The Census and Me

I received this from the National Urban League:

"Dear Friend,
 


"When the founding fathers met in Philadelphia during the Constitutional Convention, their work remained unfinished for almost 200 years until the passage of modern civil rights legislation. Even on the nation's census, the framers of the constitution only counted people of African descent as 3/5ths of a person. On April 1, 2010, you will have the power once again to finish their work. Let's make sure that our community really counts this time.


"On April 1st, the nation counts itself. You should have received a Census Form at your home or apartment that asks you several very simple questions."


Check out what the Census Bureau has well-known people, including Dorothy Height, saying about the importance of this effort: http://2010.census.gov/2010census/

BUT, GUESS WHATt? I have yet to receive a census form. I guess I’m on the way to not being counted – unless, of course, I raise hell!

theGrio

Check out my first piece for theGrio, a project in the NBC Universal world that aims to bring news and information to blackfolks:

www.thegrio.com/money/bad-economy-motivates-black-philanthropists-to-give-back.php

Martin Luther King Jr.

I think the Kennedys have it right. Rather than dwelling on the anniversaries of assassinations, they mark the birthdates of JFK and RFK with family rituals.

Having said that, I will share with you here some of the remarks I made at the 2004 birthdate observation of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The place was The Central Synagogue in midtown Manhattan, New York City. The hosts were Jews and blackfolks.

“When he was 18 years old, in 1947, he became his father’s assistant at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. He was ordained Feb. 25, 1948, a few weeks after he turned 19 and a few months before he graduated from Morehouse College.

“Fifty years ago, when King was 25, the civil rights revolution began in earnest when the U.S. Supreme Court decided that separate was not equal in the nation’s public school system and declared segregation unconstitutional. We as a nation are still grappling with the import of that decision. Even when I went to the ‘white’ high school, months after King’s death, my hometown was just getting around to implementing the Supreme Court’s decision of so long before to integrate ‘with all deliberate speed.’

“1954 was not only momentous because of the Brown decision, but that is also the year when MLK became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama – 25 years old! 14 months later he was chosen to head the Montgomery Improvement Association, which was leading the bus boycott that began after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to relinquish her seat to a white man on a city bus. For the remainder of his life he was blessed and burdened by a role that, by Aug. 28, 1963, had made him as A. Phillip Randolph said in introducing him to an audience of hundreds of thousands in Washington, ‘the moral leader of our nation'….

“I come today not to presume what a living 75-year-old MLK would be doing other than going to church and enjoying birthday cake with his family. But I come to encourage all of us – myself included – to do as King did in his short life, which saw landmark litigation, marches, sit-ins, pray-ins, wade-ins, freedom rides, anti-war demonstrations.

“To me, it’s irrelevant whether King was a saint or not. He was a doer. When called upon to work to change what was wrong with the world, beginning in Montgomery, he took on the job, despite the sacrifices that entailed….

“Around Easter we Christians often sing, ‘Were you there when they crucified my Lord?’ Of course, we were not. That was thousands of years ago. But we can update that question to ask not just where we were during various stages in the struggles for justice and peace, but where we are and where we will be.”

Rain, Rain, Don't Go Away

I know a lot of us have had lots of snow and rain in recent weeks -- months, even! But I'm annoyed by TV weather people who turn rain into a villain. Sure, there may be inconveniences, but Mother Nature is just that: a nurturing presence. Don't lose your minds. We need rain for those veggies you eat in restaurants or purchase at supermarkets. I need rain for my garden, and, truth be told, by cats, Frankie and Sammie Dee, prefer rainwater to what I give them from the tap and even from relatively expensive bottles of Poland Springs!

Rain is a good thing.

The Incredibly Shrinking Mr. Preval

Rene Preval is the president of Haiti, but he seems to let leaders of other countries do all the talking when it comes to how to rebuild his nation following the January 12 earthquake and all the aftershocks (smaller earthquakes) thereafter. In photos of former President Clinton and former President Bush doing walk-abouts in Port-au-Prince last week, there was an unidentified black dude just a step behind: the president of Haiti.

At a memorial service a month after the big earthquake he said that his wife had urged him to speak to his people right away. And this is what his response was: "What can I say to the people who are dead, who are injured, the people who have lost loved ones? Haitians, the pain is too heavy for words to express."

