital. This is what Brother Malcolm was trying to get us to understand almost 50 years ago.

The beauty of Malcolm was that only he could represent the truth of the Black experience with such fury and eloquence—only he could dissect the brutality of American hypocrisy with such fearless clarity, with such an impenitent passion. With heart and mind, body and soul, he awoke the dead and led the army…from the front…in the street…in the rain…in the middle of the ghetto…right in front of Mr. Hoover and his COINTELPRO. In the end, Malcolm was me and Malcolm was you. Malcolm was ‘The People’ and the beat of our hearts, the one who came and gave life as he went—our Black Freedom Christ who dared to stand tall. We didn’t lose Brother Malcolm; he gave himself—a shepherd of the sheep who gave himself. Thanks Brother Malcolm…Black lives on. I too am Malcolm X, the oppressed live on. 

***

Lamont Lilly is a graduate student at North Carolina Central University in Durham, NC.

Happy Birthday Hank Aaron!

Happy Birthday Hank Aaron
by Mark Anthony Neal

It was July 8, 1973, and my father had taken me to New York's Shea Stadium, where the Mets were playing the Atlanta Braves. I was 7 years old and a big-time fan of Willie Mays, who was playing for the Mets in his last professional season. But most of the people who came out that day were there to witness another legend. And that legend didn't disappoint -- Hank Aaron belted two home-runs, bringing him that much closer to Babe Ruth's historic record of 714.

I left the stadium a fan of Hammerin' Hank.

Tom Stanton was 12 years old that summer, and as he recalls in "Hank Aaron and the Home Run that Changed America," he was among the tens of thousands of children who wrote to Aaron that year in an effort to "eradicate the evil heaped upon our hero." That so many children felt the need to reach out to Aaron has everything to do with why a single homerun is still seen as emblematic of America's changing race relations.

Racism may not have been wholly responsible for the hate mail Aaron received -- Roger Maris was treated harshly when he was breaking Ruth's single-season homerun record in '61 -- but the memory of Martin Luther King's assassination was still fresh and America was still in the throes of a social movement that was transforming how "race" was lived.

And, of course, Aaron plied his trade in the onetime heart of the Confederacy, a fact he was likely reminded of when he peered out at the empty seats in Atlanta's Fulton County Stadium as he drove toward the record. Sports may have been regarded as one of the arenas where America's racial tensions were defused, but Aaron himself might have disagreed with that premise; many whites moved out of his Atlanta neighborhood after his family arrived in 1967.

Though Aaron discussed his challenges in his '91 autobiography "I Had a Hammer," Stanton draws upon interviews and published comments from Aaron's friends, family, peers and teammates to fill in the blanks in ways that the intensely private Aaron never would have. The comments from former teammates Ralph Garr and Dusty Baker, both of whom Aaron mentored closely, are particularly helpful as they had a bird's-eye view of Aaron's daily state. Sharing the outfield with him, they were well aware that they, too, were targets.

Stanton begins his story not in the spring of 1973, when Aaron's quest began to make news, but the previous autumn, at the funeral of Jackie Robinson. Like many of the black players of his generation, Aaron viewed Robinson as a hero and a role model. And Robinson realized that Aaron was his heir-apparent in the task of agitating for better race relations within the league; particularly important to both men was the hiring of a black manager. Stanton writes that as Aaron sat in New York's Riverside Church, listening to Robinson's eulogy, he "realized that with the sports world focusing on his home-run pursuit, he would be in a position to push the issue."

Aaron didn't break the record during the 1973 season, ending the year two shy of his goal.

In one of the most moving passages of the book, Stanton details the outpouring of emotions that Braves fans -- more than 40,000 of them -- gave Aaron the last day of the season. "All season Aaron had been hitting home runs in Atlanta before sparse gatherings of 3,000 and 5,000 and 9,000," Stanton writes. "Now before this enormous crowd he had failed to hit one -- and still they cheered him."

"But, of course," he adds, "this wasn't about home runs. It was about something else. It was an embrace, an affectionate pat on the back, a way of telling Aaron that those hecklers and letter writers and furious little bigots didn't represent them."

