In 1986 I lived near Shattuck and 47th. Street in Oakland California. No white man, or white woman, lived here. Hmm! Hamm! No way! When you drove by, there was a gang hanging around the store on the corner, that is no longer there. After the fire-bombing of their car by a rival gang, they told me I was safe, because I was a member of the hood, and, under their protection. Can you dig it!
An article below claims ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ was the Black Panther theme song. I doubt it. This is Oakland’s theme song – in my mind! This is what I’m talking about! This is what really goes down in Wakanda after the Wakandans smuggle in another boatload of really cool White Folk! Get down!
Wakanda was invisible. But there were some, who had the eyes to see, and ears to hear.
Most black people I have had conversations with, are Social Scientists. I am a SS. I am a poet and writer. I study how we relate to one another. Huey Newton was a SS. Folks are asking about the song in the Black Panther trailer. Here’s the skinny on this;
“It’s an iconic piece that became a slogan for the real-life Black Panther movement in America during the ’70s, a spoken-word poem that essentially calls for an awakening of social consciousness in African-Americans, and a turning away from the mind-numbing elements of popular-culture such as TV.
This is an ironic choice of song and reference, considering that Marvel Comics once shied away from even using the name “Black Panther” for the character during 1972, to avoid confusion with the political group. However, Black Panther has gone on to represent a lot of struggles of race and injustice, from “Panther vs. the Klan” in the mid-’70s, to the modern comic series by acclaimed African-American author Ta-Nehisi Coates.”
In 1971, I lived in Roxbury with three hippies. Our black roommate was having a bad acid trip. I helped him. As the sun rose, we sat on the front steps. Showing someone that’s on a bad trip, the sun will always rise on a new day, is a huge help. Overlooking the square, David recited Scott-Haron’s anthem from memory. He did not falter or leave out a word. I was impressed, and deeply moved.
I do not speak for black people. I offer my view thru the sleeve of a white man, as Wiley put it. “No man is a island.” Wakanda is an isolated land island. I went there with a ticket. This movie did not say FOR BLACKS ONLY.
You may want to read this instead of reading what a white man has to say.
https://www.refinery29.com/2018/02/191093/black-panther-ending-women-wakanda-feminist-message
INTERJECTION: I blog in the morning and then look at the news. I found these stories.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/22/us/billy-graham-mlk-civil-rights/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/22/africa/lupita-nyongo-trevor-noah-born-a-crime/index.html
Lagos, Nigeria (CNN)Oscar-winning actor Lupita Nyong’o will star in a movie adaptation of “Born A Crime,” the bestselling autobiography by TV host and comedian Trevor Noah.
Nyong’o announced the upcoming role on social media on Wednesday.
I had two black girlfriends. Venus was a beautiful Oakland prostitute. We never fornicated. We made popcorn, watched T.V. and made-out. We kissed a lot. I was her boyfriend. I lived in a converted water tower. I was under the protection of a black gang that was selling crack. I knew them six years earlier when they were children. I came into the hood off Shattuck to fix up a friends apartments. I befriended them. I paid them for work. I gave them cereal on Saturday, and we watched cartoons. I was a status symbol.
an object, habit, etc., by which the social or economic status of the possessor may be judged.
I gave them insights and inroads as to how white people got things. I had them mudding and taping when they were twelve. Their parents just opened the door and let them out. They never bothered to come see what we were doing. It was a good scene. They had money in their pocket and food in their stomachs. We made hotdogs.
When they saw me hanging out with Venus, they put in good word. I was a good man and could be trusted. I belonged!
Social science is a major category of academic disciplines, concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within a society. It in turn has many branches, each of which is considered a social science. The social sciences include, but are not limited to: anthropology, archaeology, demography, economics, history, human geography, jurisprudence, linguistics, management, political science, culture , psychology, and sociology. The term is also sometimes used to refer specifically to the field of sociology, the original ‘science of society’, established in the 19th century. A more detailed list of sub-disciplines within the social sciences can be found at Outline of social science.
Back to the movie I walked out of. Here’s the real reason. The Black Evil One shoots another black man while he is lying on the ground, with a white-man’s gun. This is no way to establish any villain. I knew what was coming next a cinematic lesson on why black men should stop shooting other black men, and take their exalted place in Black Socity. Ho-hum! This is bad social science. White men don’t shoot other white men lying on the ground. Some white men shoot helpless white children lying on the ground begging for mercy. So far, there is no solition for that.
I just learned the school had a armed guard – who did nothing!