That's why you are the president, Mr. Preval. Find the words to express what your country needs. Haiti has been screwed up for more than a century, in large measure because of United States policies and those of other foreign governments. Now is the time to put into play long-term development plans that you were talking about more than a year ago and meshing them with those that have emerged since the earthquake through the United Nations and the European Union, among others.

This week your voice should be a megaphone at the conference on Haiti that the United Nations is hosting in New York. Don't be a wimp.

RIGHT ON, MR. PRESIDENT!

While extremist knuckleheads are threatening the lives of the President and members of Congress because of their differences of opinion on health care reform, our Commander in Chief steathily went to Afghanistan today to boost morale of troops and, hopefully, kick Afghanistan’s president in the butt. To get this war -- and the one in Iraq -- over with, so-called leaders like Afghanistan's need to step up.

President Obama shows that he can multitask, while his opponents are stuck in the mud.

March Madness! So This Is An Excuse For Rape?

So many of us Baby Boomers, especially those who grew up in the South and were on the frontline of integrating one thing or another, have issues to this day. But I must say that Tom Payne is way beyond the way beyond.

He was the first black player on the University of Kentucky basketball team, and one can hardly imagine the hell he went through. But he has put others through a greater hell by raping them. I came across this article in which Payne essentially gives himself a pity party: he was an integration warrior without the armor to handle the task. So he became a rapist? “He has been imprisoned for all but three years since 1972, in three different states for three different convictions,” the Fanhouse article says. He is currently finishing out a sentence in Kentucky, but hoping he can be released early since he is nearly 60 and his mother is in her 80s and can use his help and, of course, he has a message to offer to young people who might go astray.

From the article: “Starting in Georgia at the end of his rookie season with the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, then in Kentucky after cases were made against him while he was still in Georgia prisons, then in California in the 1980s after being paroled, then back in Kentucky in 2000 when he was paroled in California, for violating his parole in the previous state, Payne has been in prison for all but three of the last 38 years.”

Pity the fool.

He wants the University of Kentucky to recognize him as the pioneer that he was. But I cannot see a school honoring a man as a serial rapist frittered his life away.

Read the article and make your own call on this:

http://ncaabasketball.fanhouse.com

Civil Society?

Sometimes I think we give too much credit to and are over-adoring towards The Founding Fathers. After all, while talking about liberty and justice for all, a bunch of them were slave owners and others benefited from slave trafficking. They talked about how “all men are created equal” while conveniently ignoring men who were not white property owners and ignoring women altogether.

And yet…

As they cobbled together the Constitution that has pretty much stood the test of time -- with amendments, of course --they did not go after each other with the kind of venomous rhetoric we are seeing today in the contest over health care reform. Language that is racist and xenophobic and sexist and homophobic. Language that threatens the lives of the President and of members of Congress, some of whom have closed their offices while shielding themselves behind security guards.

I suppose the last time we were this "civil" was during the Civil Rights Movement and, before that, the Civil War. In both eras, many lives were lost.

Is this the U.S. or Taliban country?

O Brother Where Art Thou?

As the vote on President Obama's health care reform nears, I've been struck by the lack of very public support and cajoling from Harlem's Rep. Charlie Rangel, the former chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee who is now enmeshed in all sorts of investigations into his ways and means of doing personal business with government resources.

We should be seeing Rangel, a senior member of Congress, all over the media landscape, to persuade and reassure we the people. He should be there with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as she misses no opportunity to use media for the message. I'm sure he's doing some wheeling and dealing behind the scenes, but a more public face is sorely missed at this critical time.

Al Sharpton Gets a Strange Stamp of Approval

What a difference access to money and tailored suits and the likes of Donald Trump and exclusive men’s clubs and expensive cigars and, oh yeah, the White House, makes. Al Sharpton has re-invented himself so many times since I met him in the 1980s when he was rotund, had hair permed on a regular basis as a homage to James Brown, wore shiny neon jogging suits and a huge Martin Luther King medallion around his neck. He has now done it again. But what’s really scary is that he has let Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal re-invent him and present him as what once was called “a safe Negro” who is acceptable in polite company and can be counted upon to bring blackfolks, specifically Democrats, to the voting booths in November. Check out a front page article in today’s (3/17) Wall Street Journal: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/16/obamas-new-partner-al-sharpton/

President Obama is mistaken in thinking that Sharpton, like Booker T. Washington so many decades ago, can speak for blackfolks and influence how they vote and how they live. Washington, an accomodationist, was an adviser to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft during the segregation era. Sharpton, an unrepentant opportunist, is an adviser to President Obama in what is supposedly the “post-Civil Rights” era.

