Fondly remembered concert symbolizes Americans' progress toward racial harmony | |
One would like to believe that George W. Bush is sincere when he speaks against discrimination. He has used especially clear language to warn against condemning Arabs for the actions of terrorists.
But the president of the United States has stripped his public rhetoric of much of its power by allowing the government to summon thousands of men of Arab descent for interrogations with federal law enforcement officials. These purported invitations were issued solely on the basis of their recipients' ancestries. The profiler-in-chief seems to be saying, "Don't yield to bigotry. Leave it to us."
Then Bush's attorney general suggested that anyone who questions the government's racially motivated policies is guilty of treason. There are other reasons one could despair. The U.S. Senate has no African-American members, and the female senators could fit in a single elevator.
But we are much less divided along racial, gender and other lines than we have been. That's thanks to the striking sacrifices of millions of people who believed they could help make things better, and who then did so. Our individual and concerted efforts can make things even better still if we don't allow ourselves to lose sight of how far we've come. The government's efforts to drag Arab men in for questioning are misguided and unfortunate, but the United States has overcome obstacles far greater and far worse.
There are many women alive today who were born at a time when all female U.S. citizens were denied the right to vote. That has changed during their lifetimes because Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and legions of others worked to change it. The 2000 presidential election debacle shows we must reform the procedures by which we vote, but that will be an easier task than was securing the ballot for women, Americans of African ancestry and others who were denied that right in a past that thankfully seems distant.
Whenever I'm discouraged by how much remains to be done to make the United States fulfill its promise of equal opportunity for all, I think of a concert in Washington, D.C. in the early fall of 1984. It armors me against feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of all that we still must do to make this country what it can and should be.
The concert was by Black Uhuru, the celebrated reggae band. "Uhuru" means "freedom" in Swahili, and the group's name is a call to action as stirring as their music is jubilant. Playing on the bill with Black Uhuru were King Sunny Ade and his orchestra of more than two dozen Nigerian musicians. Near the end of the show, the bands joined forces and played together to an enthusiastic sold-out crowd of people whose skin tones ranged from light to dark.
The concert's location: Constitution Hall.
In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution, which owned the hall, would not allow the opera singer Marian Anderson to sing there because she is black. But 45 years later, more than 40 black musicians, each of whom is much darker than Anderson, jammed together on the stage that had been denied to Anderson. No one in the audience had any reason to give their doing so a second thought.
Not too long ago, such a show would have been impossible. It was made possible by, among others, Eleanor Roosevelt and the 75,000 other people who crowded around the Lincoln Memorial to hear the concert that Anderson gave in celebration of her talent, and in defiance of the racists for whom that talent mattered less than the color of her skin.
When Black Uhuru and King Sunny's orchestra played in 1984, there were no chains on the feet of the Africans on stage or in the audience. There were no restrictions on who could use the water fountains. And there were no prohibitions against whites and blacks enjoying the concert together.
It was a great concert. But it's an even greater symbol of how far we've come. And it can be greater even still as inspiration for our efforts to go farther.
Last edited by eplovejoy; 12-10-2001 at 06:50 PM.
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