The Last Holiday

by Gil Scott-Heron

  It also gave Stevie Wonder’s tour and his quest for a national holiday for a man of peace more substance, more fundamental legitimacy. Not just to me. Everyone seemed to understand a little better where Stevie was coming from and what this campaign was all about:

  It went from somewhere back down memory lane

  To hey motherfuckers out there! There are still folks who are insane

  In 1968 this crowd was eight to twelve years old

  And they weren’t Beatle maniacs but they did know rock and roll.

  The politics of right and wrong make everything complicated

  To a generation who’s never had a leader assassinated

  But suddenly it feels like ’68 and as far back as it seems

  One man says “Imagine” and the other says “I have a dream.”

  Stevie took his heart with him onstage some nights. Both parts of his heart. The warm part and the part that sat in fear. It showed his feelings. In the whole arena that night in Oakland there could not have been a legitimate doubt about his sincerity. His respect for Dr. King and his friendship for John Lennon took shape and gained dimension as he left the campaign trail and gave seventeen thousand that could have been seventeen million or just seventeen a look at what most men will deny they have: an inside where all the insanity and madness of this world really hurt and enraged you.

  I had felt a little of that from Stevie before. It was simmering there on 20/20 when he was creating a song for Barbara Walters. It was in his voice in Boston, Massachusetts, when he stopped a show to review that city’s record of racism. It was a grasp of an essence of things about life that far exceeded whether Stevie could hold a note or play a scale or write his name, much less a tune. This was a man whose humanity and compassion was real, as visible and as certain as the tears that seeped from beneath his dark glasses and flowed freely down his face onto his clothes. Tears he never bothered to wipe away.

  Stevie’s talking was like a jazz solo, spontaneous and immediate, an expression so honest as to be almost embarrassing. I was trying to find things to look for around my shoes as tears took a front-row seat in my eyes.

  Later, I could not remember us playing those last two songs, though I was sure we had. I could only bring back three solid images of that night, two of Stevie: the first one was of the brother standing there waiting for me at the bottom of those stairs. The second was of him standing alone in that spotlight, crying. And the third was of me standing there next to Santana with our eyes sweeping the floor as though there was really something to look for.

  I carried one other memory out of Oakland with me. It was about an article in the paper the next morning, a review of the show that slammed both me and Stevie to the floor, starting with the first paragraph: How dare I be called the Minister of Information, it said, and how dare Stevie be called the Ambassador of Love to the world, when neither of us had the decency to mention that a friend or a fraternal brother had been killed.

  The implication of this was racist in its nature. It implied that because I was Black and Stevie was Black and John Lennon was white and therefore not a “Soul Brother,” that there had been no mention from the stage about the murder.

  Keg Leg was outraged: “What the hell he talkin’ ’bout, boss? Stevie standing up there all that time talking!”

  “It’s about the deadline, Keg,” I tried to explain. “In order to get that article in the paper this morning the reporter had to leave by 11:00. And Stevie didn’t start talking until 11:30.”

  What that meant was that seventeen thousand people knew what happened, but three hundred thousand read in the paper the next morning that both Stevie and I were far less than we ever intended to be.

  39

  January 15, 1981

  What’s amazing about people who are supposed to “think of everything” is how many things have never crossed their minds. It’s obvious that what that expression is meant to indicate focuses on a specific subject, like whatever is going on in your life or what you’re involved with at the time. By the middle of January 1981, I should have known a whole lot more than I did about what I was involved in and what was going on in my life.

  That was never more clear to me than when I saw how things looked from the back of the outdoor stage set up on the Washington D.C. monument grounds as Stevie’s rally for Dr. King got under way. I can’t even explain to you how little I knew, but I will try to explain it to you the way it occurred to me.

  I would never claim to be the smartest son of a gun on the planet. If I had claimed that, all of you readers would know by now that I was lying. But by the same token, by then I had been in this business for ten years and had to feel as though I knew more than when I started. And also, by then, I had been working on the Hotter than July tour for ten weeks, and had some new information crossing my mind as I climbed the back stairs onto the temporary stage and looked out at perhaps fifty thousand people standing shoulder-to-shoulder across the expanse of the Mall chanting, “Martin Luther King Day, we took a holiday!”

  As of January 15, I could look back ten weeks to Halloween since I’d been working on the Hotter than July tour. It was a project that, when taken as a whole, was set up to cover sixteen weeks, or four months, a third of a year. The endeavor was cut into two six-week halves with a break, a rest period, that lasted a month. Since the tour had gone on break from the West Coast in mid-December, my life had not been free of upset and disruption, but businesswise and musicwise things were on schedule. My new album, called Real Eyes, had been released around the first of December; some support for our performances over the next two months or so could be expected. That meant everyone would get paid and some of the music I was writing and arranging for our virtually new configuration with the horn section was starting to fit. That was good.

