Interviews

Traversing Chisholm’s trail (complete transcript)

A conversation with director Shola Lynch about her film, Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed, and the struggle to make American democracy accountable to all of its citizens.


The Interviewer: Laura Nathan, InTheFray Managing Editor
The Interviewee: Shola Lynch, Director, Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed

(This is the complete transcript of the interview. For the highlights, click here.)

Tell me a little bit about the response you received when you screened your film here [at the South-by-Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas] on Monday.

It was actually Monday at 11 a.m. I was a little worried, but we had a great crowd, and we got a standing ovation. That was awesome and totally unanticipated.

It premiered at Sundance before, right? Did you get a similar response there?

It had a great response, people stayed by a Q&A, but a standing ovation. That doesn’t happen all the time. It wasn’t a concert. It wasn’t mandatory; there’s no encore in film. I’m sure if Shirley Chisholm was there, there would be an encore every time, but I’m just the filmmaker. It’s great for her, though.

That’s great. Tell me a little bit about what inspired you to make a documentary about Shirley Chisholm.

Well, you know, I didn’t really remember that she’d run for president. I knew that she was the first black woman elected to Congress, and I don’t even really remember 1972. I was really young. It hadn’t really been pointed out to me, and I’m very interested in history. I’m really interested in African American history and women’s history, but she’s kind of left out of that landscape. She’s mentioned in passing though. I was familiar with her name, but nobody has really done an in-depth study of her political work. Or even a biography, for that matter.

She wrote –

Her own. She wrote Unbought and Unbossed about her run for Congress. She had a really difficult run. That actually is a really fascinating story. And she wrote The Good Fight, which is about her run for president.

But those were both written back in the 70s, right?

Exactly. The year after the race. So in ’69, Unbought and Unbossed, and The Good Fight in ’73. It was published in 1973. And in many ways, that presidential campaign took so much out of her. Emotionally, financially.

And she was attacked several times, right?

Yeah, she was attacked several times. I mean, it was scary, and it was definitely supposed to be a warning to her that she was transgressing her place and that she was really not fit for being there. And some of it was out and out intimidation of her.

Do you think that that was the case because she was a woman of color, or was it due to either her race or gender specifically?

You know, you can’t separate the two. Would it have happened if it was just a man? Probably. But in some ways it was more offensive to think that you had both a minority race and gender classification or guidelines or you know, she shouldn’t have been there.

I don’t remember – when did her political career end?

She retired in ’83 from Congress. She was in Congress from ’68 to ’83, and she retired because of the Reagan era, and she said it was very difficult to work across the aisle and have bipartisan legislation. She was always very issue-oriented and relied on that work across the aisle. And with whoever. She didn’t tow the party line. Nobody really owned her, which is great and really frustrating, you know [Laughs].

Were there certain political pet projects that she had? I mean, I know she wanted to make democracy more representative, but were there certain pieces of legislation that she worked on to do that?

Well, I talked to her senior legislative aide during that period. She’s actually in the movie – Shirley Gaines. She was interested in education. And there were a couple of bills that she had passed on health care and things that had to do with issues related to the people in her community. They were largely a group of people not making a lot of money, just trying to get by in Brooklyn. And she was very aware of the need for after-school programs and for passing legislation related to that in the New York state legislature and also in the U.S. Congress.

She spoke out against the Vietnam war on the floor of Congress when nobody else did.  She worked for women’s rights and the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment], [she] and Bella Abzug, it was a joint effort.

In a way, it’s very fascinating to me because she comes out of a Christian tradition. We always think of Christian tradition as very fundamentalist and very right-wing. Her Christian tradition was humanistic, and because of that, she defended broad kinds of legislation and was for human rights, and there wasn’t really such thing as gay rights, but gay rights folks loved her. I mean, she wasn’t advocating a gay rights lifestyle, but she was advocating human beings’ rights, and whatever fell under that broad umbrella was really important to her.

It’s fascinating to me because I’ve grown up thinking the Christian tradition can mean only one thing. So it’s fascinating to take a look at her.

Yeah, certainly. Tell me a little bit about the effect you think Shirley Chisholm had on her constituents and her colleagues.

Everybody that we talked [to] who had worked with her in Congress or on her campaign was so incredibly impacted by her energy, her commitment, her follow-through, and were completely inspired in their own lives in that way. And to a T, every person has been involved in either local politics or their own work community and shaping rules, trying to change things. It’s almost like they have a real sense of citizenship and duty from seeing her in action as young kids, well, not kids, college-age. And they are always impressed with [her] forthrightness. We think of politicians as trying to figure out how to spin things, but she just had her mind set on something. She was the same person, who believed in the same legislation and said the same thing whether she was in front of a white Southern audience or a black Baptist audience or an urban audience anywhere in the country.

And it’s this funny friendship that gets struck up between her and [George] Wallace for that very reason. Because Wallace, you know, was on the complete other end of the Democratic and political spectrum in so many ways. But he didn’t mend his words either, so in a funny way, he actually said on television that he had a lot of respect for Shirley Chisholm. He said, “If you’re not going to vote for me, vote for Shirley Chisholm. She’s at least telling you how she feels. There’s integrity in that.” [Laughs].

That’s great.

Yeah.

When I spoke with Larry [Meistrich, CEO of Film Movement, distributor of Chisolm ‘72], one of the things he mentioned when we discussed your film was that they’re marketing it as a film about electability rather than a story about an African American woman. Is that how you want to see your film marketed as well?

Yeah, you know, I think too often you can get pigeonholed by your race and gender [Laughs]. And while it’s interesting and it’s good and it’s important, it is. And nobody wants to give it that short shrift.

The reason the movie is important to me is not because of her race and gender, but it’s because of her political action and the kind of politician she was. Given that time period, it’s amazing, including the race and gender stuff. And I really appreciate that about Larry’s approach to the material in the film because it is a political story. And that’s the more interesting story. I mean, it’s like “yeah, great, she’s black and she’s a woman. Yeah, great.” That story’s done in 30 seconds. Cheers! [Laughs]. And I think too often people forget that any story, if it’s told well, has broad appeal because it strikes a human chord.

And that was her big thing. She wanted to hold democracy accountable and guarantee equality for all people.

Yeah, she never denied who she was in the process.

One of Shirley’s gripes with the political system was that it wasn’t equally accessible to everyone. Would you say this still seems to be the case now? Obviously, it still seems to be.

Yeah. It’s even worse now because it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy. More people now than they did in the 50s obviously and even in ’72 feel like they cannot affect any kind of change. Whereas, back then, it was kind of the tail end of that feeling, like we can make the system moral. If you think about the civil rights movement, which was started in part by adults, a lot of the change came from protesting in the streets by young people. And the civil rights laws passed, and the Voting Rights Act passed. The ERA almost passed, or it passed in Congress, but then it didn’t get ratified by the states. [Laughs]. Then Vietnam was a huge issue.

And the voting age had changed from 21 to 18, and ’72 was the first election where all of these people were allowed to vote. That’s a huge part of the story in that it’s a historical moment that allowed her to run. You’re talking about 10 million new voters that were crazy enough to be attracted – many of them – to a candidate like her.

Ann [Hinshaw, Shola’s publicist] mentioned that you’ve also been very politically active yourself, but she didn’t say what that was. She just said I had to ask you about your activism. So tell me a little bit about some of the projects you’ve worked on.

[Laughs]. Well, I don’t know, how do I put this? I am politically involved. I am definitely politically involved. I believe in voting. I believe in participation, and I mean participation in a big sense, like I’ll go out and vote. And I mean participation in a smaller sense. Any organization or community or work environment that I belong to, I will be an active member of that community, and that includes making it a better community, which in some ways is above and beyond the call of duty. It’s not something I get paid to do. I don’t know where I get that from, but it is instilled in me, and it comes out in various ways.

I was an athlete here at the University of Texas; I ran track for the Lady Longhorns. There was actually an incident that happened; it was Greek Week, I think. The parades, blah, blah, blah. And there was one – I think it was the Fiji House – [that] kept opening and closing a trunk. Inside, they had a noose and “Die nigger,” and they just had some horrible racial slurs in there. And somebody from The Daily Texan saw it and happened to have a camera and took a photograph, and so there was a big debate on campus about this. And the president was asked – he had to react. So he called all of these people into his chamber, and said, “I want to read this speech to you, who are part of this community of the university.” A lot of them were athletes, a lot of them were football players, these were all guy athletes. You know, professors. And what he did is he came out late, and he said, “Oh, you know, we don’t have time for this discussion, let’s just go to the podium. Come with me.” So he was basically making it seem as though he had this community of people behind him, and he gave the most kind of “boys will be boys, you know, it’s a shame, but boys will be boys” speech. And those of us that were in the audience that were on the mall and the athletes were up there were mortified, and they were embarrassed. They were angry, and they felt used. So one of the things that always comes up from the athletes is, “You know, we’re here to do our job [representing the school], so if you need anything …” So a swimmer and I, along with a couple of other organizations, organized a rally, and we got about 200 athletes – I mean, some of the biggest guys and some of the ladies. [Laughs]. And we marched from the stadium all the way to the mall and gave these passionate speeches. It was great, and that propelled me to be in student government, which at UT is really hard. But because of that, a lot of the guys decided to go out and vote – and vote for me. That was the only way I could win because I wasn’t a part of a sorority or anything. So athletes were my community. I remember this one guy came up and said, “You know, I never would’ve voted, but I like you, and you want to win, so I’m gonna vote for you.” He was this big Texan with an accent. So things like that.

One of the things you mentioned earlier is the increase in political apathy and the feeling of powerlessness. Do you think that that will change this coming year, especially after a lot of people in Florida weren’t allowed or encountered physical barriers that prevented [them] from getting to the polls in 2000?

Yeah, I hope so. And that’s part of the reason I felt that it was important to finish a film like this before a presidential election. Not only is it about a woman who runs for president, but the way in which she does it and the spirit in which she does it is really inspiring. I think there are a lot of people who feel that [change has to happen] and who are trying to work through whatever organizations they belong to, or Internet communities, which is a big thing now.

The other problem with politics is the huge amount of money that’s involved in running a presidential campaign. I mean, she ran her presidential campaign with very little money, which in a lot of ways is bad. She was very frustrated by that, you know. And campaign finance was actually a huge issue back then. Thirty years ago. By comparison, they were probably spending chump change, even if you do the monetary conversions.

Carol Mosley Braun ran for the Democratic presidential nomination this past winter, but she has since bowed out of the race. Do you think the same barriers exist to a woman of color getting elected to the White House for women like Carol Mosley Braun as they did for Shirley Chisholm, or do you think those barriers have changed in some respects?

Well, I think they have changed to a degree in that because there are more women and women of color involved in all aspects of political life – not to say there are huge amounts – but it’s not as shocking. Think about Congress. Four hundred-some-odd congressmen. Think about what a group picture would have looked like for Shirley Chisholm. I mean, the people she had to work with every day. She was the first, so it was really uncomfortable. I mean, she told all kinds of stories – we couldn’t put all of them in the film – about ways in which people really felt uncomfortable around her. And in some ways, it was isolating. I mean, she built her own community through her office. It was really draining in a lot of ways.

Now there are more women in Congress, and it’s not as shocking. But there are still huge barriers because of the idea of leadership that we have – I mean, there are even barriers for some men. Everyone can’t style himself as Indiana Jones, and so if you’re a guy who doesn’t exude that kind of masculinity, you’re going to have a lot of trouble. So what does it mean if you literally you don’t have the cahones? I mean, what is that? [Laughs].

In the film world, women of color lack a visible presence as well. There aren’t that many films about women of color. Did you find that that makes it difficult for you? I guess most of the funding for your film came from organizations with a vested interest in promoting Chisholm’s message. But did you find that you had trouble initially getting that story out and garnering support for your project?

Well, I found that I had trouble fundraising because people really wondered. I had to craft my proposals knowing that people were going to craft the relevance of it.

That’s so ridiculous.

It is, and it isn’t. Yes, it is. I didn’t want it to be a biography for that reason. Not that I think a biography is a bad way to go, but she is really a woman of action. This is a story about her run for president. So it’s easier to stay away from just general celebration and uplift, which happens a lot. And I think that does a disservice because people who participate in making history don’t think of themselves as making history. There are all of these moral dilemmas and choices that they’re responsible for. And they have to think about what those choices are and act on them. And that’s the same kind of thing we all do every day whether we choose to ignore the choice or not, which is easier in a lot of ways. Does that make any sense?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

So I wanted it to be about that process. And the other thing about it is that because I am a black woman, I knew I could raise money for a film about a black woman. And that because she was not historically contested territory – in fact, the territory didn’t exist – people were like, “Oh, how nice.” And there was that assumption that this would be a nice documentary as opposed to a good political story. I mean, I knew I couldn’t make a story about the ’72 presidential election … Now I hope that this gets easier and that I don’t have to work as hard to find funding. There are so many great documentaries I’d love to make.

So do you have any future plans? Are there any projects that you’re currently working on?

Yeah, I have a bunch of ideas, but you know, I really enjoyed doing a film about somebody who is still alive because they can participate in telling the story.

I agree. I’m sure it was really great to work with Shirley. Is she in her 80s now?

She’s 79. She’ll turn 80 soon.

She’s still active?

Yeah.

In talking to her, did you get a sense of what she thinks are the problems with the political system today and what she thinks the current barriers are to representation and equality?

Well, we tried to focus on ’72, but her main complaint was that there was no working across the aisle any more. And when you strictly go along party lines, you’re not really going to get anything done.

Right. And that’s still true today.

Yeah, actually, she’s really frustrated by that.

Are there any politicians or activists that you think have really embraced Chisolm’s message? Can you think of anyone who might be the next Shirley Chisholm?

