On the Shoulders of Giants

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  That same June, as a favor to Dr. Clarke, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the participants of the HARYOU program. Dr. King was still a few months away from being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but he had already been announced as Time magazine’s Man of the Year. I had always been a little skeptical of his unbending belief in nonviolence. He’d once written:

  Conditions are such for Negroes in America that all Negroes ought to be fighting aggressively…. The nonviolent demonstrator…sees the misery of his people so clearly that he volunteers to suffer in their behalf and put an end to their plight…. Violence, even in self-defense, creates more problems than it solves. Only a refusal to hate or kill can put an end to the chain of violence in the world and lead us toward a community where men can live together without fear. Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.

  I didn’t exactly believe in violence, but I had trouble believing we were ever going to get what was due us without putting up a fight. Still, like most African-Americans, I couldn’t help but admire Dr. King’s courage, dedication, and boundless optimism. When he spoke, all things did indeed seem possible, even “a community where men can live together without fear.”

  I was honored to have the opportunity to attend Dr. King’s speech. Even better, I was going to cover the event as a journalist for our publication. My press credentials allowed me to take part in the press conference Dr. King held after his address. There I was, a seventeen-year-old kid huddled together with all these seasoned members of the mainstream media, scribbling away in my pad. Holding my tape recorder in my shaking hand, I finally got up the courage to ask Dr. King a question of my own: “What do you think the significance of Dr. Clarke’s program is to the people of Harlem?” Dr. King replied that there was no doubt the program would be successful. In fact, it already was a success, because from that day forward, I understood what I needed to do with my life. I knew it had to be something that affected the African-American community in a positive way.

  Then the inevitable happened. Just as Langston Hughes had warned in his prophetic poem “Dream Deferred,” Harlem exploded.

  It was July 19. A hot, muggy Sunday. Everything was sticky: my clothes, the subway seats, people’s stares, even the air. After spending a lazy day at the beach, I was returning home when I decided to stop off at 125th Street to browse for jazz records before meeting up with some friends. I’d heard about a CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) rally that was supposed to take place around the same time, so I thought I’d check it out, see if there was anything newsworthy I might write about. The rally was to protest the shooting death of fifteen-year-old African-American James Powell by a white off-duty police officer, Lieutenant Thomas Gilligan. The shooting had occurred two days before and there’d been peaceful protests throughout the city ever since.

  Stepping out of the subway entrance was like walking into a war zone.

  Gunshots echoed. Glass shattered. A thousand desperate feet pounded past me.

  I ducked behind a lamppost, wondering where the shots were coming from. People were smashing storefront windows, running wild through the streets either in fear or in rage. The riot had started outside the 123rd Street police station a couple blocks from where I was crouching. Rocks, bricks, and bottles were hurled, garbage cans were set on fire, and retail stores were looted, including those selling guns. A police officer with a megaphone had tried to calm the situation by shouting, “Go home! Go home!” One of the crowd shouted back, “We are home, baby!”

  Now here I was, running and panting along with everyone else, scared that my height would make me an easy target for a nervous cop. Yet, I also felt part of the collective rage that emanated from the people running beside me. We were running hard and fast, fueled by anger and frustration, dragging behind us the heavy chains of history. Those thick chains scraping the pavement had caused the sparks that ignited this night. Maybe if we ran hard and fast and far enough, they’d disintegrate and we could break through the time barrier and emerge all fresh and rested in the Harlem imagined by those visionaries of the Harlem Renaissance: a Mecca, a Paradise—a Home.

  But those were the fevered dreams born of fear and anger. As much as I admired Dr. King, tonight I just wanted to pick up a brick and throw it. For the cop who shot James Powell. For Coach Donahue. For the teachers at Power who didn’t think it important to teach us about anyone with a black face. Of course, I didn’t. I had learned enough about history from my own studies at Schomburg Center to realize that looting and bricks didn’t effect real change. Some government suits would make a sympathetic speech, create a panel that would investigate the causes, dump some money on a couple neighborhoods, plant a few trees here and there, and hope the dragon would go back to sleep for another ten years. When it would be some other politician’s problem.

  The next morning I showed up at the office of the journal and we decided to put out a special issue about the riots. We interviewed local residents, writing down their eyewitness accounts, chronicling for history what the white media was ignoring. While they were busy tabulating the property damage and police injuries, we were tabulating the cost to the community, to the individuals’ spirits, to the hope of easing racial tensions. And that cost was high. That night the people took to the streets again, with the rioting spreading all the way to the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The city authorities declared a state of emergency in Harlem and banned all demonstrations. A “state of emergency”? Were they kidding? Harlem had been in a state of emergency for thirty years; that’s why people were rioting!

  The riots lasted five days, with one person being killed, 100 injured, and 520 arrested. Later, the FBI would classify the riots as an attack on “all constituted authority.” Our little band of teenage journalists could have told them that much. Hell, Zora Neale Hurston said as much when she wrote, “Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.”

