Back in the early 90s, when Bush the Elder ran the White House, Hip Hop was about to shift out of the love tradition in which it was born, American families were just starting to run up the tremendous debt that is crippling so many of us today, but things were still fresh, my grandfather handed me a cassette tape (remember them?) labeled “What Makes You So Strong Black Man?”.
“Listen to this,” my grandfather told me. “I made a copy just for you.”
I did. I listened to the recorded voice of a reverend visiting the Howard University chapel, filling it – and me – with words of defiant redemption. The voice traced the legacy of slavery, the emphasis on dehumanization required to sustain the slave systems of The West, and the incomparable resistance of Black men – and women – that enabled my grandfather to exist at all. “How did you survive?” the voice rhetorically asked Black people. “No other race has suffered what you have.” The voice quoted Sterling Brown’s “Strong Men.” The entire poem. The voice asked, “Is there something in your African psyche? Is there something in your African spirit? What makes you so strong?”
“This,” the voice said, “was Delilah’s question.” The reverend was, of course, Jeremiah Wright, and in this sermon my grandfather had recorded for me, Rev. Wright expressed the liberation theology of United Church of Christ by contextualizing Black Power in the Samson story. The locks, he said, were a symbol of Samson’s relationship with God. But, he said, the locks were just a symbol. The spirit of The Lord does not require a particular hairstyle for profound revelation, miracle, or everyday sustenance to occur.
Obama has certainly been Samson, his power cut by his challenger, and the strong man has kept on coming. The spirit of Samson has also been riding Rev Wright, as the media have been as relentless as Delilah in cutting him down, making him an easy target for the Philistines. But this strong man, the Reverend Wright, is a Black man that keeps “a-comin’ on.”
He just spoke before the National Press Club and delivered a moving speech that centered the Black Church in the American public discourse. He said that the treatment of the Black Church has been Ellisonian in its invisibility. He said the media attacks have not been against just him but against the African American church itself. He listed names from Richard Allen and Absalom Jones to Barbara Jordan and Malcolm X. And his own Grandmamma. He listed the amazing initiatives and outreach services of his United Church of Christ in Chicago, including Anti-Apartheid efforts while the US was still, disgracefully, in South Africa. During the Q&A, he spoke of his years of military service, asked if that made him patriotic, then asked how many years Cheney ever served.
He will not be silenced. He is launching an initiative to help speak the truth of the Black theological tradition from the point of view of Black people, and he articulated his long history of inter-faith work.
The pundits think he shouldn’t speak. They say he’s damaging Obama’s chances. Some say his speech takes us too far off-course as the nation should be moving to a place of healing. Roland Martin gave his Bill Moyers appearance an A, his NAACP speech a B, and his National Press Club speech today an F, particularly the Q&A portion, and said it’s not an issue of substance but of tone.
Watch Wright on C-Cpan.org. You’ll hear, like I did back in the day, that the strong man is still coming. That makes me glad. It is only because of the daring liberation work of Black folk like him, that my grandfather – and so I – exist at all.
Sterling Brown’s “Strong Men”:
They dragged you from homeland,
They chained you In coffles,
They huddled you spoon-fashion in filthy hatches,
They sold you to give a few gentlemen ease.
They broke you in like oxen, They scourged you,
They branded you,
They made your women breeders,
They swelled your numbers with bastards. . . .
They taught you the religion they disgraced.
You sang:
Keep a-inchin’ along
Lak a po’ inch worm. . . .
You sang:
Bye and bye
I’m gonna lay down dis heaby bad . . .
You sang:
Walk togedder, chillen,
Dontcha git weary. . . .
The strong men keep a-comin’ on
The strong men git stronger.
They point with pride to the roads you built for them
They ride in comfort over the rails you laid for them
They put hammers in your hands
And said ? Drive so much before sundown.
You sang:
Ain’t no hammah
In dis lan’,
Strikes lak mine, bebby,
Strikes lak mine.
They cooped you in their kitchens,
They penned you in their factories,
They gave you the jobs that they were too good for,
They tried to guarantee happiness to themselves
By shunting dirt and misery to you.
You sang:
Me an’ muh baby gonna shine, shine
Me an’ muh baby gonna shine.
The strong men keep a-comin’ on
The strong men git stronger. . . .
They bought off some of your leaders
You stumbled, as blind men will. . . .
They coaxed you, unwontedly soft-voiced. . . .
You followed a way.
Then laughed as usual.
They heard the laugh and wondered;
Uncomfortable;
Unadmitting a deeper terror. . . .
The strong men keep a-comin’ on
Gittin’ stronger. . . .
What, from the slums
Where they have hemmed you
What, from the tiny huts
They could not keep from you ?
What reaches them
Making them ill at ease, fearful?
Today they shout prohibition at you
“Thou shalt not this.”
“Thou shalt not that.”
“Reserved for whites only”
You laugh.
One thing they cannot prohibit ?
The strong men . . . coming on
The strong’ men gittin’ stronger.
Strong men. . . .
Stronger. . . .
Comment(s)
Strong men keep on comin’!
Thank you for this Eisa!