When Dr. King spoke: Power of a People's Pain.

When Dr. King spoke: "If you can't fly, then run, if you can't run, then walk, if you can't walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward" I heard the enforcement of the laws of purpose, and felt at the time what it meant to Colored folks. Being young, and being old and a Negro in those times held a stress level that strangled dreams. It killed by fear and emboldened by necessity a killer instinct in others, and made the leaders arise from within the caste system created by the fears white lives, who developed themselves into monsters or tolerant moderates, afraid to do what was right in the sight of God!

Dr. King, I recall, was despised by so many ministers, but I saw fear of changing the white people around them alive in the purposes the church served in Colored neighborhoods. No one killed like white folks! I remember how television delivered these messages from Martin Luther King Jr. the way word spread through the forests into the towns and cities where 'Members' lived. I remember old people talking about the way storytellers told the old stories to the children around fires in the dark of night! The fires became radio, radio became television and television became the internet, where the family circles disappeared into the mist of separate rain drops.

Now, today broken circles pretend to bring people together. Pieces of a dream are no more effective than broken bowls. The old ways of fighting the demons are the methods to bring the worst of killers to their comeuppance, to trail, to the courts of law, but not the law created by the killers and framed by the beneficiaries of their brutal murders and acquisitions by force and terror.

It is less and it is more our Ancients speaking the old truths our interactions with those from Europe stripped from our knowing of the deep that gave Dr. King his voice... - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 4/18/18 

50 years after Dr. King was killed we got. . .

Millennials. I don't call them that. Naming a group by a time period takes their humanity away. If anything they are the Unawares, and unable to figure out where they stand in relationship to anything around them near or far. Without childhoods of substance in the traditional, or ancient way of developing a child's spirit as their spirit settles into their bodies is the beginning of creating undeveloped adults. The complexity of what I just said, in person, leaves these children outside of understanding; so I as an Elder have to couch many things because these young people's lack of balance tells the story of their lack of substance needed to become human. -

There are remedies, but American culture is into quick fixes based in entertainment. It would be foolish in this medium to share, or teach what I know.  Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 4/03/18

Towards a Solution

Màat Petrova releasing or letting go.

"Economic expansion cannot alone do the job of improving the employment situation of Negroes. It provides the base for improvement, but other things must be constructed upon it, especially if the tragic situation of youth is to be solved. In a booming economy Negro youth are afflicted with unemployment as though in an economic crisis. They are the explosive outsiders of the American expansion."

~ Martin Luther King Jr. / "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community" p207 ©1968, based on the original 1967 edition

2 old women armed and strengthened by each other.

Homage Paid to a Man.

Martin Luther King's deep words of challenge to cowardice.

PERSONALLY pause to pay homage to a man courageous enough never to let his spirit die though his life was under constant threat. His sacrifice was the ultimate; his message was timeless. I think of him as the original drum major of love. Misunderstood. Maligned. Mistreated. He was just one of many deserving of equal honor who's names we may or may not ever know. But on this day where we celebrate his birth, I PERSONALLY pause to honor him and symbolically pay the same honor to the millions of others like him who will never get a holiday of their own though they also made the ultimate sacrifice. It is because of them all that I am even here - a humbling thought by itself.

So though a few words offered in social media is woefully inadequate to express what I'm truly feeling, it's something my heart compels me to do. So for him and all those like him who chose spirit over life and made it possible for me to be . . .

I sincerely, humbly, from the depth of my whole soul say 'thank you'. - Eden Adele, Jan. 16, 2017

What Colored Folks did.

ONE 


The California Eagle was a Negro newspaper in Los Angeles, California. It was founded as The Owl in 1879 by John J. Neimore. The newspaper was renamed the California Eagle and continued in print until 1964.

Charlotta Spears assumed control of the paper after Neimore's death in 1912. She hired J. B. Bass who would eventually serve as editor until his death in 1934. Charlotta and J.B. married in 1914; historically, she is better known as Charlotta Bass. She retired from the newspaper business in 1951. In 1952 she became the first Colored woman to run for national office as the Vice Presidential candidate on the Progressive Party ticket.

Loren Miller, a civil liberties lawyer and city editor of the Eagle, bought the newspaper after Bass' departure. Loren sold the paper in 1964 to accept an appointment as a justice to the State Supreme Court. The publication also closed that year. - Michael Scipio  




TWO   


This is a good reminder of how divided Negroes were during the years after slavery on what was the best course of action to win over white folks' resistance to the liberation of 'their' Negroes. What is lost in the current version of the Civil Rights movement is how unpopular King's ideas were at the time. Too much rage had accumulated in the chests of men and women, who'd already taken up arms against whites. There were a number of Black men who had killed white men down South living in the North hiding from the cracker mentality of the South!. . .

