ODETTA, THE VOICE OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Today, The Grandma has been listening to Odetta, the American singer and civil rights activist, who died on a day like today in 2008.

Odetta Holmes (December 31, 1930-December 2, 2008), known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, lyricist, and civil rights activist, often referred to as The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement. Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals. An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she influenced many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin.

In 2011, Time magazine included her recording of Take This Hammer on its list of the 100 Greatest Popular Songs, stating that Rosa Parks was her No. 1 fan, and Martin Luther King Jr. called her the queen of American folk music.

Odetta was born Odetta Holmes in Birmingham, Alabama, United States. Her father, Reuben Holmes, had died when she was young, and in 1937 she and her mother, Flora Sanders, moved to Los Angeles.

She began operatic training at the age of thirteen. After attending Belmont High School, she studied music at Los Angeles City College supporting herself as a domestic worker. Flora had hoped to see her daughter follow in the footsteps of Marian Anderson, but Odetta doubted a large black girl like herself would ever perform at the Metropolitan Opera.

In 1944, she made her professional debut in musical theater as an ensemble member for four years with the Hollywood Turnabout Puppet Theatre, working alongside Elsa Lanchester. 

In 1949, she joined the national touring company of the musical Finian's Rainbow.

While on tour with Finian's Rainbow, Odetta fell in with an enthusiastic group of young balladeers in San Francisco, and after 1950 she concentrated on folk singing.

She made her name playing at the Blue Angel nightclub in New York City, and the hungry i in San Francisco. At Tin Angel also in San Francisco in 1953 and 1954, Odetta recorded the album Odetta and Larry with Larry Mohr for Fantasy Records.

A solo career followed, with Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues (1956) and At the Gate of Horn (1957). Odetta Sings Folk Songs was one of the best-selling folk albums of 1963.

In 1959 she appeared on Tonight with Belafonte, a nationally televised special. She sang Water Boy and a duet with Belafonte, There's a Hole in My Bucket.

More information: The New Yorker

In 1961, Martin Luther King Jr. called her The Queen of American Folk Music. Also in 1961, the duo Harry Belafonte and Odetta made number 32 in the UK Singles Chart with the song There's a Hole in the Bucket.

She is remembered for her performance at March on Washington, the 1963 civil rights demonstration, at which she sang O Freedom. She described her role in the civil rights movement as one of the privates in a very big army.

Broadening her musical scope, Odetta used band arrangements on several albums rather than playing alone. She released music of a more jazz style on albums like Odetta and the Blues (1962) and Odetta (1967). She gave a remarkable performance in 1968 at the Woody Guthrie memorial concert.

Odetta acted in several films during this period, including Cinerama Holiday (1955); a cinematic production of William Faulkner's Sanctuary (1961); and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974).

In 1961, she appeared in an episode of the TV series Have Gun, Will Travel, playing the wife of a man sentenced to hang (The Hanging of Aaron Gibbs).

On September 29, 1999, President Bill Clinton presented Odetta with the National Endowment for the Arts' National Medal of Arts.

In 2004, Odetta was honoured at the Kennedy Center with the Visionary Award along with a tribute performance by Tracy Chapman. 

In 2005, the Library of Congress honored her with its Living Legend Award.

In mid-September 2001, Odetta performed with the Boys' Choir of Harlem on the Late Show with David Letterman, appearing on the first show after Letterman resumed broadcasting, having been off the air for several nights following the events of September 11; they performed This Little Light of Mine.

In December 2006, the Winnipeg Folk Festival honored Odetta with their Lifetime Achievement Award. 

In February 2007, the International Folk Alliance awarded Odetta as Traditional Folk Artist of the Year.

On March 24, 2007, a tribute concert to Odetta was presented at the Rachel Schlesinger Theatre by the World Folk Music Association with live performance and video tributes.

She made an appearance on June 30, 2008, at The Bitter End on Bleecker Street, in New York City for a concert in tribute to Liam Clancy. Her last big concert, before thousands of people, was in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on October 4, 2008, for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Her last performance was at Hugh's Room in Toronto on October 25.