Many blackfolks remember -- not fondly -- the Sharpton of the garrish jogging suits and the incendiary language; the man who actually paid people to show up at his rallies to bamboozle gullible media into thinking he had a larger and more loyal following than he did. Those people are not likely to follow his lead in today’s political climate.

I may have a cup of tea with Sharpton or appear on his syndicated radio program, but for President Obama there is more at stake. He does not want to be known, as the WSJ declared today, as Sharpton’s “partner.”

Sharpton and Tavis Smiley, the broadcast host who is as good as Sharpton in the self-promotion arena, have tangled over Sharpton’s Obama connection. Smiley says, in the WSJ article, that it is hard “to speak truth to power about the suffering of black people on the one hand, and then be running in and out of the Oval Office and trying to run the president’s agenda or express White House talking points.” Professor Cornel West of Princeton is quoted as saying that Sharpton risks becoming “a symbolic insider.”

And this is part of the reason: The Wall Street Journal is a linchpin in Murdoch’s conservative communications empire that includes The New York Post and the Fox News Channel. Sharpton is a frequent guest on Fox shows hosted by Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity.

The French have a saying: The more things change, the more they remain the same. As Billie Holliday sang: Them that’s got shall get. Them’s that’s not shall lose. Sharpton’s got; a whole lot of blackfolks will lose because of his latest re-invention of himself as someone who no longer believes in the power of well-directed protest politics -- independent of those to whom he should be speaking truth.

Clarence and Ginni Thomas: The Yin and the Yang

I have defended Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas when I felt he deserved defense. But he is a nerdy weirdo. Prof. Linda Greenhouse so eloquently made the point in a piece published March 11 at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com: “February 22 was the fourth anniversary of the last time Justice Thomas asked a question during an argument. His silent presence on the bench has evolved into a weirdly compelling example of performance art.”

His wife, on the other hand, has been very vocal as a member of that “tea party movement” that has risen as a so-called grassroots opposition to President Obama. In a Los Angeles Times piece by Kathleen Hennessey on March 14, Ginni Thomas told a gathering in Washington: “I am an ordinary citizen from Omaha, Neb., who just may have the chance to preserve liberty along with you and other people like you.” She wants to save the United States from Obama’s “hard-left agenda” and went on to say: “I have felt called to the front lines with you, with my fellow citizens, to preserve what made America great.”

Imagine the couple’s dinner talk. As a lifetime appointee to the court, Justice Thomas is supposed to be totally apolitical. His wife is anything but. Just as Justice Antonin Scalia seems to be his guardian angel and mentor on the court, his wife is probably just as influential at home.

His votes in coming cases bear greater scrutiny.

I’ll end this blog entry with a New York Daily News column I wrote in 1995 and that was part of the “body of work” that earned me a 1996 Pulitzer Prize for commentary (www.pulitzer.org)

CLARENCE THOMAS' INPUT IN RACE DEBATE

BY E.R. SHIPP

Wednesday, July 12th 1995, 1:14AM

THREE OF MY fellow Georgians stand at the forefront of our painful national debate on racism and remedies: House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the self-proclaimed leader of the Republican revolution; Rep. Cynthia McKinney, whose racially gerrymandered congressional district the Supreme Court deemed unlawful, and Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court justice who, if you listen to some folks, was single-handedly responsible for that decision and an earlier one limiting the federal courts' role in the area of school desegregation.

Thomas has been pilloried, "called everything but a child of God," as we say in Georgia. But rather than being "an Uncle Tom," as so many are so quick to say, at times he sounds to me like W.E.B. Du Bois, the scholar, founding member of the NAACP and Pan-Africanist whose bona fides has not been called into question as far as I know.

You probably think I'm nuts, but consider what Du Bois had to say 60 years ago when educators like himself and lawyers such as Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall were debating what to do about segregated schools. Work to raise their quality, while conceding the reality of American apartheid? Or sue to end state-mandated segregation, arguing that integration was the only assurance black children could get a decent education?