Back to the dancing
I can describe the event that started the revolution. My friend Bob Pratt called me about 9:00 A.M. on Sunday. He told me the record store by Lake Meritt, was wide open. Everyone was going in and grabbing records. I went down to get me some. I passed a young black teenager with his arms full.
“Hey, man! If you want some free records……”
“Yeah. I heard. Thanks!”
I wanted just one record, and I grabbed it! No matter where you lived in Oakland, you knew everyone like music. Bob and I used to stay up late listening to KDIA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Diddley_(1958_album)
I thought I was going to die and go to hell before I learned where Bo’s dancers got their -fanning the pussy move. You see it when the Tough Girl Chorus come down 42 Street. Bo had to have seen this movie. He orchestrates the moves of his singers, one who plays a guitar. Check out Peggy Jones history. She grew up in the Apple.
When we enter Wakanda, we see a gleaming modern city. Why aren’t we taken into the coolest Black Bar on earth – and perhaps the galaxy? Where’s our leisurely stroll down Bohemia Boulevard where the Black Artists live, and on to the Red Light Row. If you’re an advanced nation, you don’t have sexual hang-ups, and old time religion. You have overcome the Shame-base – dirge! The way foreword is not to go into the past. I’m sorry. I got a beef with the Happy Clappy-Hand People, those choirs that claim they came out of Africa. Black Panther was not made for Africans – who got no money to buy a ticket! Bo’s women are – tough! I would have been happy to marry one of them.
And, I solved another mystery. What the hell is Little Richard saying in ‘Lucille’. Well, he’s saying…..”If you don’t do it, your sister will”….but they had to alter the words.
42 Street was not only the Height Ashbury of America, but the world. This is the big breakout from Puritanism and the Baptist Bible Belt. It looks like Wakanda missed the boat, and didn’t get on the ‘Soul Train’. Why? This movie has nothing on ‘Westside Story’. The Wakandians………..are expatriots!
Jon
To be continued
TOUGH
used as a positive description of someone or something;
synonyms include cool, hot, tight, bitchin’, sweet, awesome, pissa, hip, rad etc.
.
Peggy Jones or Peggy Malone (married name) (July 19, 1940 – September 16, 2015), known on stage as Lady Bo in recognition of her relationship with Bo Diddley, was an American musician. A pioneer of rock and roll, Jones played rhythm guitar in Bo Diddley’s band in the late 1950s and early 1960s, becoming one of the first (perhaps the first) female rock guitarists in a highly visible rock band, and was sometimes called the Queen Mother of Guitar.[1][2]
Born in Harlem, New York City, in 1940, Jones grew up in the Sugar Hill section,[3] and attended the High School of Performing Arts where she studied tap and ballet dance and trained in opera. Even from a very young age, she found herself completely consumed with music; purchasing her first guitar at the age of 15. She was briefly in a local doo-wop group, the Bop Chords, which disbanded in 1957.[4] A chance meeting with Bo Diddley, who was impressed to see a girl with a guitar case, led to an invitation to join Diddley’s band as a guitarist and singer. She recorded with him from 1957 to 1961[2] or 1963,[5] appearing on singles including “Hey! Bo Diddley“, “Road Runner“, “Bo Diddley’s A Gunslinger”, and the instrumental “Aztec” which she wrote and played all the guitar parts on.[1][2][5] However, throughout her career, Peggy Jones always strived to be an independent artist and was involved in an R&B band known as the Jewels, among other various names.[6]
Oakland Jonny Got Sober
It is alleged one does not quit drinking until you hit bottom. Growing up in Oakland, bottom can be a long and dangerous trip, down.In 1987 I fouud myself living in a converted water tower in back of a very old Victorian house on 47th. and Shattuck in Oakland. I had lived here six years prior after a teacher at City Cottage bought the place for next to nothing. I was susposed to be the manager, help this Yuppie keep all the riff-raff at bay, but, he rented another back appartment to two young girls who the local gang were pimping out. In otherwords, I was managing a whorehouse for dangerous young dealers – whom I knew since they were twelve. I had befreinded all of them, and they liked me, remembered me fondly!
One day I emerge from Fort Appache to see a burned out car across the street, I asked my young buddy, the fearless leader, what happened.
“We had a drive by. They torched our car and shot at us!”
Shaking my head, I said;
“You guys are really blowing it.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll protect you.Your part of the hood.”
That was the first time I heard the expression “the hood”. And, right on cue, a few days later, my crazy friend Lester comes to the hood for a visit. We had lived at the University Hotel, and done some serious damage.