  In essence, this rally was the halftime show before the second six-week half. But if you’ve ever seen the Florida A&M marching band, just how long do you think it takes to perfect those steps, formations, baton tosses, improvisations, and instrument playing?

  So nobody that I could see up there seemed likely to jump up and start majoretting up and down Constitution Avenue, but I was pleased to see how many people thought Stevie was worth supporting.

  One thing that knocked me out looking at this halftime show was how much I had not thought about. Like how much work was involved in organizing a fucking rally. That was what Stevie had done and what had to have taken up so much of his offstage time when we were playing and what must have consumed what I was calling a “rest period,” the month off between December 15 and today, Dr. King’s birthday. This had to have dominated a great deal of his time and probably much more of his thoughts. The rally. Ways to publicize it, ways to dramatize it, ways to legitimize it.

  Some of it was obvious. You had to have permits, like a license to have a parade. That seemed bizarre, but it took a necessary number of police to close certain streets or divert traffic or just stand around looking like police. And on the monument grounds there were wooden saw horses and security and crowd restraints and a stage and sound equipment and technicians to set it all up and run it. And I was enjoying another piece of equipment I felt was necessary: a heat-blowing machine to warm my chilly backside.

  I had no idea what this was costing, what the total expenses were. Nor did I ever ask about it and have the expenses incurred by Stevie neurotically concealed from me. I didn’t have any way to justify saying, “Hey, just what the hell is this gonna cost?”

  I considered that this information was probably something that was being distributed on a need to know basis, and apparently I did not have that. I didn’t worry about why.

  My respect for Stevie Wonder expanded in every direction that day. I was following his lead like a member of his band, because seeing as he had envisioned was a new level of believing. It was something that seeped in softly, and when you were personally touched by someone’s effort and genuine sincerity, your brain said you didn’t yet understand but your so
ul said you should trust.

  We had been to Mayor Marion Barry’s office earlier in the day. There I was introduced to the winner of a citywide essay contest that had run in the D.C. school system. The theme of the essay was why Dr. King’s birthday should be a national holiday, and the contest was open to middle and high school students. A seventh grader won, and I thought the fact that he was in the seventh grade was the headline out of that. After they introduced us, I took a few minutes to read his essay so I would know what to be listening for—my cue when he came to the end, because now, at the rally, I would present him to the crowd.

  It was a gray winter day, the type of gray that looked permanent, not bothered with clouds or memories of blue. Gray, sullen, not threatening but sporting an attitude. Somebody was organizing things, checking out how many speakers were on hand who wanted to say a few words.

  When we got to the part of the program where the kid was to read his essay, I introduced him and walked back offstage. I kept one ear on the loudspeakers because I had to be on it when he was through. That would be no more than five minutes, max.

  At some stage, I heard the kid having trouble reading his own essay. I thought he might have been nervous with the big crowd and the TV audience, it must have felt like everybody in the world was watching him. I could hear the crowd getting restless and a couple of folks started giving the kid a hard time. Suddenly, mid-sentence, or maybe in the middle of a word, the kid stopped. He turned around and went back to his seat. It was a seat of honor, right behind the podium in the middle of the stage.

  It was quiet now, just a sprinkle of sympathetic applause. I found my list of speakers and introduced the next one, but I realized something had gone wrong. As the next speaker approached the podium, I went over to the kid and said, “Let me see that essay there, brotherman.”

  And sure enough, he had stopped at the top of his second page, a good five or six paragraphs from the end. He had been reading from a mimeographed copy of his essay, and the ink was faded—I would have needed night goggles or some shit to see what was on that paper.

  I waited until that next speaker was through, then went up there and explained to the audience that I was going to introduce the kid again, and that he was going to read his essay to the end, and that they were going to listen. Yeah, I knew it was cold, I said, but it was cold for this kid, too, and he was reading from a faded copy, and I didn’t want to hear nothing from the crowd but applause, period. “Have some patience with the young brother, please.”

  After I introduced him, I walked backstage again. He started to read again, and I heard him coming to the point where he had faltered, the part on the page that was damn near invisible. He started to falter again, and I listened for some wiseass to say something. But then it started to go smoothly, and I looked over and there was Diana Ross standing next to him with her arm around his shoulder. Without being in the way, without making it her essay, she helped him over those rough spots. My man’s confidence got a lift and the crowd started to appreciate what he had written. I stood there thinking, There must be thirty or forty adults up here on this stage, and she’s the only one of us who thought to go up there and help the brother!

  Jesse Jackson spoke, too. His attitude was about changing the laws and about people needing to know more about Thurgood Marshall and needing to know more about what happened, because the way to change America was through the law. You see, if you don’t change the law, you don’t change anything. You could burn your community down and somebody else would build it up; all you were doing was burning down some houses. But if you changed the law, then you had done a whole lot to change the foundation of society.