In the July 1935 Journal of Negro Education, leading scholars, including E. Franklin Frazier, Ralph Bunche, Horace Mann Bond, Alain Locke and Du Bois, weighed in on the subject. Du Bois chastised blacks for their "utter lack of faith" in their own schools. "[A]s long as American Negroes believe that their race is constitutionally and permanently inferior to white people, they necessarily disbelieve in every possible Negro institution." The quality of the education should be paramount, he said, not whether black kids sat next to white kids in integrated classrooms. "The Negro needs neither segregated schools nor mixed schools," Du Bois declared. "What he needs is Education."

Thomas seemed to echo Du Bois a few weeks ago in finding that a federal judge had gone too far in requiring an elaborate desegregation plan to achieve racial balance in the public schools of Kansas City, Mo., where, in some instances, schools were 90% black. Looking at black students' poor academic performance, the federal judge concluded that there was a link between the high proportion of blacks and the low quality of the schools.

"It never ceases to amaze me that the courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior," Thomas wrote in a passionate critique of the Kansas City plan. Of the Missouri court's insistence on racial balance, he said: "This position appears to rest upon the idea that any school that is black is inferior, and that blacks cannot succeed without the benefit of the company of whites."

Thomas, like Du Bois, would say to local school officials and parents: Fix the schools to make sure that they are indeed educating kids. Demand that every school gets its fair share of education dollars. Let kids go to school in their own neighborhoods if they choose. And forget about what proportion of students are of what race. Thomas agrees with Du Bois that it's wrong to use children as "battering rams" in the elusive goal of creating an integrated society.

Admittedly, Thomas is a strange bird, but he seems to have more faith in the ability of blacks to stand on their own two feet than do some of those who berate him. His is an Old Testament-style tough love. He is yes, I do believe this a proud black man. But a confused one.

"We're a mixed-up generation, those of us who were sent to integrate society," Thomas once said.

I'm part of that generation that was the first to integrate this, that or the other. We've got the bruises psychic, if not physical to show it. So who better than us the expeditionary troops, the cannon fodder to force Americans to confront racism and shape remedies that make sense for the 1990s? Black thought on racism did not begin with the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education case. The remedies we seek should not end with it.

---------------------------

The questions I raised at the end of that column remain. But Justice Thomas is probably the most messed-up, mixed-up member of his generation.

Surviving the Storm

The newscasters are calling it “a killer storm.” But, so far, I have survived this Nor’easter unscathed but a bit wet. Thanks to the kindness of strangers, I had a relatively lovely evening at my favorite Long Island, NY, Irish restaurant: Molly Malone’s.

Having been beaten up and blown around Saturday in trying to get from my Fire Island house to the ferry to Bay Shore, Long Island, I so looked forward to the St. Patrick’s Day parade on Main Street. Didn’t happen. At the restaurant, power was in and out and in and out until it finally decided on OUT. But, folks at the bar shared the food that made it out of the kitchen before OUT. They generously gave me warm bread and steamed mussels. The band arrived four hours late and after a couple of minutes decided it could not play without electricity. Whatever happened to accoustics and accapella? The wait staff was creative and placed candles all around. So even if you were not part of the Sweet 16 Party for a young lady that was going on above the bar, you had a rather festive evening. And, for those who wanted it, a rather romantic evening. I shared good conversation with people at the bar -- and good conversation is a rare thing these days, isn’t it?

Eventually I made it back to my relatively OK motel, which did have electricity, and I enjoyed food I’d brought from Molly’s: a nice salad and an Irish Lamb Stew.

Should I call this the luck of the Irish part of my black heritage?

Charles Rangel and David Paterson: Lost Leaders

For decades, the names Rangel and Paterson have been at the forefront of politics, especially that involving blackfolks in New York. Depending upon which side of the deal you were on, that was mostly a good thing. Now those names -- Rangel and Paterson -- are at the forefront of politics for all the wrong reasons.

Start with Representative Rangel, who thinks he is still chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee; he thinks he has just stepped aside amid myriad investigations based on ethics and conflicts of interest and tax fraud and who knows what else. The New York Daily News, which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for thrashing Rangel and his allies for their stewardship of the Apollo Theater, published an article on Feb. 27 with the headline “Don’t Want Charles in charge: Rangel should quit chairman post -- Dems”. It’s no surprise that Republicans want him out of that role -- and perhaps even out of office -- but his fellow Democrats are also saying the same thing. In another Daily News article, on Mar. 4, Richard Sisk wrote this: “WASHINGTON - Charlie Rangel was alone and lost Wednesday, an aging and now powerless pol who didn’t know where to go or what to do. He had made a wrong turn coming out of a memorial service for another old bull of the House, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), and was by himself under the vast and majestic expanse of the Capitol dome. The usual scurrying aides, the armload of briefing papers, the multiple cell phones and other trappings of influence were gone.”