That’s a hard question, by the way, because I’m not aware of everyone doing her work. But Congresswoman Barbara Lee from Oakland, California, actually as a young college student helped run the Chisholm presidential campaign and was so inspired by Shirley Chisholm and Ron Delam and by community activism in the Bay Area that she became a politician. She became involved in local politics, and then decided to run for Congress. And she stood up, she was the lone voice on the floor against giving unilateral power to our president after 9/11. You know, wow!

That’s great.

It is, and it’s inspiring! And she also has put a bill on the floor a couple of years ago to recognize Shirley Chisholm [H.Res. 97, March 21, 2001, referred to the Committee on Government Reform but never considered]. I mean, it’s not legislation. It’s a public record. I think these examples are important for women, for women of color. These women are righteous in a lot of ways. You don’t always agree with them, and that’s part of the fun, too. But they’re doing what they think is best, and there’s real appeal in that.

Oh, absolutely. One of the biggest criticisms of both the mainstream feminist movement and the racial equality movement, if you’d call it that, is the failure of these movements to recognize various other aspects of identity. Do you find that this is still a problem, particularly for women of color? And do you think there is a way for women of color to successfully work with mainstream feminist movements and racial equality movements?

Yeah, you know, the thing is, it has always been an issue, and it will probably always be an issue. And it’s a matter of how open the dialogue is in many respects, and Shirley Chisholm said this, too. The idea was that she could bring a coalition of people together, and then the reality was that coalition-building was really hard. Because women’s groups didn’t necessarily want to deal with black issues, and black folks didn’t really want to deal with women’s issues, and it was difficult. It was difficult. And so black women were feeling kind of left out. And Paula Giddings, who wrote When and Where I Enter, which is a history of this subject. The subtitle, I think, is The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. It’s a great book. I don’t think anybody’s written anything since then that’s been influential. It’s really fun to read a survey about how black women have been the fabric of American history. And she doesn’t do it with uplift and celebration, but in showing their work and showing how they’ve been able to navigate race and gender in the 18th century, in the 19th century, and the 20th century. In fact, it’s the only place where I found more than passing mention of Shirley Chisholm’s campaign for president.

Wow.

Granted, it’s just two-and-a-half pages. It’s just a survey, you know. She points out that in the 70s, you see black women finding their own voice, and you see that happening in literature and in politics. For instance, Color Girls by Shengei, I think, Maya Angelou, and then also Shirley Chisolm in politics. It’s like, okay, we have identity other than just our gender or just our race. And that’s the fascinating part. People will fixate on only one aspect of someone’s experience. It’s limiting because no one walks through the world just as their race or just as their gender. There are all kinds of ways in which you identify. I identify – I used to identify – as an athlete and as a scholar and all of the things that make up our personalities.

Documentaries, some say, have a better chance of raising consciousness and sparking activism –

I don’t necessarily believe that at all. I mean, good storytelling is good storytelling, and I think documentaries have been given a bad rap because often they will be good subjects, but they will not necessarily be good stories. We can think of documentaries with good stories, and we can make documentaries with good stories. But then you can also see where the drama is, and good stories also make good movies. The best example recently is Lumumba by Raul Peck. And he made a documentary about Patrice Lumumba, and then he made a narrative. And the narrative was just unbelievably moving. I mean, Oliver Stone has made a career on it! [Laughs].

All of that being said, what is it that you would ideally like to see your audience take from Chisholm ’72?

Oh, gosh, that’s a really hard question! A little bit of hope, a little bit of optimism that could be translated into their own lives and their own communities. Yeah, if you think about it, you know, “democracy, citizenship, and participation.” [Laughs]. And what it means applied to us as individuals. But it’s not an abstract idea – well, it is an abstract idea, but it also translates into everyday life.

What would you hope other filmmakers might take from your story and from your work?

Yeah, I’m not as presumptuous. [Laughs]. Well, I will say that what we tried to do was tell a really good story and were aware of that and didn’t want to just rely on the fact that we had a fascinating subject. I mean, you see it happening for a lot of the documentaries now. You have to tell a story. It’s not just information strung together.

You have to connect with the audience.

Exactly. You have to make it emotionally compelling. And how do you do that to a character? There are great characters out there that are participating in Hollywood and in documentaries. And then any project can be fascinating. I mean, who knew Dogtown and Z-Boys could be such a great movie? Well, why is that a great movie – are you familiar with it?

I’m not.

It’s about skateboarders. That movie is fantastic because the characters are so compelling. I don’t give a flying cahoots about skateboarders, but those guys are so much fun to watch. The story was really well done, so then all of the sudden, skateboarding becomes a cool thing. [Laughs].

Is there anything you hope political aspirants or people in politics would take from your story about Shirley and her career?

Well, in a lot of ways, they’re the ones who can make the fastest, most effective changes right now. You know, politicians as a breed do not have to be bad people. You don’t have to agree with them, but if politicians actually behave in a way that they believe is actually good and right rather than just trying to win a game, then I think we make our world a better place. There are a lot of people on both sides, throughout the political spectrum that feel that way. I mean, there are a lot of people who just care about winning and making sure you have a job. It’s about money and corporate interests and lobbyists. Oh my gosh. I don’t know quite how to put this. Politics shouldn’t be just about winning. It should be about doing good, but you want to win also. So I’m not quite sure.

One last question. Has Shirley seen the film? What does she think about it?

She has not seen the film.

Oh, really?

She has a very interesting relationship to the film. She almost didn’t let me do it. I had to talk her into it. So I talked her into it, and we went down and did one interview with her so we’d have a trailer to show people. She humored us basically because when we showed up, I said, “We’re going to use this [trailer] to fundraise, so I’ll be back. It might take a year. It might take two.” She never really expected me to come back, which is why she humored us. She’s good at that actually, but she’s also a woman of her word. So when I did come back, she had to do it.

And so when we told her we got into Sundance [Film Festival], she said, “Oh, that’s nice.” But I had to explain to her what that meant because she had no conception of what Sundance was. She was like, “Oh, have fun, dear!” And I wanted to show her the film before we went to Sundance, but she said, “This isn’t a good time.” She had just moved. She had just built a house, and she wanted to move all of her books out of storage. She wanted to be surrounded by her books. And so, finally, I’m going down to show it to her next week actually.

Why didn’t she want you to make the film? Did she just think it wouldn’t be interesting to other people?

In some ways, she didn’t feel it was very relevant. I had to remind her. She said, “That was 30 years ago; I’m not sure if I want to go back to that.” She had real resistance to doing that. But I was able ultimately to convince her because I said, “It’s not really about you. It’s about future generations and making sure that they have great examples, great stories about people who tried to do good things.” Basically, I appealed to the schoolteacher in her.

Oh, that’s right. She was a teacher before she ran for Congress.

Yeah, she was a schoolteacher for a very long time. She was in her late 40s when she ran for Congress. She had lived a whole life. That’s the other thing. We think that once we hit 30, life is over. But [former Texas Governor] Ann Richards did the same thing. There are all of these women who do not find themselves or their stride until they’re old enough to say, “I don’t care what you think,” and stop trying to please people.

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Interviews

Traversing Chisholm’s trail

A conversation with director Shola Lynch about her film, Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed, and the struggle to make American democracy accountable to all of its citizens.

Winner of BEST OF ITF INTERVIEWS (SO FAR)


Shirley Chisholm 1972 (photo by Rose Greene)

“I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that … I am the candidate of the people of America.”

–Shirley Chisholm, January 25, 1972, announcing her bid for the U.S. Presidency

Desegregation may have been positive for many people to the extent that it theoretically broadened the scope of opportunities for people of color. And by rejecting the notion that separate was equal, the Brown decision, along with the Civil Rights Acts that became law a decade later, forced whites to recognize the existence of blacks, if nothing else. They attended the same schools, ate in the same restaurants and were citizens of the same nation.

Or so Shirley Chisholm wanted to believe. The first black woman elected to Congress and then to seriously run for president in 1972, this Brooklyn Democrat sought to make democracy live up to its name by making the U.S. political system more representative, humane and inclusive. But for all of the recognition – much of it negative and degrading – Chisholm received during her political career, she, as a historical subject, couldn’t overcome the virtual invisibility that women of color have been plagued with, even today, 50 years after the Brown decision.

It is for this very reason that Shola Lynch decided to make Chisholm’s 1972 run for the White House the subject of her first feature film. When I sat down with Lynch to discuss the making of Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed, she relayed that she knew of Chisolm prior to making the film. But because Chisholm is rarely mentioned – much less discussed extensively – in history books and in film, Lynch’s knowledge about her was extremely limited.

And Lynch, it goes without saying, was certainly not the only one who knew so little about a woman who has struggled to contribute so much to the American people – be they black, white, gay, women, rich, poor or any combination thereof. Perhaps now that Lynch has made this film, which will be released nationwide by Film Movement in September, this historical error can begin to be corrected.

The Interviewer: Laura Nathan, InTheFray Managing Editor
The Interviewee: Shola Lynch, Director, Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed

(The text below includes highlights from the interview. For the complete transcript, click here)

Shirley Chisholm at a press conference with Congressman Ron Dellums in 1972 (photo courtesy of Shirley Chisholm)

Tell me a little bit about what inspired you to make a documentary about Shirley Chisholm.

Well, you know, I didn’t really remember that she’d run for president. I knew that she was the first black woman elected to Congress, and I don’t even really remember 1972. I was really young. It hadn’t really been pointed out to me, and I’m very interested in history. I’m really interested in African American history and women’s history, but she’s kind of left out of that landscape. She’s mentioned in passing, though. I was familiar with her name, but nobody has really done an in-depth study of her political work. Or even a biography, for that matter … [She wrote her own, though]. She wrote Unbought and Unbossed about her run for Congress. She had a really difficult run. That actually is a really fascinating story. And she wrote The Good Fight, which is about her run for president.

But those were both written back in the ’70s, right?

Exactly. The year after the race. So in ’69, Unbought and Unbossed, and The Good Fight in ’73. It was published in 1973. And in many ways, that presidential campaign took so much out of her. Emotionally, financially.

And she was attacked several times, right?

Yeah, she was attacked several times. I mean, it was scary, and it was definitely supposed to be a warning to her that she was transgressing her place and that she was really not fit for being there. And some of it was out and out intimidation of her.

Do you think that that was the case because she was a woman of color, or was it due to either her race or gender specifically?

You know, you can’t separate the two. Would it have happened if it was just a man? Probably. But in some ways it was more offensive to think that you had both a minority race and gender classification or guidelines. [People at that time thought Chisholm] shouldn’t have been there [running for president and speaking out against social and political norms].

I don’t remember – when did her political career end?

… She was in Congress from ’68 to ’83, and she retired because of the Reagan era … She said it was very difficult to work across the aisle and have bipartisan legislation. She was always very issue-oriented and relied on that work across the aisle – and with who[m]ever. She didn’t tow the party line. Nobody really owned her, which is great and really frustrating …

Were there certain political pet projects that she had? I know she wanted to make democracy more representative, but were there certain pieces of legislation that she worked on to achieve that end?

Well, I talked to her senior legislative aide during that period. She’s actually in the movie – Shirley Gaines. She was interested in education. And there were a couple of bills that she had passed on health care and things that had to do with issues related to the people in her community. They were largely a group of people not making a lot of money, just trying to get by in Brooklyn. And she was very aware of the need for after-school programs and for passing legislation related to that in the New York state legislature and also in the U.S. Congress.

She spoke out against the Vietnam War on the floor of Congress when nobody else did.  She worked for women’s rights and the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment] …

In a way, it’s very fascinating to me because she comes out of a Christian tradition. We always think of Christian tradition as very fundamentalist and very right-wing. Her Christian tradition was humanistic, and because of that, she defended broad kinds of legislation and was for human rights, and there wasn’t really such thing as gay rights, but gay rights folks loved her. I mean, she wasn’t advocating a gay lifestyle, but she was advocating human beings’ rights, and whatever fell under that broad umbrella was really important to her …

Shirley Chisholm 2003 (photo by Sandi Sissel)

… Tell me a little bit about the effect you think Shirley Chisholm had on her constituents and her colleagues.

Everybody that we talked [to] who had worked with her in Congress or on her campaign was so incredibly impacted by her energy, her commitment, her follow-through, and were completely inspired in their own lives in that way. And to a T, every person has been involved in either local politics or their own work community and shaping rules, trying to change things. It’s almost like they have a real sense of citizenship and duty from seeing her in action as young kids, well, not kids, college-age. And they are always impressed with [her] forthrightness. We think of politicians as trying to figure out how to spin things, but she just had her mind set on something. She was the same person, who believed in the same legislation and said the same thing whether she was in front of a white Southern audience or a black Baptist audience or an urban audience anywhere in the country …

Are there any politicians or activists that you think have really embraced Chisholm’s message? Can you think of anyone who might be the next Shirley Chisholm?

That’s a hard question, by the way, because I’m not aware of everyone doing her work. But Congresswoman Barbara Lee from Oakland, California, actually, as a young college student, helped run the Chisholm presidential campaign and was so inspired by Shirley Chisholm and Ron Delam and by community activism in the Bay Area that she became a politician. She became involved in local politics and then decided to run for Congress. And she stood up; she was the lone voice on the floor against giving unilateral power to our President after 9/11. You know, wow! … And she also has put a bill on the floor a couple of years ago to recognize Shirley Chisolm [H.Res. 97, March 21, 2001, referred to the Committee on Government Reform, but never considered]. I mean, it’s not legislation. It’s a public record. I think these examples are important for women, for women of color. These women are righteous in a lot of ways. You don’t always agree with them, and that’s part of the fun, too. But they’re doing what they think is best, and there’s real appeal in that.

One of Shirley’s gripes with the political system was that it wasn’t equally accessible to everyone. Would you say this still seems to be the case now? Obviously, it still seems to be.

