The annual King Holiday Observance is a time that we celebrate, commemorate and honor the life, legacy and impact of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The King Center’s theme for this year is “Mission Possible: Protecting Freedom, Justice, and Democracy in the Spirit of Nonviolence365”. Focusing on nonviolence every day of the year—and not just on this weekend which includes the presidential inauguration that many fear will lead to increased violence—is a lofty goal.

I’ve told the story before of being in a meeting following the 2016 election. Several white participants were close to apoplectic in their concern over what the country had just done. But two older, very accomplished African-American friends had a less emotional reaction. Yes, they were concerned about what was to come but they were not surprised at the white community’s backlash against the nation’s first Black president. * They reminded us that their families—their mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and grandfathers—had always dealt with adversity in this land of opportunity. It went along with being Black in America. They persevered and they never gave up hope. Their unspoken message to us was if they did it in the midst of the oppression they faced, then persevering was the least we could do from our positions of privilege.

I remember their example and courage today and whenever I’m feeling hopeless. And this weekend, I turn to the music of hope and perseverance to help focus on the work ahead.

In his farewell address to the nation, President Biden noted the “short distance between peril and possibility” but promised that “what I believe is the America of our dreams is always closer than we think. It’s up to us to make our dreams come true.”

If we want to make our dreams come true and save our democracy, it is well past time for white Americans to join with all people of good intentions; dig into our deep history of racism fueled by greed; and fully commit to the hard, antiracist work to repudiate white supremacy and the corresponding minority rule that is a feature of that vile belief system. 

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THE BLACK NATIONAL ANTHEM

There’s no better place to start this look at peril and possibility than with the Black National Anthem. With words by James Weldon Johnson and music by his brother John, Lift Every Voice and Sing was written at the turn of the 20th century, a time when Jim Crow laws were beginning to take hold across the South and Blacks were looking for an identity. In a way that was both gloriously uplifting and starkly realistic, it spoke to the history of the dark journey of African Americans.

“Lift ev’ry voice and sing

‘Til earth and heaven ring

Ring with the harmonies of Liberty

Let our rejoicing rise

High as the list’ning skies

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun

Let us march on ’til victory is won“

“It allows us to acknowledge all of the brutalities and inhumanities and dispossession that came with enslavement, that came with Jim Crow, that comes still today with disenfranchisement, police brutality, dispossession of education and resources,” Shana Redmond — author of Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora — says. “It continues to announce that we see this brighter future, that we believe that something will change.”

“Stony the road we trod

Bitter the chastening rod

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died

Yet with a steady beat

Have not our weary feet

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered

Out from the gloomy past

‘Til now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast“

While there are many versions by great artists, the one I learned is the one sung by choirs and congregations in church. Here is that version from late November 2016—another auspicious time—at Abyssinian Baptist Church.

“God of our weary years

God of our silent tears

Thou who has brought us thus far on the way

Thou who has by Thy might

Led us into the light

Keep us forever in the path, we pray

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee

Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee

Shadowed beneath Thy hand

May we forever stand

True to our God

True to our native land“

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RUTHIE FOSTER

The Grammy-nominated 2020 album Ruthie Foster’s Big Band Live at the Parmount includes Woke Up This Morning, a freedom song created in 1961 from the old gospel favorite I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on Jesus. The song was written by The Rev. Robert Wesby of Aurora, Illinois, who sang it in the Hinds County, Mississippi, jail after his arrest and incarceration during the Freedom Rides. Foster takes us to church and to the streets with her powerful version.

We need to walk and talk with our mind “stayed on freedom.” For everyone, not just the wealthy.

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ARETHA AND MAVIS

So much of the music of the Civil Rights era was built off of gospel music. O Happy Day with Mavis Staples and Aretha Franklin brings together two of the greatest and most powerful Soul and Rhythm & Blues voices not just of their generation, but of all time. (Check out the interplay at about the 1:50 segment and then again at 4:00. Good gawd!)

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RHIANNON GIDDENS

Rhiannon Giddens has, in her own way and on her own path, become a true musical treasure. In the powerful I’m On My Way, she sings “I don’t know where I’m going, but I know what to do.”

“I don’t know the hour that finds me in this room

Dust around my feet and still no sugar in my spoon

But I’ve only got the taste for something sweet as time

Not bottled on the table but still hanging on the vine

I don’t know where I’m going But I’m on my way

Lord if you love me Keep me I pray

A little bird is stretching out to the shimmering, shaking blue

Don’t know where I’m going But I know what to do

Don’t know where I’m going But I know what to do“

Several years ago Giddens updated the old Civil Rights anthem Freedom Highway, which has the great line, “made up my mind that I’m not turning around,” something we all need to do in this day and age.

The Giddens version of Wayfaring Stranger captures the tune’s haunting, yet ultimately hopeful message. We’re all strangers in a strange land, yet we still must persevere.

In a more modern tune, Giddens sings Keep On Keepin’ On with the Silkroad Ensemble, where she’s the artistic director.

One foot in front of the other. Day after day. Its what we have to do.

More to come . . .

DJB

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*This past election cycle we could note that the backlash was against a woman of color who was running for the nation’s highest honor.

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Image of MLK Memorial by Michael Wilson from Pixabay