A very unscientific but still telling survey by Harlem World magazine found that 67 percent of respondents wanted Rangel to step aside. Just as when it became evident that Rangel’s predecessor, Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., was no longer effective, especially for New York, youngbloods are already lining up to run for his seat.

At the state government level, there’s the problem of Gov. David Paterson, who, a few days after announcing his plans to seek election to a full term later this year, announced that he would not be running.

I am not accustomed to David Paterson being a pity-party type of guy. But he came across that way a few days ago in a WCBS-TV interview. “Difficulty and disaster greeted me,” he told the reporter. He wasn’t talking about his whole life’s experience, which, of course, involves health issues that led to his blindness. He was talking about assuming the office of Governor of the State of New York.

He’s the “accidental governor,” one who was picked by Eliot Spitzer to be lieutenant governor but who didn’t have a clue about the real wheelings and dealings in Albany until Spitzer resigned because of a sex scandal involving a prostitution ring. As Lt. Gov., Paterson was a happy-go-lucky fellow who had a title and Harlem’s esteem because of his father, Basil, and his honorary fathers: David Dinkins, Percy Sutton and Charles Rangel.

His intellect and wit have stood him well, but his dumb decisions while in office are leading to a sad downfall. He’s admitted to adultery and drug use; indeed, that was one of his first announcements. Now he’s somehow involved in a domestic violence case brought against one of his aides by that man’s girlfriend. And he seems to have violated state law by accepting free tickets to a Yankees World Series game last year. The piling on of charges and rumors continues.

The end of this year may see Paterson and Rangel retired from current political leadership.

Radio, the Internet and Maximizing Resources

I appeared on Carl Redding’s radio program Thursday (3/11) to discuss, among other things, the fight over health care reform. BTW, this is a struggle that goes back to the days of President Harry Truman in the 1940s. What he started then, building upon a larger struggle for what we now know as the Social Security system started by President Franklin Roosevelt, didn't see sucess until 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson was able to sign into law Medicaid and Medicare and enroll former President Truman as the first Medicare client.

Most of our current elected representatives don’t know what they are talking about regarding what President Obama is trying to accomplish and haven’t delved into the main proposals on the table. They wait for executive summaries from staff members who wait for marching orders from their particular political party’s top dawgs.

Carl has health care coverage because he is a military veteran (Marine Corps); I have no health care coverage because I am a journalism veteran. As a former colleague put it, jobs in journalism "are melting away like dirty snow in the new spring sunshine."

But enough of that for now.

The radio program was on a black-owned gospel radio station, WEHA 88.7 FM, that is also on the Internet: wehagospel887.com That led me to at least two thoughts.

First, we as people of color are not as out of the loop Internet-wise as some people want us to believe. There is power not only in the blood but also in the ‘hoods!

Second, there should be a network, not just of gospel radio, but of all Internet-based radio so that we can come together to address issues like health care reform and emergencies such as the January earthquake in Haiti. Particularly regarding Haiti, Chile, etcetera, when mainstream media move on to other subjects, this network could still provide information to and receive information from folks on the ground. It could also help people determine which organizations to make donations to -- the good, the bad and the downright ugly.

I recently came across something called Carribean Christian Radio (www.caribbean-radio.com; “Island Radio Stations Broadcasting Over the Airwaves and via the Internet”). A link between those stations and fellow travelers here in the States (Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, Silver Spring, Md., lots in New Jersey and Florida, networks like Black America Web, etcetera) could be powerful. And we wouldn’t have to re-invent the wheel and duplicate what are sometimes ego-driven and fairly fruitless efforts.

What do you think?

Finding Money for Your Non-Profits

I recently worked with Broadway Housing Communities (main office: 583 Riverside Drive, NYC 10031) on a grant proposal for a project that can help facilitate better communication among and between us in Upper Manhattan and the South Bronx: Blacks, Latinos, Whites, poor, not-so-poor, longtime residents, newcomers, small businesses, cultural institutions, etcetera. The deadline for that particular multimedia grant proposal was March 1, and, thanks to those looking out for us from whatever celestial perch, they made the deadline. Let's keep our fingers crossed that Broadway Housing Communities makes the cut for this nationwide 2010 New Voices Program.