Yeah. It’s even worse now because it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy. More people now than …  in the ‘50s, obviously, and even in ’72 feel like they cannot affect any kind of change. Whereas, back then, it was kind of the tail end of that feeling … If you think about the civil rights movement, which was started in part by adults, a lot of the change came from protesting in the streets by young people. And the civil rights laws passed, and the Voting Rights Act passed. The ERA almost passed, or it passed in Congress, but then it didn’t get ratified by the states. [Laughs]. Then Vietnam was a huge issue.

And the voting age had changed from 21 to 18, and ’72 was the first election where all of these people were allowed to vote. That’s a huge part of the story in that it’s a historical moment that allowed her to run. You’re talking about 10 million new voters that were crazy enough to be attracted – many of them – to a candidate like her …

Carol Mosley Braun ran for the Democratic presidential nomination this past winter, but she has since bowed out of the race. Do you think the same barriers exist to a woman of color getting elected to the White House for women like Carol Mosley Braun as they did for Shirley Chisholm, or do you think those barriers have changed in some respects?

Well, I think they have changed to a degree in that because there are more women and women of color involved in all aspects of political life – not to say there are huge amounts – but it’s not as shocking. Think about Congress. Four hundred-some-odd congressmen. Think about what a group picture would have looked like for Shirley Chisholm. I mean, the people she had to work with every day. She was the first, so it was really uncomfortable. I mean, she told all kinds of stories – we couldn’t put all of them in the film – about ways in which people really felt uncomfortable around her. And in some ways, it was isolating. I mean, she built her own community through her office. It was really draining in a lot of ways.

Now there are more women in Congress, and it’s not as shocking. But there are still huge barriers because of the idea of leadership that we have – I mean, there are even barriers for some men. Everyone can’t style himself as Indiana Jones, and so if you’re a guy who doesn’t exude that kind of masculinity, you’re going to have a lot of trouble …

Oh, absolutely. One of the biggest criticisms of both the mainstream feminist movement and the racial equality movement, if you’d call it that, is the failure of these movements to recognize various other aspects of identity. Do you find that this is still a problem, particularly for women of color? And do you think there is a way for women of color to successfully work with mainstream feminist movements and racial equality movements?

Yeah, you know, the thing is, it has always been an issue, and it will probably always be an issue. And it’s a matter of how open the dialogue is in many respects, and Shirley Chisholm said this, too. The idea was that she could bring a coalition of people together, and then the reality was that coalition-building was really hard. Because women’s groups didn’t necessarily want to deal with black issues, and black folks didn’t really want to deal with women’s issues, and it was difficult … And so black women were feeling kind of left out. And Paula Giddings, who wrote When and Where I Enter, which is a history of this subject … [shows] how black women have been the fabric of American history. And she doesn’t do it with uplift and celebration, but in showing their work and showing how they’ve been able to navigate race and gender in the 18th century, in the 19th century and the 20th century. In fact, it’s the only place where I found more than passing mention of Shirley Chisholm’s campaign for president …

Granted, it’s just 2 ½ pages … She points out that in the ’70s, you see black women finding their own voice, and you see that happening in literature and in politics. For instance … Maya Angelou and then also Shirley Chisholm in politics. It’s like, okay, we have identity other than just our gender or just our race. And that’s the fascinating part. People will fixate on only one aspect of someone’s experience. It’s limiting because no one walks through the world just as their race or just as their gender. There are all kinds of ways in which you identify. I identify – I used to identify – as an athlete and as a scholar and all of the things that make up our personalities …

Shola Lynch on location in Barbados (photo by Sandi Sissel)

In the film world, women of color lack a visible presence as well. There aren’t that many films about women of color. Did you find that that made it difficult for you to produce this, your first film? I guess most of the funding for your film came from organizations with a vested interest in promoting Chisholm’s message. But did you find that you had trouble initially getting that story out and garnering support for your project?

Well, I found that I had trouble fundraising because people really wondered. I had to craft my proposals knowing that people were going to craft the relevance of it … I didn’t want it to be a biography for that reason. Not that I think a biography is a bad way to go, but she is really a woman of action. This is a story about her run for president. So it’s easier to stay away from just general celebration and uplift, which happens a lot. And I think that does a disservice because people who participate in making history don’t think of themselves as making history.

There are all of these moral dilemmas and choices that they’re responsible for. And they have to think about what those choices are and act on them. And that’s the same kind of thing we all do every day, whether we choose to ignore the choice or not, which is easier in a lot of ways … So I wanted it to be about that process. And the other thing about it is that because I am a black woman, I knew I could raise money for a film about a black woman. And that because she was not historically contested territory – in fact, the territory didn’t exist – people were like, “Oh, how nice.” And there was that assumption that this would be a nice documentary as opposed to a good political story. I mean, I knew I couldn’t make a story about the ’72 presidential election … Now I hope that this gets easier and that I don’t have to work as hard to find funding. There are so many great documentaries I’d love to make …

When I spoke with Larry [Meistrich, CEO of Film Movement, distributor of Chisolm ’72], one of the things he mentioned when we discussed your film was that they’re marketing it as a film about electability rather than a story about an African American woman. Is that how you want to see your film marketed as well?

Yeah, you know, I think too often you can get pigeonholed by your race and gender [Laughs]. And while it’s interesting and it’s good and it’s important, it is. And nobody wants to give it that short shrift.

The reason the movie is important to me is not because of her race and gender, but it’s because of her political action and the kind of politician she was. Given that time period, it’s amazing, including the race and gender stuff. And I really appreciate that about Larry’s approach to the material in the film because it is a political story.  And that’s the more interesting story. I mean, it’s like “Yeah, great, she’s black and she’s a woman. Yeah, great.” That story’s done in 30 seconds. Cheers! [Laughs]. And I think too often people forget that any story, if it’s told well, has broad appeal because it strikes a human chord.

All of that being said, what is it that you would ideally like to see your audience take from Chisholm ’72?

Oh, gosh, that’s a really hard question! A little bit of hope, a little bit of optimism that could be translated into their own lives and their own communities. Yeah, if you think about it, you know, “Democracy, citizenship, and participation.” [Laughs]. And what it means applied to us as individuals. But it’s not an abstract idea – well, it is an abstract idea, but it also translates into everyday life.

What would you hope other filmmakers might take from your story and from your work?

Yeah, I’m not as presumptuous. [Laughs]. Well, I will say that what we tried to do was tell a really good story and were aware of that and didn’t want to just rely on the fact that we had a fascinating subject. I mean, you see it happening for a lot of the documentaries now. You have to tell a story. It’s not just information strung together.

Is there anything you hope political aspirants or people in politics would take from your story about Shirley and her career?

Well, in a lot of ways, they’re the ones who can make the fastest, most effective changes right now. You know, politicians as a breed do not have to be bad people. You don’t have to agree with them, but if politicians actually behave in a way that they believe is actually good and right rather than just trying to win a game, then I think we make our world a better place. There are a lot of people on both sides, throughout the political spectrum, that feel that way. I mean, there are a lot of people who just care about winning and making sure you have a job. It’s about money and corporate interests and lobbyists. Oh my gosh. I don’t know quite how to put this. Politics shouldn’t be just about winning. It should be about doing good, but you want to win also. So I’m not quite sure.

One last question. Has Shirley seen the film? What does she think about it?

She has not seen the film.

Oh, really?

She has a very interesting relationship to the film. She almost didn’t let me do it. I had to talk her into it. So I talked her into it, and we went down and did one interview with her so we’d have a trailer to show people. She humored us basically because when we showed up, I said, “We’re going to use this [trailer] to fundraise, so I’ll be back. It might take a year. It might take two.” She never really expected me to come back, which is why she humored us. She’s good at that actually, but she’s also a woman of her word. So when I did come back, she had to do it.

And so when we told her we got into Sundance [Film Festival], she said, “Oh, that’s nice.”  But I had to explain to her what that meant because she had no conception of what Sundance was. She was like, “Oh, have fun, dear!” And I wanted to show her the film before we went to Sundance, but she said, “This isn’t a good time.” She had just moved. She had just built a house, and she wanted to move all of her books out of storage. She wanted to be surrounded by her books. And so, finally, I’m going down to show it to her next week actually.

Why didn’t she want you to make the film? Did she just think it wouldn’t be interesting to other people?

In some ways, she didn’t feel it was very relevant. I had to remind her. She said, “That was 30 years ago; I’m not sure if I want to go back to that.” She had real resistance to doing that. But I was able ultimately to convince her because I said, “It’s not really about you. It’s about future generations and making sure that they have great examples, great stories about people who tried to do good things.” Basically, I appealed to the schoolteacher in her.”

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Photo Essays

Powerful days

Despite many challenges, Life photographer Charles Moore managed to capture the civil rights movement — and a piece of the nation's history — on camera in the 1960s. And in the process, he helped change the world.


On September 3, 1958, Charles Moore, a young photographer for the Montgomery Advertiser, witnessed an argument between the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and two policemen on the steps of the City Recorders’ Court. Moore’s good fortune that day was in stark contrast with King’s. Moore was the only member of the media to witness King’s subsequent arrest, and his picture of the minister being manhandled during the police booking became one of the most significant photographs of the civil-rights movement. King was taken to the back of the jail where he was frisked, roughed up, and tossed into a cell.

When Life picked up the picture from the Associated Press wire, it would be the first of Moore’s celebrated civil-rights photos to be published in the magazine. Having witnessed many of the most significant events of the era, by 1965, the photographer would grow weary of years of hatred, violence, street battles, and the searing taste of tear gas. After documenting the fight surrounding James Meredith’s bloody admission to the University of Mississippi, the dogs turned on protesters in Birmingham, and the savagery of the civil-rights march at Selma, Moore booked an around-the-world ticket on Pan Am and didn’t return home for eight months.

Through the work of Moore and other heralded photographers such as Flip Schulke and Gordon Parks, Life — along with King’s savvy for spreading his message through the media — is credited with giving national prominence to what had been a regional story until the mid-1950s. During the 1950s and ’60s, the weekly Life was the nation’s most influential media outlet, reaching more citizens than any television program and read by more than half the adult population of the United States.

Although many letters to the editor protested Life’s so-called “liberal bias” in covering civil rights, the magazine was also criticized for its conservatism. When it published eleven pages of Moore’s graphic photos of rioting in Birmingham, Alabama, in May 1963, it described the movement as a “crusade” and used sympathetic headlines such as “The Dogs’ Attack is Negroes’ Reward.” However, the same article criticized King’s non-violent but provocative actions.

The pictures on these eleven pages are frightening. They are frightening because of the brutal methods being used by white policemen in Birmingham, Ala. against Negro demonstrators. They are frightening because the Negro strategy of “nonviolent direct action” invites that very brutality — and welcomes it as a way to promote the Negroes’ cause, which, under the law, is right.

Indeed, the article quoted no blacks at all and followed with a sidebar interviewing 16 Birmingham whites. In the introduction to the interviews, Life said, “The Negroes of Birmingham know what they want and how they want to get it. The white people of the city, shaken by recent events, are perplexed about what to do.”  Moore felt that the magazine’s only bias was in its zeal to right the wrongs of desegregation. Despite being a southern, white male he was sickened by the injustice that he witnessed while covering the civil-rights movement.

In his 1964 book about the violence in Birmingham, Why We Can’t Wait, King’s comments illuminate the drama contained in Moore’s photos and the power of the national media, of which Life was most influential: “The brutality … was caught — as a fugitive from a penitentiary is often caught — in gigantic circling spotlights. It was imprisoned in a luminous glare revealing the naked truth to the whole world.”

Like King, Moore had been the son of a Baptist minister. The photographer was reared in Tuscumbia, Alabama, living in a poor white community as “a real tough little kid who grew up in a community of tough kids.” His father would invite Charles along, as he was sometimes invited to preach in the normally segregated black churches nearby. Although he knew few blacks growing up, he remembers that a kind man once walked him home when he became lost and wandered into a “colored town” when he was six. He credits his father’s insistence that that no racial epithets be uttered in the family’s house for his own tolerance. “Although my Dad had few black friends, he told us never to use the ‘n’’ word,” Moore said.

Moore had not set out to be a news photographer. After a stint in the Marine Corps and training in fashion photography at the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, California, he returned home to Alabama and settled for a job photographing in an Olan Mills portrait studio. Although the industrious Moore was soon offered a job as regional manager for the studio chain, he went to Montgomery to see the local newspaper’s chief photographer, Joe Holloway. As the first of Moore’s photographic mentors, Holloway was impressed with the 26-year-old’s knowledge of a Rolleiflex camera and ability to build a rapport with models on the site of a fashion shoot.

When he began working at the paper in 1957, Moore had no knowledge of the national story that had occurred in Montgomery just a year before: Rosa Parks, a local seamstress, had refused to ride in the back of a city bus, as was the rule in the South, touching off a massive boycott. “To be honest, I was a young kid. I didn’t know what was going on in the world. I had no interest. My head was into camping, wildlife and fashion. I wanted to photograph beauty,” he said. He had no idea that his pictures to come would do far more than help publicize King’s efforts; they would also lead to national outrage culminating in President Johnson’s signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. By that time, Moore’s dramatic Life photos were given credit for helping to influence the legislation’s passage.

Fueling the movement

Before King was arrested on the courthouse steps, Moore had met him briefly on a routine assignment at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church just a few blocks down from the paper.  As a typical southern newspaper of its time, the Advertiser relegated “Negro news” to a separate section. Still, the paper did not ignore the growing national prominence of its local minister and Moore soon began to realize the importance of the role he was playing:

When I met Dr. King, I was just at the beginning of my career. I never knew black people on a personal level because there was segregation. I had been to his church meetings and didn’t have to go to many to be absolutely fascinated by this man. When I went down to meet him, I shot him at the pulpit with a cross behind his head. I got down low to get the power of this man. I have to say, ‘Yeah, I was on my knees to King.’  I became fascinated [by the] the power of his oratory. From then on I wanted to cover him. I wanted every assignment I could get.