“What in the hell are you doing dressed like that?” I asked Lester the Molester.
“What do you mean?” he replied while opening my refrigierator.
“You’re dressed just like a Narco Agent. It’s like you jumped out of your squad car, ran into a telephone booth, and emrerged like this! Look at you. You even got hard shoes on. You’re going to get me killed!”
“Hey, you’re out of beer! What gives? There’s a liquor store down the street. Let’s go!”
I protested, but Lester is extremely compulsive.
Now, walking down the street, this monkey in a Hawaian shirt is turning heads, getting the funniest looks from everyone we meet. Now my buds are staring hard at me. I could read their minds.
“What gives, Oakland Johnny? Why are you bringing the heat down on us? We tusted you. You’re part of the hood.”
Twice in my life someone has pointed a gun to the back of my head, and pulled the trigger, several times, but each time the gun had jammed. Alas, I had found the sure way to put an end to my miserable existance.
On the corner of 47th. And Shattuck was a liquor store where my gang hangs. About six of gthem were there at the entrance when Lester and I walked in. There were no hardy hellos or high fives. There was a cold silence.
Lester and I were into Cobra malt beer, because it was twice the alcohol content. We bought two tall six packs. Coming out of the store, Lester, asks,
“Who wants a beer?”
There was grumbling amongst the gang. There were no takers. Lester thrusts a tall one at a beautiful young girl, who hesitates, then goes for it, because…..
“Today’s my birthday! I’ll take one.”
Her boyfriend, reluctantly takes one after looking at his bros, and opens it.
“That’s not the way to open a Cobra beer!” Lester shouts. And taking one out of the bag, he bites down hard on it, then holds it out as the beer comes squirtung out of the two punture wounds he made with his canine teeth.
“That’s how you open a Cobra beer!” And Lester is sucking the beer out of the can like a Vampire as the gang cracks up. Now, we all want one, and there are big smiles to be shared, and cool talk, because Lester broke the ice, And we weren’t going to die that day, because, we had not reached bottom yet. Instead, we sang Happy Birthday in front of the store that is now Pyung chang’s Tofu House.
My bottom came a week later, while I was in the yard, raking up the needles used to inject drugs into these – children. I was going to plant a vegetable garden right in the middle of Fort Appache as a means to turn the tide of negativty. As I spaded over the hard earth, I had a vision of how my life was going to end. No, I would not get killed, However, on way my home from the bar at 2:00 A.M. someone is going to creep up behind me and hit me with a blunt insturment, and take what’s left of my money. I will suffer iriversible brain damage and become a stumble bum, the very dude I have seen in the Proudce Markety when young. I will be the Fool in the Hood, who can not speak anymore, nor, even think. But, my gang will take care of me until the day they die, which would not be too long into the furture.
I started calling old friends from high in my ivory tower. I called Michael Dundon, and gave him a good cursing out, because he too had betrayed me, left me for dead. He quielty listened, waited till I was finished, then said;
“Do you want to get sober?”
“Yes!”
“Then get on a train, come up to Eugene Oregon, and get in the New Hope program.”
“New Hope?”
The rest is history! Thanks the Blue River Dundons, I entered an out program at Serenity Lane, and got sober. The first thing I wanted to do as a Sober Man was build a raft and sail it around Round Lake. Doing this was a world away from hauling sacks of spuds for Captain Victim, who did not believe in playing with his sons.
The child plays
The toy boat sails across the pond
The work has just begun
Oh child
Look what you have done
Jon Presco
Copyright 2011
Lucille, you won’t do your sister’s will?
Oh, Lucille, you won’t do your sister’s will?
You ran off and married, but I love you still
Lucille, please, come back where you belong
Lucille, please, come back where you belong
I been good to you, baby, please, don’t leave me alone
[Chorus]
I woke up this morning, Lucille was not in sight
I asked my friends about her but all their lips were tight
Lucille, please, come back where you belong
I been good to you, baby, please, don’t leave me alone, (whoaa)
[Instrumental break]
[Chorus]
I woke up this morning, Lucille was not in sight
I asked my friends about her but all their lips were tight
Lucille, please, come back where you belong
I been good to you, baby, please, don’t leave me alone
[Outro]
Lucille, baby, satisfy my heart
Lucille, baby, satisfy my heart
I played for it, baby, and gave you such a wonderful start
Rosamond Press 
Reblogged this on Rosamond Press and commented:
I doubt Ray West was a Black Panther.