logo

“The Bridge”

Time Has Come Again.

An honest telling of the African American fight for Civil Rights, and Economic Justice for all in America.



— dave

*BringingAmericaTogetherAgain

The World Is A Ghetto
JAN 17, 2014 Miami, Florida
The 21st Century Freedom Riders @ WLRN (Miami)

((video))

dave.

Allan Harris and Doug Wimbish, known as residing on opposite sides of the musical spectrum, first performed together in Miami, as part of The Miami Design Preservation League’s Annual Art Deco Weekend on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach. “The World is a Ghetto” (above) was part of a live broadcast on Miami’s PBS radio station the Thursday before the weekend.

Summertime
b/ Allan Harris
Celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center (2015)
Pompano Beach, Florida

((( LISTEN )))

HDRtist HDR Rendering - http://www.ohanaware.com/hdrtist/

— dave.

1934    George Gershwin writes “PORGY AND BESS” an ARIA telling the story of a crippled street-beggar struggling to survive on Catfish Row, a black tenement in 1920s Charleston, South Carolina. “Porgy and Bess” was based on real-life, Charleston resident, Samuel Smalls.
n MANY “PORGY AND BESS” CHARACTERS SPOKE GULLAH, SMALL’S NATIVE LANGUAGE.

A Human Cry  
b/ Billie Holiday

((( LISTEN )))

Billie Holiday b/ William P. Gottlieb

1939 Strange Fruit,” the song known for its horrifying description of the Ku Klux Klan’s indiscriminate execution of innocent black men, was written by Abel Meeropol, a white, Jewish school teacher in the Bronx, New York. From the first time she sang it at Café Society, one of New York City’s first integrated nightclubs in Greenwich Village, Holiday wept every time she sang it after. She told of how moved she was by Meeropol’s words, “so horrific, sad, and true.”

n STRANGE FRUIT / TRICKY REMIX (VERVE) 2002

n  THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1939)
b/ John Steinbeck

Cannery Row (1945)  b/ John Steinbeck

 

1957 Hearing the story of The Little Rock Nine (the nine African American children who faced anger, discrimination, and white nationalists, after enrolling in the all-white Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The first, and most notable, segregation of a public school after the Supreme Court’s historic Brown vs. the Board of Education decision),

Paul McCartney was inspired to write “Blackbird,” the song featured on The Beatles White Album.

Portrait of Jazz
One day in what’s now called “The Golden Age Of Jazz,” a momentous gathering of musicians was preserved, and now stands as an important document in America’s musical history.

1958Great Day In Harlem
((( LISTEN )))

 

 

A Great Day In Harlem b/ Art Kane (Esquire)

1958 A Great Day in Harlem or Harlem 1958 is a black-and-white photograph of 57 jazz musicians in Harlem, New York, taken by freelance photographer Art Kane for Esquire magazine on August 12, 1958. The musicians gathered at 17 East 126th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenue. Esquire The photograph was published in Esquire’s January 1959 issue.

 

n    CIVIL RIGHTS TIMELINE : (1947-1968)

1961 Martin Luther King Jr.
The Voice for Freedom and Justice for All

— Reg Lancaster

Change Is Gonna Come
b/ Allan Harris (Sam Cooke)
((( LISTEN )))

— Allan Harris

Ride On
b/ Little Axe (1994)
((( LISTEN )))

— Little Axe

FREEDOM RIDERSBlack and White Civil Rights Activists rode interstate buses (Greyhound/Trailways) into the segregated south, protesting (peacefully) the Southern states ignoring the United States Supreme Court decisions ruling the segregating of public transportation was unconstitutional.

(Morgan v. Virginia 1946 and Boynton v. Virginia 1960)

Southern states ignored the Supreme Court, and the federal government had done nothing to enforce laws against segreation.

MAY 04, 1961 
THE FIRST FREEDOM RIDE LEAVES WASHINGTON, D.C.
SCHEDULED TO ARRIVE IN NEW ORLEANS.
MAY 17, 1961 

dave.

FREEDOM ROAD — Groups made up of young, white (many Jewish) and oppressed African American Activists, embarked (on Greyhound busses) from New Jersey, starting a dangerous journey, south through Tennessee, Louisianna, Mississippi, Alabama … east to Florida and back north up the Southeast coast, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia, before ending in Washington D.C.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.’s ARREST IN ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA.

Along the way, the Freedom Riders were often met by violent white segregationists, including local law enforcement, showing their defiance of recent Supreme Court rulings against segregated public transportation.

 

n 1961 — ALAN SHEPARD

MAY 5, 1961 FIRST AMERICAN IN SPACE.

n 1962 — JOHN GLENN
FEB. 20, 1962 FRIENDSHIP 7 / FIRST AMERICAN TO ORBIT EARTH.

n 1962A CRISIS IN CUBA (KEY WEST)

OCT. 16-29, 1962 — “13 DAYS” ON THE BRINK OF NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION

Thirteen Days (2000) 

Matinee (1993) 

 

A Dream Come True
b/ Martin Luther King  
w/The Funk Brothers (Motown)
((( LISTEN )))



US civil rights leader Martin Luther King,Jr. (C)

Photograph b/ James P. Blair

August 28, 1963 — Two years after the first Freedom Ride, and at the end of THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOR JOBS AND FREEDOM. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his I Have A Dream speech, and called for voting rights, overall economic justice, and to end racism in the United States.

The KKK Bomb  Heard Around The World …

September 15, 1963 — A bombing at the 16th Street Church in Birmingham, Alabama killed four young girls, and marked a turning point in the fight for civil rights. Paul McCartney has said the bombing in Birmingham, and racial tension in America was inspiration for his writing “Blackbird,” a song featured on The Beatles White Album.

1964 “The Problem We All Live With”
b/ Norman Rockwell

Norman Rockwell Museum

Hearing the story of The Little Rock Nine (the nine African American children who faced anger, discrimination, and white nationalists, after enrolling in the all-white Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The first, and most notable, segregation of a public school after the Supreme Court’s historic Brown vs. the Board of Education decision)

 

— studio

GREEN BOOK — Green Book builds a feel-good comedy atop an artifact of shameful segregation. Yikes … The movie is named after the early ’60s guides published for black travelers in America’s segregated South. But its spin is all Hollywood. — Vox.com

SOPHISTICATED JUKIN’ @ THE ORANGE LOUNGE

FREEDOM RIDERS (The American Experience)

LIVING COLOUR (“Back In The U.S.A.”)

Not a Norman Rockwell Homecoming — Buttons & Cookies in Vietnam. Tom returns to strangers in the house. Parents had moved to the other side of East Hartford, Connecticut.
Homecoming @ Bradley International (2005) — A Navy surgeon’s family greets his flight, arriving in Hartford, Connecticut.

 

— ABC

1976 — Alex Haley’s book, Roots: The Saga of an American Family., was adapted by ABC as a television miniseries of the same name and aired it in 1977 to a record-breaking audience of 130 million viewers. In the United States, the book and miniseries raised the public awareness of black American history and inspired a broad interest in genealogy and family history. (ancestory.com)

Haley’s first book was The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published in 1965, a collaboration through numerous lengthy interviews with Malcolm X.

1984 — Keith Leblanc vs. Sugar Hill
“No Sell Out,” Keith Leblanc, with the blessing of friend Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X’ widow, made a recording of Malcolm X speeches, cut to a mix of his drum beats and electronic creations.