In September 1958, King attempted to enter a crowded courtroom for a hearing involving his fellow pastor and key aide, Ralph Abernathy. Moore had heard that King might be there, and on his own initiative decided to drop by. “The police were telling him he couldn’t go in and were giving him a hard time. He said, ‘I’ll just stay here [on the courthouse steps]’ and refused to leave,” Moore said.

Moore recalls that the two inexperienced officers suddenly decided to arrest King, unaware of who he was. His wife, Coretta, protested but was told, “Just nod your head and you’ll go to jail, too.” Although King was not being pushed, one officer twisted the minister’s arm as the three walked a block and a half to the police booking area. “I saw an opening on the other side of the counter. I ran there real quickly. Nobody stopped me and I quickly took a few frames from behind the counter,” Moore said.

When the picture went out on the wire, two Life staffers appeared in town the next day, photographer Gary Villete and “a guy who later became managing editor.” They got in touch with Moore, who invited them to his home for dinner, his first meeting with the magazine.

At the time, Moore did not understand the significance of his picture, but many others did. During the next two days, the national press corps poured into town. Rather than pay a fine for loitering, King was intent on serving his 14-day jail sentence. To diffuse further publicity, Police Commissioner Clyde Sellers released him, saying that he was merely saving the taxpayers money by paying King’s $10 fine. “King was a master at using the media. The significance was that the whole world was aware that Martin Luther King had been put in jail,” Moore later realized.

When the picture was published in Life twelve days later, Moore was pleased but wished the magazine could have published his eight-picture sequence of the incident instead of just a single photo. Once before, Life had published a full-page fire picture of Moore’s but editors chose not to give prominent play to King’s arrest. The photograph occupied one-sixth of a page and was used with three other pictures accompanying a story about “mostly quiet” civil-rights integration. Stories given far more dominant play in the same issue included “Chinese ‘Reds’ impose a blockade on Quemoy” and an article about fixing charges on television quiz shows. A prominent story on race riots in Britain also dwarfed the coverage of unrest at home.

Even with the understated play in Life, the photo’s publication in the influential magazine triggered further outrage and a rush of financial aide for King’s Montgomery Improvement Association. Although he had once been asked to appear on television’s Meet the Press, King was now even better-known on a national level; his influence would soon grow to a fevered pitch. By the next time King was photographed by Moore during an arrest, the photographer would be on assignment for Life.

Moore makes his mark as a freelancer

By 1962, Moore had been his newspaper’s chief photographer for four years after Holloway had moved on to a career at United Press International. He was ready for a change and decided to take a room in the French Quarter of New Orleans for a 10-day shooting vacation. He met the wife of local district attorney Jim Garrison, who would later rise to prominence with his controversial views on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Garrison helped Moore gain access to the late-night world of jazz bars, musicians and stripper — subjects that were otherwise off-limits to outsiders. “When I got back to the paper, I knew I wanted to travel more and reach out to a new audience,” Moore said. He gave two weeks’ notice and moved to New York, anticipating a lucrative freelance career there.

“It didn’t work. I spent three months and was hanging out in the West Village. I hated New York and my money was going.” Before heading back to Alabama, Moore befriended Milt Freir, a representative from Leica who urged him to go see Howard Chapnick, the influential founder of the Black Star picture agency. In his book, Truth Needs No Ally, Chapnick described Moore as disenchanted. “He had come to New York to make his way into photojournalism and after three months had found a cold, unyielding and professionally unrewarding city.”

Chapnick decided to give Moore a small weekly guarantee. “We talked and Howard liked the idea I was giving up New York. ‘I think you can do some really good work down there,’ he told me,” Moore remembers. Chapnick would later credit Moore with documenting the important events that defined the movement.

Rather than encourage Charles Moore to stay in New York to pursue his career, I told him I felt one of the great stories in American history was unfolding in the South. He came from the South and understood it. Going back to Alabama to document the events taking place there would provide the chance for Charles to do work he was uniquely qualified for.

Still, upon his return to Montgomery, Moore faced another two months of frustration. He missed the newspaper and had little to do. “I felt like a stranger in hell back in Montgomery. I was struggling,” he said.  But Moore had a sudden turn of luck when he ran into Life‘s Miami bureau chief, Dick Billings, in Oxford, Mississippi.

Black student James Meredith had attempted to register at the University of Mississippi and the state’s defiant governor, Ross Barnett, ignored a federal court order by declaring himself the university’s emergency registrar, personally and physically barring Meredith. The governor was seen as a folk hero in his state and hated what he saw as Life’s liberal bias, refusing to be photographed or interviewed. Moore’s contacts from five years of covering state government paid off as he assured Billings that he could get a picture.

After being granted exclusive access to photograph Barnett, Moore says that he did not dare mention the word ‘Life.” The editor was thrilled with the pictures. “After today, you’re working for us,” he was told. At the time, a mob of more than 2,000 was descending on the college town, intent on blocking Meredith at any cost.

Moore’s ascent to the ranks of Life photographers could not have come at a more dangerous time. U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sent 200 federal marshals down to protect Meredith and each other. Several other Life shooters were on the scene, some with combat experience. With two days to go before federal marshals would attempt to escort Meredith to his first class, Moore knew that it would be a violent weekend.

Word got out that he was working for the magazine. A pack of enraged white students shoved their way into Moore’s hotel room, shouting and cursing. One began to choke him before the former Golden Gloves boxer pushed him away. “I’ve never seen such hate in anyone’s face before. It was like I were vermin … To him I was worse than ‘a nigger,’  I was a white nigger. And worse than that I was a white Life magazine nigger.”

On the street, the mob waved confederate flags. Some even loaded guns as they waited for Meredith’s arrival, not knowing he had already been hidden at a campus dormitory. Local law enforcement, urged on by the governor, was defiant of the federal authorities as well, intent on preventing the enrollment of the first black student there. One of Moore’s most chilling photographs showed local plain-clothes policemen chuckling while one practiced a swing with a billy club before the start of the inevitable rioting. “They were talking about what they’re going to do to Bobby Kennedy and the U.S. Marshals, laughing and showing how they would take care of them,” Moore said.

Moore had to make some quick decisions. The marshals had blocked the campus, forbidding the press to go in. Readily identifiable as a news photographer, he was threatened again. “I was told, ‘You nigger lovers had better go home’ … and that this guy and his brother were out with their shotguns looking for me.” After buying a gas mask at a local Army-Navy store, Moore sneaked onto the campus with the help of a brave student who he remembers only as ‘John.’ The student drove a VW beetle and Moore stashed his cameras in the vehicle’s trunk. “The cops searched the car but didn’t search the trunk, which was up front. That’s how I got in,” he said.

It was Sunday evening and as darkness fell, the rioting began. The mob had surrounded the school’s administration building, the Lyceum, and started slashing tires and throwing rocks. Soon it was a siege. Earlier, Moore had decided to bluff his way into the building, where 200 unarmed marshals were holed up. Accompanied by a freelance writer who was also working for Life, Moore banged on the door, telling the guard that he was desperately ill and had to go to the toilet. The ruse worked and the two were forgotten about in the ensuing chaos. Outside, cars were set on fire, and when a lead pipe knocked a marshal unconscious, the lawmen began to fire tear gas into the mob. Moore darted outside for a short time but again talked his way back in. “If you stayed outside and used a flash, you would die. Molotov cocktails were being thrown all over,”  he said.

It was no safer inside. As soon as marshals fired the gas into the crowd, it would drift back inside, filling the building. Moore wore a gas mask through the evening as he photographed the wounded marshals, several shot and bleeding. After hearing about the melee, then-President John F. Kennedy decided to send in federal troops but they would not arrive until the next day. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach was trapped inside the building, and Moore overheard him pleading on the telephone with Bobby Kennedy:

‘They’ve got guns out there, Bobby, they’ve got guns. Our men are being shot . . .’ He was trying to convince Kennedy to let them have weapons to protect themselves and Kennedy said no. They had billy clubs, that’s all. The marshals were shooting tear gas to keep the crowd from rushing them. They even stole a bulldozer and were attacking the building with it.

When it was over, twenty-eight marshals had been shot and 160 were injured. Moore had been the only photographer inside and had exclusive shots of the wounded. Later he learned that a French reporter and a local repairman had been killed in the night-long battle. “We put our lives on the line. I was just sitting on a trash can in front of the building, surrounded by smashed TV cameras and tear gas canisters. We were totally wiped out,” Moore said.

The magazine’s reporters and photographers were ordered to rest up in a Memphis hotel room. One of the correspondents made up a mock press card, called a ‘SCREW’ card, standing for ‘Southern Correspondents Reporting Equality Wars.’ For his bravery, Moore was issued the first one. “I’m real proud of that because I have card No. 1,” he said. He received a phone call from Black Star telling him that Life was overwhelmed with his work. For the next three years, he would earn the reputation as the photographer most able to gain uncanny access to the front lines of the civil-rights cause.

A 13-page layout in the October 12 issue was dominated by Moore’s work. But some of the letters to the editor that were published on October 26 and November 2 were critical of both the magazine and the federal involvement in the university’s affairs. One letter complained about stereotyping when the magazine wrote, “A blood-covered red-neck is propelled in the door, guided by two angry marshals.” Carolyn P. Nemrow, of Boston, wrote, “President Kennedy has enough of the nation’s journalistic sheep jumping to give its condemnation of Ole Miss Affairs. When will people realize that the issue is not Meredith, it is state sovereignty versus ever-growing federal intervention.”

Of barking dogs and walls of water

Moore soon moved to Miami, and after considering a job with the Miami Herald, was promised steady work with Life by Billings. He was often teamed with reporter Michael Durham and in April 1963, the two were assigned to cover rising tensions in Mississippi and Alabama. After William Moore, a mailman, was shot and killed while walking to protest segregation, Moore photographed protesters along “The Freedom March” that followed a path through three states.

At nearly the same time, Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested for organizing protests by school children and from jail would write his famous treatise outlining his philosophy of civil disobedience. Although a state injunction had been issued against King’s protests, he responded by saying, “We’ve got an injunction from heaven.” Moore had a strong picture of King and Abernathy walking toward their inevitable arrest along with a series from the march. However, neither story was published in the magazine. One of the biggest American news stories of the century, the Bay of Pigs — the failed, U.S.-led attack on Cuba — pushed civil rights out of the pages of Life for a time.

The most influential pictures of Moore’s career were taken over five days beginning on May 3. Birmingham was considered the nation’s most segregated city, and the photographer had a hunch that he and Durham should go to the city after hearing reports on the radio about escalating tensions there. Five minutes after the journalists arrived in Kelly Ingram Park, the scene of anti-segregation demonstrations, firemen had been ordered by Police Commissioner Bull Connor to bring out their hoses to contain the swelling crowd.

Moore crawled on the pavement and took a position between the firemen and the protesters, who were being pummeled by a virtual wall of water. The scene disgusted Moore but he felt a responsibility to keep shooting. One of the firemen told him later, “We’re supposed to fight fires, not people.”

One of Moore’s most remarkable photographs showed three students forced against a brick wall by a fierce spray of water propelled at 100 pounds per square inch. Fourteen-year-old Carolyn McKinstry was unaware at the time that she was being photographed. “After getting hit with the hose, that was the last thing on my mind. Dr. King had had motivational meetings with us. He had never mentioned the water hose but said there might be dogs and they might even spit on you,” she said in a 1998 interview.

When she saw her picture in Life two weeks after the demonstrations, McKinstry had no special feeling about seeing herself in a national magazine, saying that she was still fearful and angry from the experience. However, a teenager at the time, she did remember being displeased at seeing her hair in disarray. Later, McKinstry would become appreciative of the sensitivity in Moore’s graphic photographs. Before the Birmingham unrest, she had said, “The black community had lost any trust that there could be a fair portrayal by the photographers. We were always portrayed in a negative light.”

The protests continued for five days as King urged the demonstrators, many of them children, to return to the park. Some of the scores of angry onlookers were not schooled in the preacher’s philosophy of passive resistance; Moore was struck in the ankle by a large chunk of concrete. Despite searing pain and an injury to his tendons, he continued to work for the next three days after treatment by a black doctor. “He did that story half-crippled,” Durham said.

When the demonstrations did not abate, Connor ordered police dogs into the crowd and urged the officers to allow whites to view the demonstrations. “I want them to see the dogs work,” he said. Along with the fire hose images, the pictures of dogs snarling and ripping at the pants of protesters would be among the most dramatic of Moore’s career. Despite knowing that he was making meaningful photographs, Moore felt revulsion. “Attack dogs — that was repulsive,” he said.

As the demonstrations spread, Moore and Durham disobeyed a police order not to go outside the park and were arrested as they attempted to document a woman being knocked down by the water from the hoses. Locked up in a cell for four hours with Durham and about a dozen menacing white men, Moore, known as a fearless photographer, faced one of the most frightening experiences of his career. “We could have been beaten very badly if they would have known we were from Life.” Another reporter from the magazine bailed them out. Facing the possibility of a six-month jail term in an unsympathetic city, Life’s lawyers advised Moore and Durham to skip town immediately and fly to New York. The charges were later dropped but for a year, Moore was a fugitive from justice in his own state, having to sneak home once to see his own children in Dothan.

At Life, Moore was given the rare opportunity to supervise the 11-page layout, and the magazine’s editors decided to give him his first byline. His photos inspired seven letters published in the June 7 issue — three critical and four sympathetic to the civil rights cause. Francis Pharr Jones, of Austin, Texas, wrote, “We assume the guilt of the white supremacist when we allow this persecution … I shall never forget those tragic faces.” Grady Franklin, of Crawfordsville, Indiana, wrote, “Charles Moore’s photographs on the racial troubles in Birmingham were superb and bone-chilling — surely a candidate for the Pulitzer Prize in news photography.”

