Sit to Stand Up: Continung the Struggle

Taking  A Stand: The Struggle Continues

What happens when a NFL quarterback worth $10 million dollars takes a stand? Everyone has an opinion about Colin Kaepernick's decision to sit during the playing of the National Anthem. For me it's simple. I admire Kaepernick' courage and support his right to exercise his First Amendment Rights. I'm sure it was not an easy decision considering everything he has to lose. Think about the "punishments" metered out to John Carlos and Tommie Smith after their win at the 1968 Olympic Games. What about the sacrifice of Muhammed Ali, banned from boxing in his prime and the support he received from prominent Black athletes. It's easy to take a stand when you have nothing to lose.

Personally, I remember as a youngster my feelings about the National Anthem. It was "their" song, not mine. I knew it did not apply to me. Yes, I stood and sang it, respectfully. But my heart was sad and I felt my exclusion even then. Today, when I hear the anthem, I am militant and feel that, whether others like it or not, it's my flag and my country too. I'm emboldened to continue my fight to do all that I can to make Dr. King's vision of brotherhood in this country a reality.

There's so much written about Kaepernick's "sit to stand up", so I won't labor the issue. I pray that as he kneels in protest God gives him strength and guidance and that the penalty he will pay doesn't break his commitment. His decision not to vote for any of the presidential candidates caused another up roar.  But, each of us has to determine how we will contribute to our collective progress. I leave this Langston Hughes' poem for you to ponder as the struggle continues.

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes.
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen",
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed-

I, too, am America.

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"A Raisin in the Sun"-A Bit of History

 

On this day, Nov. 12, 1940, the Supreme Court ruled on a case that would inspire one of the seminal plays of the 20th Century, “A Raisin in the Sun.” The parents of Lorraine Hansberry, Carl and Nannie, a real estate broker and a schoolteacher, had left the Jim Crow South only to discover hostility in the North.

 
It was in 1937 that they tried to move into the all-white Washington Park section of... Chicago. Neighbors filed a lawsuit forcing the family out on the basis of restrictive covenants. Lorraine, the youngest of the couple’s four children, was eight years old at the time and witnessed violence against her family as her parents tried to stand their ground. The Hansberrys went to court to challenge the restrictive covenants and to return to the house they bought.

The case, Hansberry v. Lee, culminated in a 1940 Supreme Court decision that helped strike a blow against segregation, though the hostility continued. Neighbors surrounded their house at one point, throwing bricks and broken concrete, narrowly missing Lorraine’s head, and neighborhood children ganged up and attacked her at school.

 The experience would plant the seed for the 1959 play and later the film, “A Raisin in the Sun,” starring Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil and Ruby Dee. The play was based on the author's personal experiences in the Washington Park Subdivision of Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood. It also stems from the  the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes:

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a Raisin in the sun? 

 

It would not be until 1968 that the landmark Fair Housing Act (Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968) would officially prohibit housing discrimination in the United States. It also created the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity.

 

 

Lorraine Hansberry reflected upon the litigation in her book To Be Young, Gifted, and Black:

"25 years ago, [my father] spent a small personal fortune, his considerable talents, and many years of his life fighting, in association with NAACP attorneys, Chicago’s ‘restrictive covenants’ in one of this nation's ugliest ghettos. That fight also required our family to occupy disputed property in a hellishly hostile ‘white neighborhood’ in which literally howling mobs surrounded our house… My memories of this ‘correct’ way of fighting white supremacy in America include being spat at, cursed and pummeled in the daily trek to and from school. And I also remember my desperate and courageous mother, patrolling our household all night with a loaded German Luger (pistol), doggedly guarding her four children, while my father fought the respectable part of the battle in the Washington court."

Her father would not live to see that day nor his daughter's Broadway triumph. Carl Hansberry, a Mississippian who had journeyed to Chicago during the Great Migration, never recovered from the family's housing ordeal. He died at age 50 in 1946 of a cerebral hemorrhage in Mexico, where he was planning to move his family out of disillusionment. Their house at 6140 South Rhodes is now a Chicago landmark and the beloved play their family's legacy.

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Langston Hughes: Voice of Ordinary Black Life

 

Poet, playwright, and novelist Langston Hughes was a primary contributor to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Born in Joplin, MO on February 1, 1902, his first poem  "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" was published in The Crisis magazine a year after his high school graduation in 1920. He enrolled at Columbia University in 1921and became a part of Harlem's burgeoning cultural movement. He dropped out of college, took a variety of jobs and ultimately signed on as a steward, travelling to Africa and Spain. After leaving the ship in 1924, Hughes lived in Paris and continued to work on his poetry. Over the next decades, Hughes finished his education at Lincoln University, continued his life of letters, traveled extensively and was commercially successful. He went on to write countless works of poetry, prose and plays, even a column for the Chicago Defender.

On May 22, 1967, Langston Hughes died from complications of prostate cancer. A tribute to his poetry, his funeral contained little in the way of spoken eulogy, but was filled with jazz and blues music. Hughes' ashes were interred beneath the entrance of the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black culture in Harlem. The inscription marking the spot features a line from Hughes's poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." It reads: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

Hughes's Harlem home, on East 127th Street, received New York City Landmark status in 1981 and was added to the National Register of Places in 1982. Volumes of his work continue to be published and translated throughout the world.

Everyone seems to have a favorite Langston Hughes poem, i.e. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" or "Mother to Son" (Life for me ain't been no crystal stairs...). My favorite is "I, too am America".

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

Langston Hughes 1902-1967

Read more about this literary icon on Biography and enjoy the brief, but excellent video.

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