This whole process got me thinking about other monies that may be out there for local projects. I'll do more research. But do any of you know of anything you are willing to share?

Why So Many of Us Are Mad at Congress

A whole lot of us, including me, are officially unemployed. If we are lucky, we can collect unemployment benefits each week -- welfare. But our do-mostly-nothing Congress members each gets paid a minimum of $174,000 per year and has access to what is called the "Cadillac" of health care insurance. I have absolutely no health insurance. It's triage for me and my two cats. Which ailment do we take care of out of my shrinking pocket at this particular time? Or do we resort to chicken soup and Vicks and meditation and dipping our toes in healing waters and other home remedies?

Official unemployment is in the low double digits (10%?); the unofficial, we know, is much higher.Why doesn't Congress know what we know and DO SOMETHING? Well, probably because they have those "Cadillac" options.

The summit meeting the President recently hosted proved that politics trumps all. Even as the President bends over backwards to come up with some kind of compromise that Republicans and nervous Democrats can agree to, they are sitting on their hands while looking to the possibilities of their prospects in November elections.

Carl Redding's Latest Restaurant

I heard from Carl Redding the other day. You know, the former proprietor of Amy Ruth's on 116th Street in Harlem? The brother has been through a lot of ups and downs in Harlem, at Foxwoods and at various other places as he makes his dream of being a major restaurateur come true. The people who have worked with him have been as down as he's been up.

He's now planning to open a Southern-style restaurant in Atlantic City in May, on Mother's Day. It will be called Redding's, and I intend to check it out during my travels from New York to Georgia and back again.

What are your memories of Carl in Harlem? And, BTW, what makes food "Southern" and what menu items would you suggest? I like the corned beef and lentils dish I made a few days ago, but that would probably never appear on a "Southern" menu. Hmmm.

The Honorable Charles Rangel

For so many years we in New York, and particularly in Harlem, have been persuaded that the reason to keep returning Mr. Rangel to office was that he would be head of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, the place in Congress where the money gets decided upon. BUT...

Mr. Rangel has not lived up to the expectations because of so much baggage -- a sense of entitlement at a minimum, lost of touch with the real world perhaps, corruption at the most.

Dear, Congressman: You've got some explaining to do.

AND: The next generation -- post Adam 2d, post Rangel, post Gang of Four --needs to step up. Where do we go from here? Stop the butt-kissing and state your case -- our case.

Listening to James Cleveland

Because my uncle Robert Moore, our Conyers, Ga., singing version of James Cleveland, recently died, I've been listening to the music of the actual James Cleveland and have concluded that James Cleveland was not a happy man within himself. Listen to him sing the songs he sang and that some of us still sing nearly 20 years after his death. He was one of Aretha's big brothers in life; he lived in her family's household led by the Rev. C. L. Franklin. Gladys Knight was an inspiration. So, too, James Brown. He was the founder of the Gospel Music Workshop of America. He died in 1991. And these are some of his words:

“I don’t mind if you use me, until you use me up.”

“Save me, Lord” they said on the mourner’s bench and that he sang about. “Whatever you have need of me, I’m willing. Save me, Lord.”

There is no self-esteem there, no feeling that he could make it in the world in which he lived. The world in which we still live in. There’s this overwhelming sadness and God/Jesus comes in to be the burden bearer that he did not have in this life. Listen to him. Tell me what you bring from his songs.

He wanted God to work those miracles that were not happening in everyday life at an ordinary pace. Even his garrish homegoing services said that.

He could never live up to what Jesus sacrificed, but he also could not deal with the sins he thought he had to bear, among them -- in his mind and in his time, 1931-1991 -- his sexuality. He was ready for the chariot to take him away.

"God so loved the world that he gave his only 'begotten”'son".. That's the lyric, but what does that mean? Who were his mother and father? What was his life other than in the choir or as a composer/arranger?

I want to write something meaningful about what he was saying in the songs he sang. Help me by contributing your thoughts. A few paragraphs. A few pages. Whatever. Let's talk about James. Share this with your own networks and invite your family and friends to contribute. Thanks.

E. R. Shipp