The photos of the dog attacks and fire hoses have been among the best-selling of all time at Black Star, reprinted time and again in books and magazines. Picture editor Yukiko Launois recalled that there were many photographers working in the South at the time, but “I remember Charles’ photos, particularly of Birmingham, as the most memorable and distinguished.” Several others had also photographed the violent confrontation between police dogs and protesters. “Somehow, Charles’ image was better. Only Charles’ became a classic. From the beginning, Charles Moore was identified with that image.”

Politicians noticed as well. John F. Kennedy said that the situation in Birmingham had sickened him and mentioned the riots there in a speech the next month in which he asked Congress to initiate civil-rights legislation. Militant black leader Malcolm X mentioned the dog attacks in a speech that he gave in Africa. Senator Jacob Javits of New York later credited Moore’s Birmingham photographs with helping to quicken passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. later said that the police-dog photographs transformed the national mood and made the legislation not just necessary, but possible. A year after Moore’s classic photos were first published in Life, Martin Luther King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Even artist Andy Warhol noticed Moore’s best-known photo of a snarling dog reared up on its hind legs while another bit the buttocks of a protester. One morning in 1964, Howard Chapnick and his wife, Jeanette, were eating breakfast when the Black Star chief noticed a Time magazine article about Warhol’s latest work. Chapnick immediately recognized that one of the featured paintings, Red Race Riot, was a slightly altered silkscreen of Moore’s photograph. “Howard has eagle eyes. He might not remember what he had for breakfast but never forgets a picture,” said Jeanette Chapnick.

The painting was a clear copyright violation without credit to either Moore or the agency. Chapnick insisted that Moore go personally to Warhol’s studio to confront him. Not comfortable with negotiating with the flamboyant artist and his assistant, Moore settled for two flower prints and Warhol’s promise that he would be credited whenever the painting was reproduced (Later it was found that the flower series had itself been appropriated from a photograph in a Burpee seed catalog). In the years to come, Warhol failed to follow through on his promise of crediting the photograph and both Black Star and Moore sold their flower prints soon after obtaining them. The Warhol watercolor was not considered an appropriate match for the famous news photos adorning the walls at Black Star. “It had no place hanging with the photography. We sold it and had a lot of trouble getting rid of it. I think we got $250 for it,” said Jeanette Chapnick.

Knowing when to duck and when to shoot

Moore and Durham traveled together frequently through the South, covering the dangerous skirmishes that defined the black struggle for equality.  When they first met in a Tennessee airport to cover the 1963 Freedom March, Life’s editors had thought it wise to team a Southerner with a Northerner. Moore’s Alabama drawl blended in but when he heard Durham’s Yankee accent, the reporter recalled Moore’s first words to him. “‘At least you look like a redneck. But when we’re together, don’t say anything.’ That’s a funny thing to say to a reporter but it was definitely good advice. It was best the rednecks didn’t know who you were in those years,” Durham said.

The two quickly became friends and looked out for each other during the many urban battles they covered. In order not to miss crucial pictures during fast-breaking riots, a system was worked out where Moore would run backwards at full speed as he photographed, led by the collar through the crowd by Durham.

Chapnick told Moore that he could not believe that in Birmingham, the photographer’s longest telephoto lens was a modest 100 millimeters. Often, the reporter would help out by carrying a lens or even Moore’s camera bag during tense events. In June 1963, in Jackson, Mississippi, a riot broke out as the two covered the funeral of Medgar Evers, the first black civil-rights leader to be assassinated. Durham remembers the event as the only time that the usually kind and soft-spoken Moore ever spoke harshly to him.

It was in the heat of action. He turned and said to me, ‘Give me the lens!’ ‘What do you mean,’ ‘Give me the lens?’ I replied. He said, ‘I gave it to you.’ I said, ‘No, you did not.’ We went back down the street and saw a red-haired kid standing there holding the lens. Charles asked him, ‘How did you get the lens?’ This kid turned and said to Charles, ‘‘You told me, Here. Hold this.’ All the time Charles thought it was me.

In June 1964, Moore and Durham were assigned to cover the disappearance of three white Northern college students who came to the South to help register black voters. After being jailed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the three vanished shortly after their release. Later they were found murdered and the Life team found themselves working in their most hostile environment yet.

“All the journalists will tell you that Philadelphia, Mississippi was the most frightening place of all,” Moore said. Because they had rented a car and taken a hotel room, word spread quickly among townspeople that outsider reporters were there to cover the murders. As Moore photographed the search for the bodies, a local man tried to knock a camera out of his hand. “As we were driving the back roads, our bumper got bumped.” For protection, “in the motel, we put a chair in front of the door.”

Go to part two

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Photo Essays

Powerful days (part two)

Despite many challenges, Life photographer Charles Moore managed to capture the civil rights movement — and a piece of the nation's history — on camera in the 1960s. And in the process, he helped change the world.


Go to part one

The local sheriff, Charles Rainey, told Moore and Durham to get out of town. “You take my goddamn picture, you’ll go to jail or worse,” he told Moore. Still, the two persisted and remained in town when Rainey and Deputy Cecil Price were brought to court in connection with the murders.

“Sheriff Lawrence Rainey was a meanie. That guy was scary. I believe they were out there that night in the woods. I don’t know if he pulled the trigger. When they forced them out into the woods, they tortured them and made them suffer. Imagine the horrible things they did,” Moore said. Price and six others, most members of the Ku Klux Klan, were later found guilty of conspiracy in depriving the victims of their civil rights. Rainey was acquitted of the charges.

Threatened on countless occasions, Moore was never beaten, but once after a sit-in in Jacksonville, Florida he was rescued by a passing television reporter as an angry mob of black teenagers chased him. In eight years of covering the movement, he found it ironic “that it was blacks who attacked us.” After a bomb threat was called in, other journalists evacuated the scene. Moore and Durham were the only ones left as the situation worsened. “They were angry with the police. They were high school kids throwing stones. They turned over our rental car and burned it. We were running away. My 100 millimeter lens was shattered. It was covering my face,” Moore remembers.

Durham was not as lucky, as the youths caught and beat him; the magazine ran a two-page article, explaining what it was like to be beaten by a mob, with a picture of the reporter bandaged up in the hospital. He said later that if he had not found himself separated from Moore as the two ran for safety, he probably would have avoided injury. “Good photojournalists are lucky. Charles had the luck,” Durham said. Moore described himself as being like “one of the careful photographers who lives through wars.” He credits veteran combat photographer Horst Faas with the philosophy that helped him escape injury while covering civil rights. “You have to know when to duck and when to shoot. Or you’ll die.”

Missed opportunities

Moore and Durham were sent on many assignments that never made the magazine. According to Moore, during the 1960s, for every story that got in the magazine, Life covered five more around the world. Constantly on the road, he often would not know if his pictures had been published until picking up the magazine on the newsstand. Durham said that he knew that Life was not interested in an abundance of text but took pleasure in photographers like Moore getting their stories in.

When their work was ignored, the two took consolation in knowing that they were witness to what they believed was an important chain of events. Not getting published “happened so often you just couldn’t let it bother you,” Durham said. “It was the main drawback. If it was The Bay of Pigs, you could accept it. But often it would be a story of less import.”

On August 28, 1963, between 200,000 and 500,000 people gathered for the largest political demonstration in U.S. history to hear Martin Luther King Jr., Charlton Heston, Sammy Davis Jr., Sidney Poitier and others argue for equal rights. Life’s editors thought that there might be trouble. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had lobbied to try to have the Kennedy administration scuttle the march, believing King to be a communist. However, Kennedy was determined that his civil rights legislation could only be helped by such a large demonstration of both black and white supporters.

“They always liked to put me out where there might be some trouble,” Moore said. He was assigned to shoot the crowd in the reflecting pool area near the Washington Monument. But the rally turned out to be a peaceful one as King delivered his epic “I Have A Dream” speech. Although none of Moore’s photos were published, the official memento of the march was a portfolio of five red, white, and blue collages of Life magazine photographs that included the dog and fire hose images from Birmingham. Forty-thousand were sold to the assembled crowd for $1 each.

Bloody Sunday

Moore’s first Life cover was the March 7, 1965, face-off between Alabama state troopers and a mass of marchers demonstrating for voting rights. King had gone to Selma to direct a registration drive in a county where so great was the intimidation, only 3 percent of blacks had registered to vote. Governor George Wallace implored that he would not tolerate such a march and had about 100 state troopers at the ready to block the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Moore and dozens of other newsmen were witnesses as the troopers warned the group that it had two minutes to retreat back to the local Episcopal church. But only a minute later, the guardsmen were told to attack. Moore’s photographs depicted the savagery as troopers, some wearing gas masks, battered the demonstrators to the ground with billy clubs. More than 60marchers were badly injured. One suffered a fractured skull. The incident came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.”

ABC interrupted its broadcast of the Holocaust film, Judgment in Nuremberg, to report live on the beatings. In Congress, more than 50 speeches were delivered deploring the brutality. Life’s coverage reflected the outrage of the nation at large. Besides the cover, the March 19 issue displayed several pages dominated by Moore’s work, including full-page portraits of troopers and the injured.

On April 2, the magazine published five letters that were overwhelmingly critical of the troopers’ violence. Mrs. M. M. Warsaw, of Braintree, Massachusetts, wrote of one of Moore’s photos, “I wonder if the Selma policeman pictured on page 37 of your current issue would have the same defiant attitude and belligerence if he was brought face to face with the Negro Marines bravely going ashore at Da Nang, South Vietnam?” Julie G. Saunders of South Hadley, Massachusetts, wrote, “The whole tragedy greatly upset me, but not until reading your article have I cried about it. After reading your article I see that it is necessary that I become physically involved … Even though I am safe and secure in this Northern school … I am not free until they are.”

After many years on the bloody front lines of the civil-rights movement, Moore had seen enough. “I had been involved in so much ugliness, and I realized that I needed to do something else.” Turning his attention toward other types of assignments after the brutal Selma beatings, in years to come he would photograph travel stories, do corporate portraiture and occasionally return to hard news. After Moore became so determined to get away from covering violence, Life’s editors later convinced him to spend two months shooting an essay on B-52 air raids in Vietnam.

Despite covering most of the major civil-rights stories of the era, Moore missed the biggest one of all. When King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968, Moore was in Palo Alto, California doing a sex-education assignment for the Saturday Evening Post. “We had it on the radio and heard the flash. I just pulled the car over to the side, listened to the news and cried. After all I’d done, I felt bad I couldn’t be there on that day in Memphis in 1968. I knew him and he knew me.”

Epilogue

Charles Moore is a freelance photographer based in Alabama. He is a frequent lecturer about the civil rights era at universities and workshops. In 1965, after vowing to get away from the violence, Moore had one other Life cover about Mary Martin’s performance in the musical, Hello Dolly. He has preferred to continue freelancing throughout his career rather than joining the staff of Life full-time. Moore continues to be represented by Black Star and has had more than 100 covers for a variety of magazines including the Saturday Evening Post and Newsweek. In 1989, Howard Chapnick decided to enter Moore’s work in the first annual Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for Impact in Photojournalism, regarded as one of the most prestigious honors in the industry. Moore was named the winner and the resulting publicity sparked renewed interest in his landmark work from the civil-rights movement. In the foreword to Moore’s 1991 book, Powerful Days, The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore, Andrew Young, the civil rights leader and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, wrote, “The photographs of Charles Moore presented in this brilliant chronicle offer more than simple, visual accounts of the civil rights years … For those of us who remember the pictured events from personal experience, this book is a means by which to sharpen memories, to relive and revisit some of the most meaningful, terrifying and rewarding moments of our lives.”

Michael Durham had the opportunity to hire Charles Moore for several freelance assignments when he later became editor of a magazine published by American Heritage. The two also collaborated on other topics for Life besides civil-rights coverage, and he wrote the text for Powerful Days. While doing the editing for the book, Durham says, “It was amazing to go back through all those old contact sheets. It was like reliving things.” Now doing freelance writing and living in Delancey, New York, he remembers the heady days of covering civil rights. “Every once in a while I think it would be great to rush off to the airport.”

Howard Chapnick passed away shortly after his 1994 book, Truth Needs No Ally, was published. Of Moore’s work he wrote, “The lesson here for aspiring photojournalists is that one has to recognize great turning points in social history, to seize the opportunity to bear witness to them, and to remember that what is in you backyard may be the stepping stone to your success.” His wife, Jeanette Chapnick, was Black Star’s bookkeeper for several decades and continues Chapnick’s work on behalf of documentary photography as a trustee of the W. Eugene Smith grant program and the Howard Chapnick Grant for the advancement of photojournalism.

Carolyn McKinstry met Charles Moore more than two decades after he took his famous photo depicting her being sprayed by a fireman’s hose in Birmingham, when both appeared on a television special about the events there. McKinstry has also appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and played herself in a recent Spike Lee film about four of her friends who were killed in a church bombing just months after the Birmingham riots. She frequently lectures about the civil-rights movement at schools and works as an informational-technology trainer for Bell South. Of Birmingham, where she still lives, McKinstry says, “It’s become a really nice place to live.”

The writer’s interview subjects:
(All interviews were conducted in 1998.)

Jeanette Chapnick
Michael Durham
Yukiko Launois
Carolyn McKinstry
Charles Moore

STORY INDEX

MARKETPLACE >

A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Kris Shepard and Clayborne Carson
URL: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0446678090/inthefraycom

The Civil Rights Movement: An Eyewitness History by Stanford Wexler (1993)
URL: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/081602748X/inthefraycom

The Civil Rights Movement: A Photographic History, 1954-68 by Stephen Kasher
URL: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0789206560/inthefraycom

Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change by Aldon D. Morris
URL: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0029221307/inthefraycom

Powerful Days: The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore by Michael S. Durham and Charles Moore
URL: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0817311521/inthefraycom

Truth Needs No Ally: Inside Photojournalism By Howard Chapnick
URL: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0826209556/inthefraycom

Why We Can’t Wait by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
URL: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0451527534/inthefraycom

Life articles >

“In the U.S., Mostly Quiet,” Life, September 15, 1958, 30.