In November 2008, Odetta's health began to decline and she began receiving treatment at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. She had hoped to perform at Barack Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009, but she died twenty-nine days before her 78th birthday, on December 2, 2008, in New York City, at the age of 77.

More information: The New York Times

 The blues is celebration,
because when you take sorrow and turn it into music,
you transform it.

Odetta

MARTIN LUTHER KING, I'VE BEEN TO THE MOUNTAINTOP

Today, The Grandma has been reading about I've Been to the Mountaintop, the last speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. on a day like today in 1968.

I've Been to the Mountaintop is the popular name of the last speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr.

King spoke on April 3, 1968, at the Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters) in Memphis, Tennessee. On the following day, King was assassinated.

The speech primarily concerns the Memphis sanitation strike. King calls for unity, economic actions, boycotts, and non-violent protest, while challenging the United States to live up to its ideals. At the end of the speech, he discusses the possibility of an untimely death.

Regarding the strike, King stated that:

The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers.

He warned the protesters not to engage in violence, lest the issue of injustice be ignored because of the focus on the violence. King argued that peaceful demonstrations were the best course of action, the only way to guarantee that their demands would be heard and answered.

Regarding the Civil Rights Movement, King demanded that the United States defend for all its citizens what is promised in the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and stated that he would never give up until these natural rights were protected, saying:

Somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so, just as I said, we aren't going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around. We aren't going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.

More information: King Institute-Standford University

Regarding economic boycotts, King advocated boycotting white goods as a means of non-violent protest. He said that the individual Negro is poor, but together they are an economic powerhouse, and they should use this power to stop support for racist groups and instead empower black businesses.

Although the industries might not listen to protests, they would be forced to listen to boycotts lest they be driven out of business. King named several businesses as targets for the boycott:

Go out and tell your neighbours not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy -what is the other bread? Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain.

Toward the end of the speech, King refers to threats against his life and uses language that prophetically foreshadowed his impending death, but reaffirming that he was not afraid to die:

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live -a long life; longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

The language is seen by some as a prophetic analogy. King was referring to events described in the Biblical book of Deuteronomy. In it, Moses is the leader of the people of Israel, who follow him to life in a Promised Land. Before they reach it however, Moses is informed by God that, because of an incident in which he did not follow God's directions, he will not reach the land himself, but will only see it from a distance.

Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo... There the Lord showed him the whole land... Then the Lord said to him, This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob ... I will let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it. -Deuteronomy 34:1–4.

Shortly after, Moses dies, and his successor Joshua leads them into the Promised Land.

More information: American Rhetoric

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression 

and cruelty by the bad people, 

but the silence over that by the good people.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

SAMUEL COOKE, THE TRAGIC END OF THE KING OF SOUL

Today, The Grandma has started her latest course of the year in Sant Boi de Llobregat. It has been a great pleasure to meet again some Stones, some Watsons and some other old and new friends who want to learnt about branding and social networks.

After meeting her old friends, The Grandma has returned at home to prepare new classes for this new course. Meanwhile she has been working, she has been listening to one of her favourite artists, Sam Cook, the American singer and songwriter who was killed on a day like today in 1964 and wrote incredible songs like A Change is Gonna Come, a hymn for Civil Rights.

Artists are eternal because art lives forever meanwhile people remember it. They are eternal brands.

Samuel Cook (January 22, 1931-December 11, 1964), known professionally as Sam Cooke, was an American singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur. 

He was also influential as a composer and producer, and is commonly known as the King of Soul for his distinctive vocals and significance in popular music.

Cooke was born in Mississippi and moved to Chicago with his family at an early age. He began singing as a child and joined the Soul Stirrers before going solo and scoring a string of hit songs including You Send Me, A Change Is Gonna Come, Cupid, Wonderful World, Chain Gang, Twistin' the Night Away, and Bring It On Home to Me.

In 1964, Cooke was shot and killed by the manager of a motel in Los Angeles. After an inquest and investigation, the courts ruled Cooke's death to be a justifiable homicide; his family has since questioned the circumstances of his death.