Aaron himself was rarely vocal about the issues swirling around him, but he took stands with the same quiet intensity he brought to the batter's box. His record-tying homer occurred in Cincinnati the following April 4 -- which was, coincidentally, the sixth anniversary of King's assassination. Jesse Jackson, who eulogized Jackie Robinson two years earlier and had long provided spiritual support to Aaron, prodded Hammerin' Hank to ask Cincinnati Reds officials to honor King with a moment of silence before the game. They declined the request. "We don't get into politics. We don't get into race" was the official word from Reds official Dick Wagner.

Measuring Aaron's legacy, Stanton notes that an unusual number of players in his orbit went on to notable careers. Baker, Felipe Alou and Cito Gaston were all at the Braves spring training complex in 1968 and the trio became not only Major League Baseball's most successful minority managers of the last two decades, but arguably three of the best managers of the last two decades, period. (And, of course, a year after Aaron hit number 715, Frank Robinson became the first black manager in major league history.) Aaron's ability to stay focused amidst daily threats was clearly an inspiration to his black and Latino teammates. "My players tell me I can't give a speech without mentioning Hank Aaron," admits Baker. "There are not enough words to show my appreciation for the impact (he) has had on me."

The strength of "Hank Aaron and the Home Run that Changed America" is that you never get the sense that the 12-year-old Stanton we meet at the beginning is very far from the narrative. Aaron's homerun may have made just a small dent in America's racial quagmire -- though sports is a metaphor for America, it is not America itself -- but it clearly helped many young fans, including Stanton, imagine a more equitable world.

Stanton's last book, the well-regarded "The Final Season," was a lament for Detroit's now-gone Tiger Stadium, so it's no surprise that this one is steeped in nostalgia and fandom. But as American youth continue to turn away from baseball, which has been "defiled" by drug accusations and labor disputes, Stanton's book is a laudable attempt to make our passion for the game all right again.

*An earlier version published in the Austin Statesman (2004)

Remembering Duke Ellington

reprinted from Popmatters (1999)

A Duke Ellington Primer

by Mark Anthony Neal

Duke Ellington

The Duke: The Essential Collection, 1927-1961

(Sony/Legacy)

It is only now that we are seriously beginning to explore the complexities of African-American performance. For years it has been so easy to interpret the great Louis Armstrong as a cooning, shuffling sycophant, who was way past his musical prime by the time "Hello Dolly" became his most requested tune. We now know that Armstrong, like so many of his generation, fell victim to a racist society in which he felt compelled to embody America's worst racial fantasies in order to continue to perform his craft. No doubt the experiences of Canada Lee and Paul Robeson, were constant reminders that America would never reward, and would blatantly punish, (Nina, Abbey -- holla if ya hear me) those African Americans who resisted the small spaces they were required to inhabit.

These examples are what make Duke Ellington's legacy even more astounding. Yeah, brother could floss with the best of them (Puffy should take some lessons), but bruh was also all business. For more than 50 years, Ellington used his music to examine the complexities of black life (the shuffling, the hustling, the loving, the scheming and the being) and to challenge the contradictions of American Democracy, contradictions that have, until recently, denied "Duke" his rightful place among other American geniuses. Columbia/Legacy's new box set The Duke attempts to put Ellington's musical legacy into some kind of fitting context. Spanning from 1927-1961, The Duke compiles over 60 Ellington recordings from his most formidable years.

The Duke is one of many products associated with the celebration of the centennial of Ellington's birth. Given the pervading racism of American society and 20th century cultural criticisms, specifically, Ellington was often denied the broad accolades bestowed upon other American composers and musicians like George Gershwin or Benny Goodman, during his lifetime. As Harold Cruse suggests in The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, his fire and brimstone study of black intellectuals, "Ellington could be denied this kind of recognition only because of the undemocratic way the cultural machine in America is run." The irony of Cruse's charges are that Ellington, in many ways, embodied the tenets of American democracy. As Stanley Crouch has asserted, Ellington was "inspired by the majesty he heard coming from musicians of all hues and from all level of training...whenever they said the music was dead, Duke was out there, writing music and performing the meaning of his democratic birthright..." Examples of this practice include the prominent role women vocalists like Ivie Anderson and the great in her own right Mahailia Jackson played in his recordings, his willingness to explore music with African and East Indian influences, and of course his well known and highly prolific musical collaboration with composer and arranger Billy Strayhorn, who was incidentally an "out" homosexual. For Ellington, the big band was a metaphor for Democracy and he composed and arranged songs that took advantage of the myriad of talents and styles contained within his bands

