I grew up thinking about a revolution. By the time I turned 12, I had read the Autobiography
of Malcolm X, Richard Wright’s Native Son and Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul
on Ice. My passion for books was fueled by my hate toward those who called
me by that name. “Nigger”.
I first heard it when I was 10. It happened during a walk home from
school. As I approached Dean St., three
older white boys began assaulting me. They
beat me and then threw me into big oak tree in front of the house occupied by
my cousin.
“That’s what you get, Nigger.”
The journey down the road of hate began that
day. I wanted to fight back. I spent hours gazing at the gun collection in
the case in our family room. The thought
of a few bullets aimed at those boys echoed in my mind.
Black became my favorite color. “Say it Loud, I’m black and I’m proud,”
became my anthem. I kept my hate inside
to protect me from my mother’s scorn and my daddy’s rebuke. I called myself a Black Panther, hoping my
brothers in black leather would protect me from the evil ways of white boys.
Such was the life of black boys in 1969. Revolution was a thought stamped in the minds
of those tired of fighting just to find a way home. We wanted to be Black Muslims and Black
Panthers because it was the best way to survive. We wanted to fight back.
We wanted to burn things to get
attention. I was tired of screaming
while no one listened. My role models
were street hoodlums. My medicine became
marijuana. Soon I graduated to
cocaine. The pain of blackness never
seemed to escape. It was used against me
like bad credit.
We wanted pay back. Books and movies served as an outlet after
our dreams got lost after being told black boys can’t do those things. I wanted to fight those who told me I’m not
good enough to achieve what white boys take for granted. It happened enough to form a file stacked
miles high in my memory.
I wanted a revolution. The
Spook Who Sat by the Door came in the middle of it all. The
Spook Who Sat by the Door is a 1973 film based on Sam Greenlee’s novel by
the same name. The movie is a cult
classic and is considered one of the most important black productions of the
era. The story focuses on a black man
trained as a CIA agent. Greenlee used
the word “spook” as a double entendre – the slang for “spy” and a term used to
refer to black Americans.
The “Spook” is trained as a government
operative, but uses the racist perceptions of black inferiority to fight
oppression in his community. Greenlee
wrote the screenplay and worked with Ivan Dixon to produce the film. Dixon, a 1954 graduate of North Carolina
Central University, directed the film. Infiltrating
Hollywood: The Rise and Fall of the Spook Who Sat by the Door (2001) is a
documentary on the making of the film.
The documentary focuses on how Greenlee and
Dixon used the film industry’s biased expectations of the black-themed films in
the 1970s to cut their dailies to look like Blaxploitation in order to obtain
funding and support from a major distributor to complete the film. United Artists took the bait and was dismayed
at the final production of the film; however, the company was bound by contract
to release the film. Instead of images of pimps and prostitutes perpetuated by
Hollywood during the 1970s, the film portrayed black people who were willing to
fight for their beliefs to achieve freedom from oppression.
The North Carolina Humanities Council has
awarded North Carolina State University’s African American Cultural Center and
the Africana Studies Program a grant to present a film and humanities
discussion of the documentary. This project is made possible by funding from
the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of
the National Endowment for the Humanities
The North
Carolina Humanities Council grant is a part of a unique Triangle and Triad
consortium -- the Southern Black Film and Media Consortium -- involving the
NCSU African American Cultural Center; the NCSU Africana Studies Program; the
UNC Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History; the Mary Lou
Williams Black Cultural Center at Duke University; film/media/Africana Studies
programs at Bennett College, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Shaw
University, St. Augustine’s University, and North Carolina Central University;
and the Hayti Heritage Center.
The program
is scheduled for September 29th, at 5:00PM at the Hayti Heritage Center and
will feature the author, Sam Greenlee, as well as Dr. Joseph Jordan, director
of the Sonja Stone Center, Dr. Charlene Register (UNC), Dr. Yvonne Welbon (Bennett
College), Dante James, assistant director of the African American Cultural
Center, and Dr. Sheila Smith McKoy the director of the African American Cultural
Center at North Carolina State University.
Yes, I wanted
to be a revolutionary when I was a boy.
I’ve traded my gun for a pen, but I’m still fighting for justice among
those who are marginalized. I’ve decided
to fight hate with love. Things have
changed since 1969, but there is so much we can learn by going back to visit life
during a time when black boys were called Nigger for walking down the street.
This spook
stopped sitting at the door a long time ago.
I’m the
Rev-elution. I won't stop until change has come.
Oh yes I know about that being a revolutionary at a young age...I remember being a fan of movies like the Spook at a young age, and reading books like Seige and the Autobiography of Malcolm X. As well as Martin Luther King's letter from Birmingham..As a teenager, I had to write about how King would impact modern society, and this was in the 90's, I believe that was to get to a Journalism summer camp at UNC for minorities if memory serves me correctly...And I definitely remember writing a kill whitey poem, Dad still has that somewhere I believe, at like around the age of 10..A lot of folks would find that ironic these days, especially as light and bright as I am, but hey other brothers come in all hues and shades.....Aren't we a great race...SMILE.......And of course at the radio station my parents founded, one song folks were guaranteed to hear, when I was on the air as a teenager was "The REvolution Will Not Be Televised." by Gil Scott Heron..Ironiclly these days it's televised, tweeted, and Facebooked........Let's keep the Revolution going on ...Your brother in arms, Marc S. Lee
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