  To be sure, I looked at the appearances there and then as a tribute for respect for Dr. King. But they were also an indication of respect for a brother for taking a step to bring a positive idea forward, to remind some of us that we could hardly criticize congressmen and other representatives for inaction if their attempts to push ideas important to us out in the open received no visible interest from those it purportedly would benefit most.

  Yeah, this piece of legislation to make Dr. King’s birthday into a national holiday looked like a long shot, especially being raised just after America had elected Ronald Reagan, who would be inaugurated at the other end of the Mall in five days. But if our community was to make valuable contributions, then those who made them had to be recognized as offering something of value. Why would the next one of us feel that he or she should make the effort, marshal the strength, and somehow fortify him or herself against the opposition that always seemed stronger, longer, with more bonified, bona fide other side, if even a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize was ignored where those efforts for peace had done the most good?

  Something was wrong with ignoring a man here that the world had acknowledged everywhere. To bring about a change inside the minds of people is difficult. That’s why there are books and teachers and laws. A change in people’s hearts is even more difficult to gauge. There has to be some sign from those who represent them in a society where folks live together without touching. There has to be some assurance that we have learned that those who showed the world did not present offerings that only people outside our country needed. Certainly recognition of a Desmond Tutu or a Martin Luther King by panels of objective individuals pointed out the value of those they honored beyond the constrictions of geography; that the work they did, in essence, came from this or that community but was of value to all mankind. How could this country purport to lead mankind and ignore what mankind needed and respected? Any American, raised in an atmosphere of abuse and violence, who suggested that centuries of deliberate discrimination could be overcome without responding to the oppressors in kind was not just valuable, but invaluable.

  This was what Dr. King signified and this was what Stevie Wonder was calling on America to honor. All holidays should not be set aside for generals. To have the country honor men for doing what they did at a time when difficult personal decisions made their actions worthwhile for the overall good meant the same thing for all citizens.

  That had been both the point and the ultimate disappointment of what had once been called “the Civil Rights movement.” What was special about the 1960s was that there was only one thing happening, one movement. And that was the Civil Rights movement. There were different organizations coming from different angles because of geography, but in essence everybody had the same objective. It came so suddenly from so many different angles, things happening in so many different towns and cities at once, that the “powers that be” were caught off guard.

  The powers had taken control when Eisenhower was elected. He held office while they secured a grip around our throats. He even spoke about it before he left office. But there was a fuckup. An oversight. They overlooked the same folks that they always overlooked. See, this was not long after Ralph Ellison had summed us up in Invisible Man. We were the last item on the last page of the last program. But that didn’t last. Because the last thing they had counted on was active dissent. Until the 1960s “the movement” had been the exclusive property of middle aged and old people. Then it became a young people thing, and as the 1960s opened up, the key word became “activism,” with Stokely Carmichael and the SNCC, “Freedom Rides,” and sit-ins. There was a new feeling of power in Black communities. And once it got started, it was on the powers like paint.

  But at some point a difference was created between “equality,” “freedom,” and “civil rights.” Those differences were played up because something had to be done about the sudden unity among Black folks all over the country. Folks got more media attention whenever they accentuated the differences. There were media-created splinters. Otherwise the Civil Rights movement would have been enough, and would have been more successful. Accomplishing the aims of the movement would have made “gay rights” and “women’s rights” and “lefts and rights” extraneous. But divide and conquer was the aim of programs like COINTELPRO. And even though it ended up wo
rking damn near backward, it worked.

  They separated the fingers on the hand and gave each group a different demand; we lost our way. Separated, none of us seemed to know to watch out for COINTELPRO. J. Edgar Hoover was dead, but in D.C. they honored what he had said: Fuck every one-a-them.

  There I was at the halftime show, looking up and down the field, and I could see for the first time. I could see what this brother had seen long before, what really needed to be done.

  We all took the stage.

  The crowd continued to chant, “Martin Luther King Day, we took a holiday!”

  Stevie stepped up to the mic and addressed them:

  “It’s fitting,” he said, “that we should gather here, for it was here that Martin Luther King inspired the entire nation and the world with his stirring words, his great vision both challenging and inspiring us with his great dream. People have asked, ‘Why Stevie Wonder, as an artist?’ Why should I be involved in this great cause? I’m Stevie Wonder the artist, yes, but I’m Stevland Morris, a man, a citizen of this country, and a human being. As an artist, my purpose is to communicate the message that can better improve the lives of all of us. I’d like to ask all of you just for one moment, if you will, to be silent and just to think and hear in your mind the voice of our Dr. Martin Luther King . . .”

  40

  In the summer of 1985, my daughter Gia, who was five at the time, was visiting my mother for a few weeks in New York City. As can happen with diabetics, grandma ran too hard one day, ran down, and then ran out. It was up to her granddaughter to run over to the phone, hit the 911 buttons, and tell the operator where to go—like where she was calling from.