While Ellington is clearly one of the most recognizable black artists of the 20th century, he emerged within a society, industry, and critical establishment that was at best condescending and contentious. The racist social science theories of the likes of John Wesley Powell and Lewis Henry Morgan were widely circulated and legitimized within popular culture (ya gotta check out Lee Baker's brilliant From Savage to Negro), thus powerfully impacting upon public perceptions of African-Americans and their roles within the larger society. Such perceptions were furthered by the presence of the minstrel stage, which fixed an image of African-Americans and their purported antics in the popular imagination.

Unfortunately this occurred at the expense of the real humanity of African-Americans caricatured via those minstrel traditions and those who found humor, including blacks, in those caricatures. The subsequent careers of Ernest T. Hogan, composer of the classic "All Coons Look Alike to Me," the aforementioned Louis Armstrong and Stepin' Fechit, whose cinematic performances became the measurement of "cooning" for many African-American audiences, are better understood when examined within this context. The willingness to describe artists like Miles Davis, Abbey Lincoln, Nina Simone or say Lloyd Price as "angry," was partly related to their refusing to embrace the type coon antics of previous generations of black performers. Somehow, Ellington, through his grace and public humility, was able to find middle ground where he resisted the type performance personas that many of his peers were saddled with, while still articulating a powerful social conscience.

The Duke consist of three discs, the first of which chronicles the years 1927-1940, the second and most potent of the disc captures Ellington recordings from the post-war years of 1947-1952, and the last disc features recordings from 1956-1961. Ellington's restless and boundless creativity allowed him to constantly rework earlier themes and this SONY/Legacy collection exposes some of those efforts. The first disc features tracks like "Black and Tan Fantasy" and an early arrangement of "In a Sentimental Mood," which was given it's most popular treatment in the early '60s when Ellington collaborated with fellow jazz giant John Coltrane. The disc also includes "East St. Louis Toodle-oo" and an early version of "Caravan." Both songs allude to the changing dynamics of African-American life, where the unprecedented migration of blacks from the deep south forced musicians like Ellington to be cognizant of the different regional tastes that could be contained in an singular audience. The most well known song on the disc and perhaps Ellington's most recognizable song is the classic "It Don't Mean a Thing (If it Ain't Got that Swing)" with lead vocals by Ivie Anderson. That "swing" has evolved as an ever changing metaphor for energy and change within African-American culture. Who could forget Malcolm X's admonishment to Civil Rights leaders that it was time to "stop singing and start swinging" or Barry Michael Cooper coining the term "New Jack Swing" to describe the hip-hop/R&B hybrid that Teddy Riley advanced in the late '80s.

The second disc presents the Ellington sound as it is being challenged by the emergence of Be-Bop and Rhythm and Blues. Tracks like the rollicking "Antidisestablishmentarianismist," "Creole Love Call," and "Brown Betty" find Ellington holding on to, if not furthering his vision of the big band. The best testament to Duke's genius was that his popularity did not wane, despite the fact that the big band sound, was for all intents, dead. The jewel of the second disc is the more than seven minute version of "Take the A Train." which features the brilliant vocals of Betty Roche. The song was a reminder that throughout the 20th century, Harlem, remained the Mecca of African-American life. And while other cities clearly influenced what we acknowledge as African-American culture (see Suzanne Smith's Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit), Harlem became, and too some extent still is, the fictive capitol of "Black America." Seemingly every black migrant who stepped off a train at Penn Station or a bus at Port Authority, were told that the quickest way to Harlem was via the "A" train.

