http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/9294/
By Joel Wendland
2-13-10
s part of its Black History Month events, on Feb. 9, the White House
celebrated the music of the civil rights movement. Great singers from
Smokey Robinson, Natalie Cole, The Freedom Singers, Bob Dylan, Joan
Baez, Jennifer Hudson, John Mellencamp and others gathered in the
East Room of the presidential home to perform some of the great old
songs of that era.
The songs that form a cultural foundation for much of the social
change movements of the 20th and 21st century echoed through the
halls of the White House that night. Mellencamp performed a rockin'
version of "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize," while Dylan growled out a
lullaby rendition of his "The Times They are a Changing."
A soulful "(Ain't Gonna Let Nobody) Turn Me Around" by The Freedom
Singers may have been the most moving performance of the night. As
the song began, singer Bernice Johnson Reagon stopped and urged the
audience to join in singing. "I know this is a show, but you have to
actually sing this song," she said. "You can never tell when you
might need it."
A touching version of "Abraham, Martin and John" by Smokey Robinson
evoked a mournful reflection on the loss of great leaders, two of
whom were occupants of the White House and who had sided with the
forces of equality and democracy.
Natalie Cole voiced Marvin Gaye's anti-racist and anti-war song
"What's Going On," including the song's denunciation of the
escalation of the war in Vietnam. The line, "war is not the answer,"
still resonates today.
The celebration took place in the East Room of the White House, which
is typically used for such public events. But some 200 hundred years
ago, President Thomas Jefferson used the room to temporarily house
explorers Merriwether Lewis and George Rogers Clark after their
return from crossing the country to the Pacific Ocean, essentially
opening the US government's nearly 200-year war on this continent's
indigenous peoples and nations.
Thomas Jefferson is most well-known for penning the Declaration of
Independence in 1776, including the words "We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these
are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
From the way he lived his life and the ideas he held, however, we
know that Thomas Jefferson really believed these words applied only
to a portion of the people. In 1785, for example, he wrote a book
called Notes on the State of Virginia explaining his views on how his
home state's government should be organized. It would be his only
published book, and it was probably the first book-length political
treatise published in the U.S.
In that book, Jefferson took time out to explain and defend the
racist ideology behind white supremacy and the separation of races.
People of African descent, he insisted, lacked imagination, the
ability to reason or any significant artistic capacity. They are
incapable of leadership or of meaningful and original artistic
expression. They are suited only for labor, Jefferson pontificated in
the pseudo-scientific manner racists typically adopt. At best, Black
and white people should always be kept apart, our nation's third
president concluded.
It was ideas like these that served as the foundation for the slave
system. Many occupants of the White House, up to Lincoln, would come
to repeat these ideas and support the slave system they justified.
Even after the end of the slave regime, presidents like Andrew
Johnson and Woodrow Wilson defended Jefferson's racial ideology.
Wilson would invoke them when he called the brief overturning of
white supremacy in the South during the Reconstruction period "a
public crime" and reinstated segregation rules on federal property.
Theodore Roosevelt mouthed his own updated version of Jefferson's
theories of race when he described racial inter-marriage and the
influx of immigrants as a form of "race suicide."
The ghosts of these presidents must have haunted the East Room on
Feb. 9, but this event stands as a sign of the many struggles and
deep changes this country has been through.
Massive painted likenesses of Theodore Roosevelt and George
Washington could only stare silently as our country's first Black
president and his beautiful family hosted this concert celebrating
the voices and music and struggles of our country's Second Reconstruction.
What a change indeed!
--
Check out videos of the concert at the White House Youtube.com page.
http://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse
.
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