  A week after the riots ended I was back up at Coach Donahue’s Friendship Farm. After everything that had just happened, I could barely stand to look at the name of the place without wanting to break something. When my three-week sentence was up, I returned to Harlem, walking the same streets where I had so recently been running for my life. The rioting was over, much of the white press were condemning Harlemites as a bunch of thugs looking for an excuse to loot a new TV. Yeah, there was some of that. But that was like saying the Boston Tea Party was a bunch of looters after free tea. Did we really fight the American Revolution so we could get cheaper tea?

  There’s a famous poem called “Harlem.” Nobody knows who the author is, which is appropriate because it has the plaintive feel of a silent prayer, as if anybody who lives in Harlem might be thinking it. Or everybody.

  Chant another song of Harlem;

  Not about the wrong of Harlem

  But the worthy throng of Harlem,

  Proud that they belong to Harlem;

  They, the over-blamed of Harlem

  Need not be ashamed of Harlem;

  All is not ill-famed in Harlem,

  The devil, too, is tamed in Harlem.

  As I walked along the streets of Harlem, I realized that this summer had been a rite of passage for me, a leap from being a child of the projects to being a citizen of Harlem. I knew what my history was, who my people were—and where my future pointed.

  The Harlem Within

  I left Harlem to attend UCLA when I was eighteen. But in the more than forty years since then, Harlem has never left me. When I think back on that summer from the heights of the giants’ shoulders I have since stood on, I can see much more clearly what effect it had on me. I’m reminded of the last line in Stephen Crane’s story “Open Boat.” After the four survivors of a shipwreck brave a turbulent sea to make shore in their leaking lifeboat, the strongest and best person among them having drowned, they stand on the shore, looking out at the sinister water, trying to make sense of the horrible
experience: “When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight, and the wind brought the sound of the great sea’s voice to the men on shore, and they felt that they could then be interpreters.”

  In the end, that’s the point of it all, isn’t it? To not just endure hardship and turmoil, but to make sense of it all so we don’t have to endure it again. So, a few lessons emerged from turmoil of that summer, lessons I’ve applied throughout my life. First, it isn’t enough to just read history. That’s something else I’d learned from Zora Neale Hurston: “Learning without wisdom is a load of books on a donkey’s back.” To read about the past for the sake of curiosity is merely gossiping disguised as study, not much different from reading a glossy magazine to find out what cologne Brad Pitt prefers. What’s really important is what we do with the information we discover; how we use it to motivate ourselves into some form of action to better our own lives and the lives of those in our community. Action doesn’t always have to be attending rallies or marching, it can also be much more personal, such as helping a neighbor, volunteering in a classroom, or teaching our children about our collective past and our collective values.

  Second, I learned the value of educating myself. Even the well-meaning teachers at my schools taught only the same things they’d been taught, using conservative textbooks that repeated the same propaganda that had been repeated before. As Malcolm X said, “I’ve had enough of somebody else’s propaganda. I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” Why trust in authority figures that have time and again demonstrated their unwillingness to tell the truth? Where were the black faces in the Bible, in my schoolbooks, in the author’s photo on the novels we were assigned to read? Why was Marcus Garvey, one of the most beloved black leaders in the world, portrayed in the white press as a buffoon? Why was Malcolm X, who calmly articulated the frustrations of many of his people, referred to as a “hatemonger,” “troublemaker,” and “the angriest black man in America”? I would never forget that first day at the Schomburg Center as I pored over book after book about the enormous accomplishments of African-Americans in every field—the arts, science, education, politics—all at a time when everything around them conspired to discourage their achievements. After all they’d had to overcome to fulfill their dreams, wasn’t it even worse to ignore them? That library was a portal through which I could see the real world, not just the one I’d been shown in carefully edited books. Every day I spent there I felt lighter, as if some unknown burden was being eased off me. When I stepped out of that building, I was energized and inspired. Seeing all that had been accomplished before me, I felt I could do no less. But what about all those black kids who only know what they’ve been taught by those who only know what they’ve been taught? What hope did they have of recognizing their talents within? I learned it isn’t enough to be content with whatever paltry “facts” the school system teaches our children, we must teach them ourselves to have a curiosity about the world, a skepticism about anything they’re told is true, and the skill to find out the truth for themselves.

  The third thing I learned from that summer of violence was the power of words. The ability to clearly, logically, and passionately articulate ideas goes much further in effecting long-lasting change than the buy-us-off chump change politicians hand out whenever someone tosses a brick through a Circuit City window. Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech opened more hearts and doors than any burning car. Malcolm X’s “Brotherhood” speech following his pilgrimage to Mecca brought more respect to Islam and support for civil rights than the sight of armed young Muslims in black suits. Words are not meant to placate anger or diminish it in any way. The anger was real, justified, and well earned. But the point was to use that anger to change the circumstances that caused the anger. And history showed us that wasn’t going to happen by burning down our own neighborhoods, it was going to happen by registering to vote and using those votes as a currency to purchase change.