“Selma: Beatings Start The Savage Season,” Life, March 19, 1965.

“They Fight A Fire That Won’t Go Out,” Life, May 17, 1963, 26-36.

“With The Besieged Marshals As The Wild Mob Attacks,” Life, October 12, 1962, 37.

Life, June 7, 1963, 21.

Life, November 2, 1958, 21.

ORGANIZATIONS >

Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
URL: http://www.bcri.org/index.html

PHOTOS >

Charles Moore’s photographs featured on Kodak’s website
URL: http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/features/moore/mooreIndex.shtml

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Commentary

A lackluster golden anniversary

Racial domination may no longer be the law of the land, but that doesn't mean social practices have changed completely in the last half-century.


A line of African American and white school girls standing in a classroom while boys sit behind them at Barnard School, Washington, D.C. May 27, 1955 (Thomas J. O’Halloran, Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints & Photographs)

The question, “Where are we 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education?” carries a note of despair.

We know where we are: Northern public schools have more segregated than they have ever been and are more segregated than their Southern counterparts, African Americans have very high dropout rates and, worse still, a damaging drug culture and mind-numbingly high incarceration rates. We have not achieved a racially integrated democracy, even if some African-Americans hold positions of significant power.

The question, “Where are we 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education,” frequently inspires the answer: “Tired.”

We have good reason to feel that the mountain is insurmountable. I’d like to remind us of those reasons, for they may help us see where we are, exactly, on the mountain, and where we are going, and thereby help us rally our energies again.

The question of what the Brown decision was really about opens out to a dizzying set of options. Was it about integration? Was it about public education? Was it about social equality? Was it about democratic law?

Sometimes we judge it on one ground; sometimes, on another. In truth, Brown addressed all of these issues, because the case was ultimately about democratic constitutions and what it takes to change them.

A constitution is more than paper; it is a plan for constituting political rights and organizing citizenship, for determining who has access to the powers of collective decision-making that are used to negotiate a community’s economic and social relations. Such plans always involve custom as well as law.

Indeed, a constitution need not even be written out as such. It may, as in Britain, rest on laws and customs that accrete over time to establish a particular distribution of political power through institutions. Or it may, as in ancient Athens, consist of laws and customs that determine who has access to the instruments of political power.

As it happens, the U.S. Constitution of 1787-88 by no means even then contained the whole plan for determining political rights and powers. It left the regulation of voting rights to the states. One can’t claim to understand the constitution (with a small “c”) of the United States without looking beyond the document that bears that title not to context generally, but very specifically, (a) to state laws and (b) to customary habits of citizenship (unspoken norms for interaction that constrain who can speak where in public and how). Both state laws and habits of citizenship help route the basic circuitry of political power.

The Constitution drafted and adopted in 1787-88 attached itself to cultural habits for organizing power-relations among the colonies’ inhabitants that had been under construction since the early 17th century. In 1630 the Virginia Assembly had, among its earliest laws, decreed that “Hugh David be soundly whipped, before an assembly of negroes and others for abusing himself to the dishonor of God and shame of Christians, by defiling his body in lying with a negro; which fault he is to acknowledge next Sabbath day.” In 1640 they required “Robert Sweet to do penance in church according to laws of England, for getting a negro woman with child and the woman whipt.” Customs of racial domination and a customary illusion that racial purity existed and was a proper object of the law were, on this continent, born together with written law.

Over nearly two centuries, white inhabitants of the colonies grew accustomed to maintaining key public spaces as their exclusive possession; for the sake of preserving life and stability, black and indigenous inhabitants, all in all, grew accustomed to acquiescing to such norms and to the acts of violence that enforced them. Each set of customs, exclusionary on the one hand and on the other acquiescent, constituted the practical rules of democratic citizenship for a set of the new country’s inhabitants. Together the two sets of rules guided residents of the new United States into the diverse forms of behavior that secured stable (though undemocratic) public spaces.

An African American boy walking through a crowd of white boys during a period of violence related to school integration, in Clinton, Tennessee, December 4, 1956. (Thomas J. O’Halloran, Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints & Photographs)

These customary rules that routed power were as much a part of the new constitution written in 1787-88 as was the newly conceived and justly privileged text. Those customary rules limited the text, as we all know, in places like the “three-fifths compromise” clause that not only wrote something less than personhood into the Constitution for non-whites but that also, more importantly, inflated the power of Southern whites relative to Northern whites.

The Constitution did not and could not answer all questions about how power would be organized; state laws and habits of interaction filled the gaps. Our constitution with a small “c,” like all constitutions, has always consisted of a complex, intricate web of law and custom.

When the country fought the Civil War and shortly thereafter passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, it undertook the project of undoing a racial constitution that had been settling into place for at least 300 years (since 1562 when Britain entered into the slave trade). A constitution 300 years a-building needs at least as long for its rebuilding. Now, 50 years after Brown, we are only 150 years into that process of remaking the complicated, intricate web of law and custom that put race at the center of our political experience. We probably have at least another 150 years to go.

I recommend that those of us who feel tired return to the transcripts of the oral arguments in Brown (recently reenacted at the Goodman Theater in Chicago and to be aired on Illinois’ PBS affiliate on May 17th), where one finds a tautness on both sides that arises from the lawyers’ intuitive knowledge that they were arguing about the entirety of a constitution. These oral arguments are more powerful, more significant documents, in my view, than the opinion itself.

One finds inspiration in Thurgood Marshall’s impassioned arguments in those transcripts. He had much farther to go than we do. We ought to make his energy our own and turn to resurrecting public education for everyone and to confronting the evils of the drug trade as well as the inequities and hypocrisies of our current responses to it. As Marshall must have understood, the work still ahead is for our children’s children’s children.

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Commentary

Where multiculturalism gets airbrushed

Sure, minorities have a huge presence on MTV. But do the prolific images of diversity add up to genuine multiculturalism?


(Original photographs from stock.xchng, illustration by Laura Elizabeth Pohl)

If MTV were your only source of news of the outside world, I’m betting you would think racism was dead and buried.

After all, here is a channel where nearly every time a black man appears, he is cruising down the street in a nice German import, wearing enough silver and gold to open his own Tiffany and Co.

And he’s dancing with black girls, with white girls, with Latino girls, and with Asian girls. Watching MTV it seems the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a land where his four children would not be judged by the color of their skin has come to pass — so long as his daughters, once grown up, are willing to flash that skin for the camera.

When the fact is a young black male in urban America is more likely to be arrested near a BMW than driving his own, I wonder what is the message of this particular brand of MTV Multiculturalism, this Dionysian image of all colors coming together and celebrating materialism and conspicuous consumption?

It’s not just MTV.  It’s Will Smith movies, it’s Tiger Woods golf, and it’s Jackie Chan movies. Through all these images runs a common message that says, “Hey, we’re not so different after all. We’re all dancing to Nelly, aren’t we?”

But phrased another way, it can also go like this: “Hey, shut up and stop talking about your own race, we’re all trying to dance to Nelly here!”

The particular brand of multiculturalism has an explicit motive. MTV – a corporation like any other – is selling advertising dollars. To get the viewers, it gears its product – that would be Nelly, N’Sync, and the rest – towards a target audience. But the herd of consumers are not the guys from Nelly’s neighborhood; they are, demographically speaking, the affluent suburban teenagers who blare Nelly and Jay-Z out the speakers of their parents’ SUVs on their way to schools and malls.

To hook this audience, MTV packages its “multiculturalism” with as little actual “culture” as it can possibly manage. It sells its “black culture” – or its Asian culture or its Latino culture – not as it actually is for the blacks, but as it is perceived by the suburban mob. Blacks are “gangstas” and “players”, Asians are kung-fu masters, and Latinos are Spanish-speaking homeboys or big-booty women.

Where are the real ethnics? Walk into the ethnic organization of any diverse campus, and you’ll see communities of young people trying to define more authentic identities for their group.

In the Harvard Asian American community, with which I am most familiar, the range of ethnic activities is astounding. Artistically, we have dance troupes that do everything from traditional ribbon and fan dances to contemporary J-Pop and break dancing. Academically, we have the prestigious Harvard China Review, run mostly, if not exclusively, by Asians. Socially, we have groups for Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong-ese, Southeast Asian, half Asian students, and more. Together, they plan panels, Boba tea nights, or entire dance formals.

One of our students is planning a campus-wide Asian American magazine; another group is pushing for a new Asian American major to be added to the curriculum. Just a month ago I ran a panel on Chinese migration, where international students whose families had moved to everywhere from Thailand to Belgium to New Zealand came together and talked about what it meant to be Chinese.

These are the acts of self-expression that any ethnic group prides itself upon. Just don’t try to find it on MTV. For all its profanity, MTV content, along with the rest of mass media, is innocuous stuff. It has to be, for the advertisers’ sake.

Mass media is “race blind,” to borrow a term from college admissions, if by being blind it can avoid controversy. In the 1989 song “Fight the Power,” Public Enemy raps, “Our freedom of speech is freedom or death / We got to fight the powers that be” and, decrying Elvis, “Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps.”

In contrast, all Nelly seems to cry out for is a pair of Air Force One sneakers. “I like the all-whites high tops strapped wit a gum bottom / there somethin’ bout them dirty that’s why I got ’em,” he raps. It’s the same beats, with very different souls.

This is the general trend with MTV Multiculturalism: It does not seek to challenge its audience;  rather, it is aimed at delivering to them whatever they want, whether it’s rap or basketball, with no guilt attached. It’s not “racist”: it emphasizes stereotypes – gangster or athlete – only as far as it is able to use them as marketing tools. Unlike political conservatives, it doesn’t really believe that blacks are less intelligent or that Asians can’t speak English. Rather, it shows them that way because of its audiences’ expectations.

When Abercrombie & Fitch put out a T-shirt depicting a slant-eyed Asian laundromat owner, Mr. Wong, with the punch line “Two Wongs don’t make a White,” it genuinely wasn’t trying to offend Asians. It was trying to sell T-shirts. That the message itself was offensive to a whole race of people seemed only a minor inconvenience.

Of course, it seems cultural critics have been screaming about the dumbing-down of mass media since the beginning of time. This essay is not the first and certainly won’t be the last to lambaste MTV. What is significant though is that ethnic groups are especially vulnerable to MTV. From the angle of discrimination, the more that MTV sells the slant-eyed Asian or the ghetto gansta, the harder it becomes, on the part of ethnic groups, to overcome those perceptions.

We are what MTV tells people we are, whether we like it or not. To illustrate the extent to which these stereotypes still float around the popular consciousness, one only has to look at the April issue of the popular men’s magazine Details. Within its pages, a piece entitled “Gay or Asian” explores the similarities between gay men and Asian men with such observations as, “One cruises for chicken; the other takes it General Tso-style.”

The magazine called it “satire,” yet I’ve not talked to anyone either gay or Asian who gets the joke. It is inescapable that as of yet, ethnic groups are still being defined in the popular consciousness primarily by their MTV depictions. That has to change.

From the angle of the ethnic communities themselves, the temptation of MTV’s money and fame begins to weaken those avenues of self-expression. All artists, regardless of their ethnicities, begin to converge towards the MTV ideal. Talented rappers in the future will write songs about their favorite sneakers; talented minority actors will give their greatest performances in pretending to be non-ethnic, that is, to be “white.” Stereotypes will be milked for their comedic value, but won’t be challenged by thoughtful films. And oh, forget Spike Lee.

We will see a culture where cheap media depictions obscure the difficulties in all race relations. Ignore for a moment the negative role models: the celebrities who play stereotypes or live them out in real life; those make dialogue about race hard enough as is.

There are still the ostensibly positive ones, the Tiger Wood’s and the Michelle Kwan’s, the people who we do look up and cheer for. But they too cover themselves in Nike swooshes and advertising dollars.

Michael Jordan, in the 1992 Olympics, covered himself during the medal presentation with an American flag. Why? Because he had a contract with Nike, and his U.S. Olympic outfit had the Reebok logo on it. The consistent message is this: “We, your heroes, have accepted the status-quo. We have prospered because of Nike and MTV, why don’t you do the same.”

The end result is a multiculturalism devoid of all value. The America of 2004 is in many ways in much better shape than any other period in its history. Legalized discrimination has waned, institutionalized racism is weaker, and race relations have improved significantly from the days when whites were setting dogs after their black slaves and burning houses in Chinatowns.

But as we emerge into a new era, will we be able to hold onto what is unique and different about ourselves? Can we preserve the shared understandings and values that come with being the members of marginalized communities, or will we sell out and pretend that we are not who we are? Given that race will always exist, and that racism will always be a problem, how can we define ourselves as “communities” – as groups with the solidarity to fight that racism – if our group identity becomes lost in the flood of MTV music videos?

The greatest accomplishment of American culture, it must be remembered, did not come from mainstream whites. Jazz came from a black culture that drew back on its long-standing and uniquely African traditions. It was a movement that came from a marginalized, but cohesive community, one that supported jazz during its nascent years and from which it drew its inspirations. The same could be said for Motown, for rock and roll, for hip hop. The white mainstream only came later on, to appropriate it and to market it, so that today, we have former N’Sync member Justin Timberlake donning bandanas and doing his best to look, well, black.

If we, the “ethnics” of America, are too quick to embrace MTV Multiculturalism, if we trade in our individual identities for one we saw in a Nike commercial, then we’ve bought a lot more than we’ve ever bargained for.