The last disc finds Ellington engaging in projects that represented both his broad artistic interests and his willingness to challenge the status quo in the recording industry. "Star-Crossed Lovers' is taken from his 1957 recording Such Sweet Thunder which explored many of the themes prominent in the Shakespearean works, Othello, Henry the Fifth, and A Midsummer's Night Dream. "Come Sunday" is, of course, from his great work Black, Brown, and Beige, which Ellington debuted in 1943. The version contained on disc three of The Duke features the vocals of the legendary gospel singer Mahailia Jackson. Their collaboration on that track and throughout the 1957 recording of Black, Brown, and Beige is perhaps one of the greatest collaborations in all of American popular music. As Wynton Marsalis stated during one of the many events that celebrated Ellington's legacy during the past year, "Duke Ellington is America's most prolific composerof the 20th century, in both number of pieces (almost 2,000) and variety of forms. His artistic development and sustained achievement are among the most spectacular in the history of music." The Duke is a great introduction to Ellington's artistry and achievement.

Celebrating the Queen of Soul's Birthday

Celebrating the Queen of Soul’s Birthday

by Mark Anthony Neal

When on the campaign trail this past year, then Senator Barack Obama was often asked about his taste in music. Without fail, Obama would answer that Aretha Franklin was his favorite singer. Apropos choice for a candidate who, perhaps managed political risk, better than any candidate in modern history. Indeed you’d be hard pressed to find any American music lover over the age of 30 who would profess anything but affection for the woman who has been, for more than 40 years, simply known as “The Queen of Soul.” President Obama’s choice of Aretha Franklin to sing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” at his inauguration, was an informal acknowledgment of what we’ve all known; Franklin is simply a national treasure.

In celebration of Aretha Franklin’s life and career, on this her 67^th birthday, I’d like to offer a playlist of great Aretha Franklin performances. And while there are literally dozens of “best of” collections that put Franklin’s career in proper perspective, I’d like to offer performances that can’t regularly be heard on your local oldies station.

This Bitter Earth (1964)

Franklin’s A Tribute to Dinah Washington, was a public nod to the legacy of one of her most important influences (the other being gospel singer Clara Ward). Recorded when Franklin was still wallowing on the Columbia label, where the legendary John Hammond had signed her, “This Bitter Earth” may be the best inkling of the genius that was to come. Only 22-years old when she recorded this Dinah Washington classic, it was clear that Franklin was someone who had a grasp of many disparate popular forms, as well as the Gospel tradition.

Trouble in Mind (1965)

With jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell in tow and Ms. Franklin herself on piano, “Trouble in Mind” is rollicking gutbucket rendition of a 1926 Blues classic, written by Richard M. Jones and initially performed by Bertha “Chippie” Hill, with Louis Armstrong accompanying on cornet. The song highlights the spiritual component of the blues (I’m goin’ down to the river/I’m gonna take my old rockin' chair/Oh and if those blues overtake me/I’m gonna rock on away from here), which made it a perfect choice for Franklin, who finessed the line between Gospel and Blues better that anyone since the father of gospel Thomas Dorsey.

Take a Look (1967)

“Take a Look” was the title track of Franklin’s final studio recording for Columbia, released as she was walking into Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals to record her Atlantic debut. Written by famed songwriter Johnny Otis , who produced Dinah Washington’s recording of “This Bitter Earth,” the song highlights all the missed opportunities that the label had to really make Franklin a major star. With the Civil Rights Movement as a backdrop, “Take a Took” is an earnest call for peace and tolerance, just as Franklin herself would play a more public role in the struggle for Civil Rights.

So Long (1969)

By the time that Franklin’s Soul ’69 was released, she was already at the center of a seismic shift in popular music, which established her as a major crossover pop star and making her, arguably, the most popular black woman performer ever. On the strength of groundbreaking releases such as I Have Never Love a Man (1967), Aretha Arrives (1967), Lady Soul (1968) and Aretha Now (1968), Franklin could afford to look back and pay tribute. Covering a range of pop and blues classics including Percy Mayfield’s “River’s Invitation” and childhood friend Smokey Robinson’s “Tracks of My Tears,” the clear highlight is Franklin’s rendition of “So Long.” Simply put the song ranks as one of Franklin’s most exquisite performances ever.