  Some historians believe the economic blow of the Great Depression of the early 1930s killed the Harlem Renaissance. Some historians say the Harlem Renaissance ended not because of the Great Depression, but because Prohibition was repealed. Once liquor was available anywhere, white people stopped coming to Harlem and black fell out of vogue. Harlem Renaissance stride pianist Willie “the Lion” Smith observed, “It was legal liquor that did to Harlem what scarcer tips and shuttered warehouses had failed to do.” It would be sad indeed to think that one of the greatest artistic and intellectual movements in American history was fueled only by booze. But it’s no worse than believing the hard economic times meant African-Americans couldn’t afford a Harlem Renaissance, just when they most needed the principles it taught.

  Anyway, I don’t agree. The Harlem Renaissance didn’t end, only its popularity among white people ended. True, that fade from black had serious repercussions. Fewer white publishers willing to take a chance on black writers. Fewer records by black musicians sold, fewer Broadway plays by black playwrights, fewer black artists commissioned to paint murals or sculpt public statues. But in the crucible of those bad times, without the faddish support of white benefactors, the black community proved what it was made of. They endured, just as did white America, but with a lot fewer resources and opportunities. And in that atmosphere in which less is less, many African-Americans distinguished themselves. The public relations part of the Renaissance may have died, but the effects it had created were stronger than ever. Just because the gardener who planted a seed retires, that doesn’t stop the plant from growing. Even though Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, and Wallace Thurman stopped commanding attention, James Baldwin (Go Tell It on the Mountain, 1953), Richard Wright (Native Son, 1940), and Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man, 1952) sprouted up to take their place. Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey might have faded from view, but Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, and Ella Fitzgerald commanded attention.

  The Harlem Renaissance had pried open a lot of reluctant doors, and those who came after learned how to shoulder those doors open even wider. The guiding principles of the Renaissance survived and flourished, despite the Depression, despite the repeal of Prohibition, despite the imprisonment of Marcus Garvey, despite the assassinations of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., despite the drugs that infested the streets for three decades, despite being ignored by politicians, both black and white. Those principles still survive today and are more important than ever: (1) study your own people’s history to see what greatness has been achieved and to realize what greatness you are capable of; (2) educate yourselves, not just by mimicking what your teachers or leaders say, regardless of their color, but by honing your mind to think critically; (3) dedicate yourself to your community so that when one member moves ahead, we all move ahead together; (4) and maybe most important of all, sing, dance, and laugh. The Harlem Renaissance was born out of severe repression and hardship, yet it produced some of the liveliest, most joyous music ever heard.

  Life challenges us: to do the right thing when everyone else isn’t; to show mercy and compassion when others show hate and spite; to be patient and steadfast when others try to push us in different directions. I’ve seen a lot of photos of Malcolm X looking dour or thoughtful or holding a gun. And I’ve seen a lot of photos of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. looking determined or hopeful or earnest. But the photo of them that I like most—that inspires me as much as any speech either ever made—is the one in which they’re standing next to each other and they are both laughing heartily as if one of them just farted. That’s how I’d like to remember both of them, as embodiments of the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance that helped create them. Despite criticism and threats from whites and blacks, they never lost their dedication and commitment to their people. And rather than despair at all that needed to be done, they celebrated the good that had been accomplished, still able to laugh at what is
joyous and ridiculous in life.

  Fats Waller said about playing music, “You get that right tickin’ rhythm, man, and it’s on!” Same thing with life. All those lessons from the Harlem Renaissance are like possible notes we could play in the song that is our daily life. We each need to find the right rhythm.

  And it’s on!

  “Master Intellects

  and Creative Giants”

  The “Talented Tenth”

  Paint the World Black

  Gladly would I urge the Negro masses to take an active part in the revolution, just to see them, for one moment emerge from their innate sluggishness, massacre their ministers, and perhaps, in the interim, give birth to a few exceptional individuals capable of arising above the mob, Communism, Christianity, and all other such doctrines to become master intellects and creative giants.

  writer WALLACE THURMAN

  The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races.

  writer and civil rights activist W. E. B. DU BOIS

  In the Beginning Was the Word

  Every social movement needs fiery spokespersons to, as the poet says, inspire the masses to get off their asses. Without Thomas Jefferson’s and Thomas Paine’s impassioned political analyses, Americans might still be part of Great Britain. Without Abbie Hoffman’s carefully crafted rants, the hippie movement might just have been a bad fashion statement. Without Gloria Steinem, Simone de Beauvoir, and Betty Friedan, women might still have their faces hopelessly pressed against the glass ceiling.