As Nelly would put it, “Oh why do I live this way / Hey! Must be the money!”

STORY INDEX

MUSIC >

Lyrics to Nelly’s “AirForce Ones”
URL: http://www.metrolyrics.com/lyrics/42069/Nelly/Air_Force_Ones

Lyrics to Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”
URL: http://www.lyricsdepot.com/public-enemy/fight-the-power.html

MTV website
URL: http://www.mtv.com

PUBLICATIONS >

“It’s all in the details”
URL: http://www.harvardindependent.com/news/2004/04/22/News/Its-All.In.The.Details-670114.shtml

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Heroic ethics

Ten years after the death of National Book Award winner Ralph Ellison, his posthumously published novel Juneteenth offers lessons for our post-9/11 world.


(Courtesy of Random House)

Man [sic] at his [sic] best, when he’s [sic] set in all the muck and confusion of life and continues to struggle for his [sic] ideals, is near sublime …

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

In response to the September 11 attacks, the figure of the hero has returned to all reaches of the political and intellectual spectrum. First canonized in the images of firefighters and New York cops, the post-9/11 hero has found its way into every varied aspect of the war on terror and even its opposition.

The conservative celebration of war heroes detailed in books like Senator John McCain’s Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life are mirrored in the volumes produced by leftist intellectuals and cultural critics. While heroism is a theme expected from former prisoner of war McCain, the left reclamation of heroic violence is more notable. Neo-Lacanians, such as Alenka Zupancic, and most commonly in non-academic circles, Slavoj Zizek, have entered the recent debate over ethics with a zeal for violent sacrifice that has been dismissed by many American leftists for being outdated and counterproductive because of its Leninist references.

Outdated or not, this rebellious work has found its way into everything from the Abercrombie & Fitch Fall Catalog to the publication Foreign Policy. Despite antagonism toward this scholarship as Leninist, Zupancic and Zizek are much more Kantian.

The fusion of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and German Idealist Immanuel Kant has developed into an ethical system that could only be called pathological deontology. In Zizek’s 9/11 treatise Welcome to the Desert of The Real, what he finds most admirable in the individuals that flew their planes into the Twin Towers was the undeniable courage to die for a cause (even if, as Zizek explicitly emphasizes, the cause was detestable).

In subsequent work on the subject, Zizek has described what he calls the ethical ‘Act’ as those choices that put the individual at significant risk, what he borrows from Sigmund Freud as being ‘beyond the reality principle,’ or quite literally suicidal. Drawing almost exclusively from pop culture, a stylistic choice that has made him infamous and highly sought after, Zizek isolates films like David Fincher’s Fight Club and other films that contain characters willing to mutilate themselves or even murder those that they love in the name of some ‘Thing’ that is ethical.

What Zizek and others drawing from psychoanalysis are not able to do is define or even hint at what this ethical ‘Thing’ is. A sort of tautology develops where by what is ethical is what you are willing to die for and what you are willing to die for is ethical.

This theoretical circularity not withstanding, it is easy to imagine the thrill of this kind of ethical action being romanticized and redeployed for nefarious purposes. Is not the Halliburton contractor who is so ‘committed’ to the American way of commerce and economic development that he is willing to risk his life rebuilding Iraq; no cost to themselves or others is too high — the very same ethical commitment ‘beyond the reality principle’ that Zizek and others champion?  

These rhetorical tactics have continuously circulated between the White House and those ‘private’ individuals involved in Iraqi reconstruction, calling into question how radical this system of ethics could possibly be. Even former counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke is enamored with bravery, mentioning in his tell-all book Against All Enemies that he disagreed with Bush’s choice to use the term ‘coward’ to describe the 9/11 bombers during his first September 11 address from Barksdale Air Force base.

Traditionally leftist public intellectual Christopher Hitchens has also championed the war in Iraq as an opportunity for those committed to democracy and universal human rights to test the mettle of their convictions. According to Hitchens’ book, The Long Short War, any criticism of the war that does not support regime change and intervention is ethically indefensible.

What animates both sides of the aisle — intellectually, politically, or otherwise — is nostalgia for sacrifice that, well, ‘kicks ass.’ Predictably and not without reason, Noam Chomsky and other leftists committed to non-violence have pointed out how counterproductive any U.S.-led intervention is likely to be, and in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, has been so far. The imperialistic interests served by Bush’s use of metonymy when invoking ‘us as hero’ and ‘them as coward’ has not gone unnoticed.

As Arundhati Roy writes concerning the war in Iraq in her essay “Confronting Empire,” “Our strategy should be not only to confront empire but to lay siege to it.” For Roy and others, 9/11 and the Iraqi war represent a turning point for the left that must now reorient itself towards a complete overthrow of U.S.-led globalization.

What has developed from all of these disparate attempts to conjure an heroic ethical response is both a deadlock and a remarkable amount of agreement. Everyone seems to agree that there is a fight to be had, and violent or non-violent, it is definitely oppositional; the only question is whether to reinvigorate individuals to put it all on the line for democracy, anti-globalization, or American security in all of its forms — national security, economic security, food security, and even sexual security. In a more reflective response to the current fervor, philosopher Judith Butler asks in the preface to her new book The Precarious Life “… whether the experience of vulnerability and loss have to lead straight away to military violence and retribution … [and] what, politically, might be made of grief besides the call for war[?]”

Ralph Ellison (Courtesy of Random House)

Juneteenth as a moment for pause

The preacher’s job, his main job, Bliss, is to help folks find themselves and to keep reminding them to remember who they are. So you see, those pictures can go against our purposes. If they look at those shows too often they’ll get all mixed up with so many of those shadows that they’ll lose their way. They won’t know who they are is what I mean.

In a response to this sobering question, Ellison offers a radical democratic ethics that requires a different sense of heroism in Juneteenth. His is an ethics that emerges from a Christian tradition of forgiveness that does not start from the same necessity for retributive justice prefigured in forms of heroism emerging after 9/11. To my knowledge, forgiveness is not an option that any of the talking heads, left or right, have openly considered. There is a reason for this.

In The Precarious Life, Butler describes in detail the rigor with which public debate over 9/11 has been regulated through the personalized attack of anyone willing to “consider the grounds and causes of the current conflict.” But, even Butler’s much needed, as she says, return to Aeschylus as a model to refuse revenge and instead “take stock of how the world has become formed” is not willing to go the next step and consider forgiveness in the place of justice. Despite the serious questions she asks, there is still a disclaimer at the beginning of The Precarious Life, clarifying that “one can — and ought to — abhor the attacks on ethical grounds (and enumerate those grounds).”

Without dismissing the ‘right’ to condemn the events of September 11, 2001, or the importance of debating military intervention, to take seriously Juneteenth is to ask what is truly taboo: Should we forgive those whom have so gravely injured us, and should that forgiveness come at the expense of safety and our desire for justice? It is this question which Ellison explores through the character of A.Z. Hickman and his relationship to his lost son, Bliss.

Juneteenth is a novel about things that can only be forgotten for so long. The return of a repressed history is both the site for the novel’s most important conflict, an internal battle for identity and security, and its most important relationship, an adopted child and a ‘least likely’ father’s attempt to bridge the racial gap. The characters of Juneteenth are caught between the apparent freedom of American individualism as described in the reoccurring quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson and the ‘servitude’ of history described by T.S. Elliot at the beginning of the novel.

Taking its name from the commemoration of emancipation that is celebrated throughout black communities, Ellison’s work-in-progress novel charts an untimely critique of the current democratic order and the paucity of political options that Ellison did not live to experience but in may ways foresaw.  

The story of Juneteenth begins in the office of Sunraider, a race-baiting senator from an unnamed Northeastern state. A congregation of black Southern Baptists led by preacher A.Z. Hickman has made a trip to Washington, D.C., to speak to one of the most controversial men there. Mistaken as a group of protesters, the delegation is escorted out of the building. We come to find that the congregation is actually the surrogate family of Sunraider, who was once known by those who loved him as Bliss. Rebuked by Sunraider’s receptionist, the group goes to watch the senator deliver one of his infamous speeches. Before Hickman is able to make contact with his estranged son to warn him of a plot on his life, another man opens fire on the Senate floor.

The majority of the novel takes place in a series of flashbacks and bedside conversations between Hickman and Sunraider/Bliss at a hospital in the immediate aftermath of the gunshots. Mortally wounded, the senator is led by Hickman to confront his past, who he is, and who he has become.

As Ellison’s stream of consciousness style unfolds, we find three distinct chronological periods in the senator’s life: A distinctly black childhood spent as a preacher, an interim period of questions and running spent mostly as a conman filmmaker, and the internal investigations of his identity on his deathbed. In all three of the periods, Ellison returns to Hickman’s struggle to understand Bliss’s decision to leave the black community and Bliss’s own struggle to find peace in the fleeting moments of his life.

One of the earliest sources of conflict for Hickman and Bliss is the arrival of the moving picture to a small town they are preaching in. The initial teaser for this new magical process comes from Bliss’s friend and provocateur, aptly named Body. Body, who overhears a conversation between three white men about a box that can show moving pictures in the dark, comes to represent Bliss’s flesh, his earthly desires. In fact, even when Body attempts to turn their discussions toward other topics, Bliss brings the conversation back to the subject of this strange new technology. Driven to learn more and more about this device, Bliss begins to pester Hickman to take him to see the pictures.

Giving into Bliss’s persistence, Hickman ultimately takes him to the picture show. But as the reverend emphasizes, the purpose of their trip is not pure enjoyment; it is also an important educational experience. In a rendition of Jesus’s proclamation in Acts 17 about living in — but not of — the world, Hickman describes the importance of knowing temptation in order to empathize with the sinner. Ellison uses the film’s distant world of shadows and spectacle as a metaphor for the socio-political. Both in the spectacular political shows that Bliss’s alter-ego Senator Sunraider puts on to rally white racism and in Bliss’s personal loss of identity, the movies are a vehicle for Ellison to explore the alienation that so many feel towards their own self-image. What is at stake in Ellison’s critique of politics is the centrality of manipulation.

For Bliss, the first picture show becomes a traumatic reminder of his lost mother. Attempting to reground the young Bliss, Hickman reminds him, “They’re only shadows … They’re fun if you keep that in mind. They’re only dangerous if you believe in them …” Despite Hickman’s early warnings regarding the movie house and this second attempt to deny the power of the ‘shadows,’ Bliss becomes transfixed by the moving image. Hickman’s description of the film as only shadows speaks to Ellison’s difficult relationship to politics. In Hickman’s attempt to reflect upon the place Washington, D.C., the reader finds a tremendous disdain for the compromise inherent in political power. For Ellison, the safety of social power — whiteness — always comes at the sacrifice of the courageous fight for ‘Truth.’

This conflict plays out in Hickman’s reluctant, yet deep and abiding, faith in the memory of President Abraham Lincoln. Despite all of his failures and inconsistencies, Lincoln represents the true vision of democracy. Lincoln made the difficult decision to emancipate the slaves not because he had the moral purity or interest do so, but because it was right.

This romantic democratic vision occurs throughout Ellison’s work. In his essay entitled “What America Would Be Like Without Blacks,” Ellison describes that it is the ability to demand what is right in the face of civil war and insecurity that gives democracy its meaning. Ellison writes that what is lost in equating democracy with stability and security is “the need for that tragic knowledge which we try ceaselessly to evade: that the true subject of democracy is not material well being … Without the [pressure] of the Black American, something irrepressibly hopeful and creative would go out of the American spirit, and the nation might well succumb to the moral slobbism that has ever threatened its existence from within.”

It is in this view of democracy that the current political order in all of its exclusion — whether it be the detainees at Guantanamo or the contract on Baghdad — becomes the true threat to freedom. The choice to become part of this system of compromise is the ethical significance of Bliss’s turn to whiteness and politics.

As the narrative unfolds, we learn that Bliss ran away repeatedly to hide in movie theaters until his final disappearance and reappearance in the grand theatre — Washington, D.C. In the theatrical performance of race-baiting, Bliss believes he has found the sense of belonging that drew him to the movies. Bliss explains in a fevered conflation of his theater experience and his turn to whiteness that both were a search for security in the safety of being powerful. What is at stake for Bliss is a feeling of belonging. The love of the African American community is not enough because to accept his blackness would require a life that he could not control. Here we find Bliss’s moral decline as a warning for what America can expect at the end of security and justice at all costs.

Through Hickman’s prodding and guided remembering, Bliss comes to realize that what he found in the safety of white authority was as illusory as the moving image:

So I said: What is the meaning of this arrangement of time, place and circumstance that flames and dampens murder in my heart? And what is this desire to identify with others, this need to extend myself and test my farfetched possibilities with only the agency of shadows? Merely shadows. All shadowy they promised me my mother and denied me solid life.

The knowledge that he made the wrong choice grips Bliss towards the end of the guided journey through his past, but it is not enough to redeem him. Instead, it drives Bliss further into delirium. Confronted by so much failure and deceit, he calls out in a crazed declaration (potentially internal monologue): “If I had only known that what I came to know about the shape of horror and the smell of pride — I say, HOW THE HELL DO YOU GET LOVE INTO POLITICS OR COMPASSION INTO HISTORY?”

The fall of Bliss appears to be a double failure. A failure of Hickman to produce the white insider who can lead on behalf of black interests and Bliss’s failure of character to accept the love and humanity Hickman bequeathed to him. However, Ellison discourages this reading of Bliss through Hickman’s perseverance regarding Bliss’s spiritual fate. In these bleak moments, Hickman reiterates the role of the preacher to try to help in any way and bring understanding because, as Hickman says, “what else is there?” What seems like resignation on the part of Hickman becomes the context for Ellison to describe what is truly sublime about Emerson’s doomed struggle through the muck.