It Ain’t Fair/Share Your Love with Me (1970)

By 1970, even Ms. Franklin was feeling the push of changing tastes, eventually adapting with the toe-tapper “Rock Steady.” In the meantime she held her own doing the music that she wanted to do. In the larger scheme of things, The Girl’s in Love with You (1970) is easily lost among her more visible outings, but it is arguably one of her finest recordings. Though the sublime “Call Me” and “Son of a Preacher Man” (a tossup between Ms. Aretha and Ms. Dusty, me thinks) are the more well known tracks on the album, which also included two Lennon and McCartney songs, “It Ain’t Fair” and ‘Share Your Love with Me” are examples of an artist who is just on the cusp of being in full control of her artistic capacity.

Sprit in the Dark/Spirit in the Dark (Reprise)(1971)

In February of 1971, Ms. Franklin headed to the Bay Area to do three nights at the famed Filmore West, with saxophonist King Curtis serving as opening act and musical director. The dates were an opportunity for Franklin to reach out to the counter-culture that coalesced in the region. Thus Franklin’s versions of Stephen Stills’s “Love the One Your With” and Bread’s “Make it With You” were obvious concessions on Live at the Filmore West (though the former is quite brilliant), but the Filmore West dates were also about exposing the Hippie crowd to the power of Southern Soul and nowhere is that more evident than Franklin’s final night performance of “Spirit in the Dark.” Initially recorded as a studio track, Franklin’s live version heightens the dramatic tension between the spiritual and the sexual world. But in a move that could have gone awry, Ray Charles who was in attendance for the performance, joins Franklin on stage for an 17-minute musical thesis on the importance of black music. Midway through, Franklin gives up her seat at the electric piano to Charles, and notes well into his solo, “it’s funky up in here.” Nearly 40 years later, the performance stands one of the greatest moments in the careers of both artists, if not one of the great live recordings in all of pop music. The late great Billy Preston and noted session guitarist Cornell Dupree were among the band members that night.

A Brand New Me (1972)

Though Franklin had long been aligned with the Civil Rights Movement, because of the work of her father The Rev. CL Franklin, her 1972 recording Young, Gifted, and Black might serve as her most explicit political statement. Her rendition of Nina Simone’s “Young, Gifted and Black” stands on its own, but one of the gems of the recording, which includes tracks originally recorded by the likes of The Delphonics, The Beatles, Elton John and Otis Redding, is Franklin’s take on the Jerry Butler classic “A Brand New Me.” One of the early efforts of Kenny Gamble and Huff and recorded by Franklin just as the duo were establishing Philadelphia International Records, “A Brand New Me” highlights her Jazz sensibilities. Her piano solo midway, is worth the price of admission.

Oh Baby (1974)

“Oh Baby” is a true obscurity from Franklin’s career. Tucked away on her largely forgettable 1974 recording Let Me In Your Life, which included her retread of Stevie Wonder’s “Until You Come Back to Me” (which many forget he originally recorded), “Oh Baby” is the portrait of an artist at the peak of her powers. A sweet song in its own right and one that Franklin penned herself, the tonal colors and pitch of her performance are simply amazing, especially during the final minute of the song. At age 32, Franklin could have retired and her legacy would still remain intact.

Don’t Waste Your Time w/Mary J. Blige(199)

After a string of success with Clive Davis and the Arista machine in the 1980s (at least until Ms. Whitney capture Mr. Davis’s attention), Franklin was ”re-introduced” in 1998 courtesy of a production collaboration with Lauryn Hill. A savvy commercial move, “A Rose is Still a Rose” was Franklin’s last “hit.” A year later Franklin, against all acceptable logic at the time, went in the studio with Mary J. Blige to record “Don’t Waste Your Time.” The song appeared on Mary (1999), which is in my mind, Blige’s career defining recording. Though Blige has never possessed Franklin’s technical skills, they very much share a relationship as the emotional centers of their respective generations.