I am gonna stop there. Here is a good place for young people to start to think. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 12/18/17 




THREE 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with his family.

“I think we should be slow in criticizing Martin Luther King; he was brave enough to put his life on the line for what he believed. We’re still here talking. That’s proof enough of his bravery over ours.”

~ Dr. John Henrik Clarke. 

From The Best of Us

The distinct impression of Black American culture is that it is great as a bygone glory, but in fact it is creative, and powerful in its presentation and substance. Today, the 4th of April 2017, marks another year distant from the day Dr. King was assassinated. As the years go by it is easy just go shopping, and was predicted his significance would grow, and the pain of that day would diminish. It has, but it hasn't become part of the way most Americans understand because the deep work taking place across the African Diaspora is not front line news. It is the cultivated work too profound to fit into the pitiful representation of journalism most Americans subscribe to. This work is aligned with the way of the snake beneath the ground directly penetrated by the roots of plants, and moistened by the waters that nourish their bodies.

The question is simple: What are you doing as if Dr. King's words meant something too you?


Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
April 4, 2017

Portrait of Paul Robeson (1898-1976) American singer, actor, athlete and civil rights activist. Painted by Randall Davey. 1920-25 oil on canvas. In the collection of The Museum of Fine Arts, St Petersburg, FL.

Rites and Reason Theatre

The Department of Africana Studies' Rites and Reason Theatre is a research and developmental theatre dedicated to giving expression to the diverse cultures and traditions of continental and diasporic Africans and the vast Africana experience.

Rites and Reason's unique Research-to-Performance Method (RPM) is a systematic process that organizes teams of artists, scholars and researchers in the scholarly and creative development of new theatrical performances. RPM teams engage in direct dialogue with the community throughout the developmental process from ideas to readings to workshops to mainstage productions.

The Rites and Reason method includes the development of innovative theatrical forms rooted in Africana cultural traditions and expressions. Within Africana cultural traditions art is a creative manifestation of thought and culture. As such, Rites and Reason is a critical space for artists, writers, and scholars to explore and engage Africana intellectual and cultural traditions, translating them into creative theatrical and expressive forms. - Brown University

1910. Negro woman. photo credit Missouri Historical Society.

Cornel West arrested at a protest.

Tribute to a Black Indian woman

Rosa Parks born February 4, 1913.

"In the 1990's, Parks shocked black-nationalist lawyer Chokwe Lumumba when she told him that her hero was Malcolm X. Lumumba had assumed that her work and close personal relationship with King meant that he would be her personal inspiration. No, she clarified, she had certainly loved and admired King greatly, but Malcolm's... boldness and clarity, his affirmation of what needed to be done for black people, made him her champion. Parks saw no contradiction in her deep admiration for both King and Malcolm X. Describing Malcolm "as a very brilliant man."... "Full of conviction and pride in his race, "she noted, Malcolm X reminded Mrs. Parks of her own grandfather: "The way he stood up and voiced himself showed that he was a man to be respected."


- excerpt from The Rebellious Life of Rosa Parks, authored by Jeanne Theoharis

Simply Put.

Occasionally in life there are those moments of
unutterable fulfillment which cannot be
completely explained by those symbols called
words. Their meanings can only be articulated
by the inaudible language of the heart. - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

GAMES against AWARENESS

"We must stop confusing religion, and spirituality. Religion is a set of rules, regulations, and rituals created by humans which were supposed to help people spiritually. Due to human imperfection religion has become corrupt, political, divisive, and a tool for power struggle. Spirituality is not theology or ideology. It is simply a way of life, pure and original as given by the Most High. Spirituality is a network linking us to the Most High, the universe and each other." ~ Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia 

"I often wonder how this generation will fare in their middle age when the weight of their obsession with not being their authentic selves is too much and Life has demanded them to be themselves. I wonder how it will affect the economy when the obsession for fake products, like fake breasts, eye lashes, etc., comes to a halt.

Hmmm. One never knows how another will wake up until they do. "- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories Nov. 16, 2016

white cloth draped around Andreea Esca.

I've learned... "If you've done your very best and lived in accordance with the laws of Nature, whatever comes will be a blessing, even if it initially looks like a curse." ~ Robin Sharma

Institutionalized Racism 101: divide shared economic interests and offer the poor white man a seat on a bus, a toilet, or a water fountain so he knows he’s not a Negro and he WILL hand you a Presidency. Dr. King already laid that out for us in 1965:

“If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. He gave him Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. And he ate Jim Crow. And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, their last outpost of psychological oblivion.”

e

Pipeline protest.