Sacrifice and the unlikely heroics of forgiveness

A man [sic] has to live in order to have a reason for dying as well as have a reason to be reborn — because if you don’t you’re already dead anyway.

It is in the fading and seemingly last moments of Bliss’s life that Ellison is able to develop the complexity of his ethical position as it relates to how to live in American democracy. Although Ellison describes in his notes that “the mind becomes the real scene for action,” the more overtly political import cannot be discounted. As signified by Bliss’s quickly declining health, the question of the ‘Truth’ is urgent for Ellison. From the moment Bliss is shot in the beginning of the novel, the search for the ‘truth of what happened’ is described as having an immediacy that exceeds the eminent biological threats to Bliss’s fate. As Ellison’s notes in the appendix to the novel indicate, Bliss’s black experience comes to represent the “embodiment of American democratic promises” as a last chance to confront the traumatic history that runs just below the “shaky foundation” of the nation.

In Bliss, Ellison explores the universal potential of the black experience, and more importantly, the already shared experience of black suffering. The discussion of Bliss’s ‘racial origin’ unfolds in an unexpected way regarding his connection to blackness. In the first confrontation over Bliss’s origin, the assumption is that Bliss must be half black since, as one of the Church sisters puts it, “Half the devilment in this country caint be located on account of it’s somewhere in between black and white and covered up with bedclothes in the dark.” Initially, it seems it is Bliss’s blood that connects him to both worlds, but Ellison’s democratic vision is much more radical than that. Bliss’s miscegenated past is not at the level of biology (we discover later his identity has no truth in that it is completely unknown), but at the level of experience.  

Hickman rediscovers the senator’s blackness in his ‘look,’ something from Bliss’s younger days that still shows through. This epiphany of recognition comes to Hickman when he sees Bliss’s anguish as he tries to remember his past:

Now I understand: That look, that’s us! It’s not in the features but in what that look, those eyes, have to say about what it means to be a man who tries to live and struggle against all troubles of the world with but the naked heart and mind, and who finds them more necessary than all the power of wealth and great armies. Yes, that look and what put it there made him one of us.

Distinct from most other accounts of race is the potential for sacrifice to transform one’s social, even racial, designation. For Ellison, as represented in Hickman’s personal exploration, the political potential of the black experience is not the possibility of justice but the potential of forgiveness. Ellison uses the endgame between Hickman and Bliss to elucidate the heroic potential of living in this state of sacrifice and marginality.

Ellison’s equation of truth and heroism sound remarkably similar, at least in form, to the Bush administration’s justifications for war. After all, what is the war on terrorism if not the rally of the U.S. populace behind the rhetoric to sacrifice our lives in the name of worldwide democracy? But what is markedly different here is the ethos of that commitment, what Ellison calls an ‘understated heroism.’ Rather than the triumphalist tenor of current U.S. military actions, Ellison’s hero, Hickman, carries the burden of a tragic fate. Through Hickman’s attempt to make ‘Truth’ out of Bliss’s demise, Ellison defines ethical individuals as those “who have had the power to stay awake and struggle.” However, unlike the U.S. drive to victory, Hickman’s struggle defines the value of living in terms of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ‘muck and confusion.’ Hickman gives up on certainty and redemption in favor of sacrifice and forgiveness.  

The most trying decision for Hickman is the moment he is first confronted by Bliss as a baby. The reader discovers at the end of the novel that Bliss was an offering on behalf of a white woman who wrongly accused Hickman’s brother of rape to explain her extramarital pregnancy. Hickman is filled with hate and revenge on behalf of his brother’s wrongful death and wants to kill both the mother and the unborn child, but something exceeds his desire for revenge. It is the moment when Hickman experiences something ‘more than himself’ that he vows both to raise Bliss in love and devote his life uncompromisingly to forgiveness. Given the cycle of revenge that drives the current conflicts throughout the globe, Ellison’s concept of the hero offers a very inviting — and at the same time humbling — critique of both left and right politics.

Butler makes a similar move in her development of an ethics that is in response to the call of the ‘Other.’ Relying heavily on the work of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, Butler attempts to find her ethical horizon in a commitment to those who have been written out of the Iraqi conflict and other violent actions at home and abroad — in her words, those at the “limits of what we can know.” But to what end? It is in her goals that Butler can be distinguished from Ellison. Butler dedicates her book to “an attempt to break the cycle of violence and revenge” while Ellison simply finds freedom in the sacrifice of justice and security that comes with forgiveness.

What should be clear is that Ellison qua Hickman makes no promises about the success that such a struggle for the truth of compassion will produce. Instead, he redefines the value structure for success, returning to the notion of love that motivates the acceptance of Bliss. Ellison elevates the pursuit of truth beyond the continuation of life:

That kind of man [sic] loves the truth even more than he loves his life, or his wife, or his children, because he’s been designated and set aside to the hard tasks that have to be done. That kind of man will do what he sees as justice even if the earth yawns and swallows him down, and even then his deeds will survive and persist in the land forever.

Thus the ethical force of Hickman’s character is his ability to turn against revenge to the point that it destroys everything he holds dear, even allowing his son to turn against the people he loved and still returning to save him with his forgiveness. It is in this impossible pursuit that Ellison defines freedom. In the selected notes to the Vintage edition of Juneteenth Ellison writes, “This society is not likely to become free of racism, thus it is necessary for Negroes to free themselves by becoming their idea of what a free people should be.”

In this commitment beyond life itself, Ellison would seem to swing toward the ‘pathological deontology’ of Zizek and others who call for sacrifice in the name of ethics. I would not argue that Zizek’s film examples or his historical examples of Jewish uprisings are devoid of ethical content, but they are quite different, at least in Zizek’s representation of these events, from the sacrificial act of forgiveness. The ‘understated’ view of Ellison’s hero militates against the leftists that are spoiling for a fight. Sacrifice in the character of Hickman is not grand or dramatic; it is grounded in humility.

In this way, Ellison’s ethics dissolve the opposition assumed by the spectrum of leftist strategies discussed earlier. Unlike the oppositional strategies of Zizek and others on both the left and the right, Ellison uses Hickman’s intimacy with Bliss to demonstrate the degree to which, in a sense, we are all invited to be ‘Negroes.’ Hickman reminds Bliss and the reader that what was offered was the option to turn against the manipulative institutions of white authority. Bliss literally had the opportunity to be black despite his obviously white appearance. This transformation was made possible because of Hickman’s decision to forgive Bliss and Bliss’s mother.  

It is hard not to see this as a broader invitation to all that read Juneteenth. What Ellison gives up in this formulation is any exclusive right to be black. It is, in a sense, the ultimate act of forgiveness and sacrifice: Those that have injured, white society, are invited to ‘live as if they were free.’ The possibility of justice or retribution is short-circuited by Ellison’s act of forgiveness because it is a form of forgiveness without expectation. Like the Christian tradition that informs Ellison’s ethics, it is an undeserved forgiveness.  

It would be easy to dismiss Ellison’s generosity on the grounds that it lets ‘the injurers’ off the hook. It is difficult to imagine that anyone would not accept Ellison’s forgiveness; it seems so easy. But an opportunity like this comes at a cost; living free requires the sacrifice of power and privilege, trading in safety for a meaningful life. Such a call becomes a new Juneteenth celebration.

The political ethos that comes from this appeal to a universal human trauma, or at least the ability to share that experience, harkens back to the closing words of Ellison’s first novel, Invisible Man. Again, it seems Ellison pins his art, his raison de etre, to the ability ‘on some lower frequency to speak for you.’ Again, this is not a simple solution; in spite of Ellison’s recurrent universalism, we are still left with a question regarding Bliss’s fate: Is it too late? Has Ellison’s provocation, like Hickman, arrived to find a deaf audience that cannot or will not be warned?

Even the state of Bliss’s soul, so to speak, is unclear; the closing moments of the book tell of a ghastly machine that continues to run despite its bastard, irreconcilable parts and a fading, paralyzed Bliss unable to reach out for Hickman’s fading voice. I would like to believe that Hickman’s fidelity to being a preacher ‘remind[ed]’ Bliss to ‘remember’ who he was. But leaving this question open embodies freedom as Ellison defines it; the incompleteness of history serves also as the point of ethical departure; in this tension lies a vision of democracy in stark contrast to the legalism and fear that define the will for revenge at the heart of the current political landscape.

It is difficult to imagine people taking the idea of forgiveness seriously in the context of 9/11 and the resulting obsession with national security, but at the same time, it is difficult to imagine the destruction that is continuing to occur if we were willing to commit ourselves to forgiveness above and beyond our own safety and security. A society without violence is as unlikely as a society without racism, but inevitability seems like a poor reason to not live like we are free. At the very least, it is a reason to seriously consider what Ellison’s work can contribute to the current search for new democratic strategies in an increasingly hostile nation.

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Pathological Deontology


The common understanding of Immanuel Kant’s morality focuses on the means/ends distinction made in contrast to utilitarianism (the idea of the greatest good for the greatest number). Deontology gets reduced: do not use humans as means, and no outcome, no matter how good, can justify immoral action.  What is overlooked is Kant’s theories about the origins of moral duty or the compulsion towards moral action that each of us is supposed to feel deep down. In this way, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason preserves an element of faith to prove the moral character of humans. What Alenka Zupancic and Slavoj Zizek do is disentangle this notion of “compulsion” and “morality” from the Protestant values that Kant asserted where natural and therefore universally True. In de-moralizing the “duty” in Kant, Zupancic particularly changes the standards for determining ethical action. Instead of relying on biblical origins for the good, Zupancic and Zizek argue that the ethical is that which you will die for. The idea is that being willing to die for something is “pathological”, or literally insane, and that it must be, in a sense, disinterested or, at least, not self-serving because it goes against what Freudians and psychoanalysts believe is the most basic human drive — self preservation — or what Freud calls the “reality principle.” Zupancic explains this relationship between the reality principle and psychoanalytic ethics in her book The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Two, writing:

…  the reality principle sets limits to transgression of the pleasure principal; it tolerates, or even imposes certain transgressions, and excludes others. For instance, it demands that we accept some displeasure as the condition of our survival, and of our social well-being in general, whereas it excludes some other[s] … Its function … consists in setting limits within the field governed by the binary system of pleasure/pain. Sublimation [a fancy word for ethics] is what enables us to challenge this criterion, and eventually to formulate a different one.

To use an historical example, anti-slavery hero John Brown was considered by all accounts of his white contemporaries to be totally insane. And by white standards of the time, he was insane because he was willing to die, and did die, to change something that in no way threatened his particular way of living. Thus, John Brown wagered his safety and privilege in his act of sacrifice and went against every natural human tendency of self-preservation and self-interest. He raised the freedom of African Americans to the status of something that was literally more valuable than himself.

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Aeschylus


An ancient Greek Dramatist (526 B.C.- 456 B.C.) whose works like Agamemnon are drawn on for thinking about tragedy. The tragic ethos that is used by authors like Judith Butler, Michael Dillon, and others is used to discount the often accepted view that violence and atrocity can be pinned on particular people or particular human decisions. Instead, tragic events are evaluated as products of systems and global trends that exceed any one individual or group of individuals. This political position at least limits the finger pointing that is often counterproductive in determining why, for instance, people would be motivated to blow up buildings or why people would be desperate or angry enough to die for a particular cause. Using a tragic view of politics can make it possible to ask these more systemic questions that get lost in the shuffle of revenge and blame.

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Metonymy


This is a literary device that uses a commonly held attribute to stand in for something else. In the example given of George W. Bush’s September 11 address to the nation, Bush can simply say that the conflict is one between good and evil without needing to explain that the U.S. are the “good guys” and that terrorists are the “bad guys.” What is dangerous about this technique is that is prevents any discussion of how these terms are applied, it makes them off limits by relying on “common sense.” In the instance of this speech, it also allowed the “bad” to represent all of Islam without Bush having to answer for such a bigoted assertion. Often metonymy allows the speaker to communicate something that he or she would not like to take responsibility for.

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Redeployed


Borrowing from French philosopher Michel Foucault’s understanding of language and power as being intimately influential on one another; redeployment refers to the degree to which the intended purpose of one’s language is often irrelevant to the ways that language gets used. Instead, ideas that are so loaded with meaning, also known as ideographs, like democracy, freedom, heroism, etc., are attached to political positions that are broadly accepted. For instance, calls for democracy have effectively been deployed for the purposes of Marxist revolutions and capitalist expansion. The Cold War was a conflict between two national ideologies that, at the level of explicit discursive form, disagreed about nothing. As Foucault writes in Politics and the Study of Discourse:

… discourse is constituted by the difference between what one could say correctly at one period (under the rules of grammar and logic) and what is actually said.  The discursive field is, at a specific moment the law of this difference.”

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Tautology


In Roland Barthes’ classic, Mythologies, he describes tautology as one of the eight vital rhetorical strategies by the right. Conservative ideology is indebted to a particular, but broadly accepted, concept of common sense. The right uses these norms about how the world works to defend that which cannot stand up to reason and debate. For example: Why must nations go to war? The conservative replies: because that is what nations do. Debate is foreclosed by locating the answer within the question and covers over the rhetorical slight of hand by appealing to one’s authority or history to prevent further discussion. In Barthes’ words, “In tautology, there is a double murder: one kills rationality because it resists one; one kills language because it betrays one …  [tautology] can only of course take refuge behind authority.” Any alternative view of the world is cast off as naive or utopian. Judith Butler argues that this rhetorical strategy has been widespread in the attempts by conservatives of both the right and the left to prevent discussion of 9/11. Butler writes:

The raw public mockery of the peace movement, and the characterization of anti-war demonstrations as anachronistic or nostalgic, work to produce a consensus of public opinion that profoundly marginalizes anti-war sentiment and analysis, putting into question in a very strong way the very value of dissent as part of contemporary U.S. democratic culture.

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