More information: PAM

Cooke's pioneering contributions to soul music contributed to the rise of Aretha Franklin, Bobby Womack, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Billy Preston, and popularized the work of Otis Redding and James Brown. AllMusic biographer Bruce Eder wrote that Cooke was the inventor of soul music, and possessed an incredible natural singing voice and a smooth, effortless delivery that has never been surpassed.

Cooke was born Samuel Cook in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1931 (he added the "e" to his last name in 1957 to signify a new start to his life). He was the fifth of eight children of the Rev. Charles Cook, a minister in the Church of Christ (Holiness), and his wife, Annie Mae. One of his younger brothers, L.C. (1932–2017), later became a member of the doo-wop band Johnny Keyes and the Magnificents.

The family moved to Chicago in 1933. Cook attended Doolittle Elementary and Wendell Phillips Academy High School in Chicago, the same school that Nat King Cole had attended a few years earlier.

Sam Cooke began his career with his siblings in a group called the Singing Children when he was six years old. He first became known as lead singer with the Highway Q.C.'s when he was a teenager, having joined the group at the age of 14. During this time, Cooke befriended fellow gospel singer and neighbor Lou Rawls, who sang in a rival gospel group.

In 1950, Cooke replaced gospel tenor R. H. Harris as lead singer of the gospel group the Soul Stirrers, founded by Harris, who had signed with Specialty Records on behalf of the group.

Cooke had 30 U.S. top 40 hits between 1957 and 1964, plus three more posthumously. Major hits like You Send Me, A Change Is Gonna Come, Cupid, Chain Gang, Wonderful World, Another Saturday Night, and Twistin' the Night Away are some of his most popular songs. Twistin' the Night Away was one of his biggest selling albums.

Cooke was also among the first modern black performers and composers to attend to the business side of his musical career. He founded both a record label and a publishing company as an extension of his careers as a singer and composer. He also took an active part in the Civil Rights Movement.

More information: Chicago Tribune

Cooke was killed at the age of 33 on December 11, 1964, at the Hacienda Motel, in Los Angeles, California. Answering separate reports of a shooting and a kidnapping at the motel, police found Cooke's corpse. He had sustained a gunshot wound to the chest, which was later determined to have pierced his heart. The motel's manager, Bertha Franklin, claimed to have shot him in her defense. Her account was immediately disputed by Cooke's acquaintances, none of whom were present at Cooke's killing.

The first funeral service for Cooke was held on December 18, 1964, at A. R. Leak Funeral Home in Chicago; 200,000 fans lined up for more than four city blocks to view his body.

Afterward, his body was flown back to Los Angeles for a second service, at the Mount Sinai Baptist Church on December 19, which included a much-heralded performance of The Angels Keep Watching Over Me by Ray Charles, who stood in for grief-stricken Bessie Griffin. Cooke was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Two singles and an album were released in the month after his death. One of the singles, Shake, reached the top ten of both the pop and R&B charts. The B-side, A Change Is Gonna Come, is considered a classic protest song from the era of the Civil Rights Movement. It was a top 40 pop hit and a top 10 R&B hit. The album, also titled Shake, reached the number one spot for R&B albums.

More information: WBEZ

 Sam Cooke had a huge influence on me.

Aretha Franklin

ALICE WALKER, SOCIAL ACTIVISM IN 'THE COLOR PURPLE'

Alice Walker

Today, The Grandma is still resting at home. She continues with the visit of Jordi Santanyí, one of her closest friends and they have continued talking about Literature, something that  they love.

They have chosen Alice Walker, the American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist winner of the Pulitzer Prize and creator of one of the most beautiful novels ever writing, The Color Purple. Walker was born on a day like today in 1944 and they want to homage her talking about her life and her works.

Alice Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she wrote the novel The Color Purple, for which she won the National Book Award for hardcover fiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She also wrote the novels Meridian (1976) and The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970). An avowed feminist, Walker coined the term womanist to mean A black feminist or feminist of color in 1983.

Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia, a rural farming town, to Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Tallulah Grant. Both of Walker's parents were sharecroppers, though her mother also worked as a seamstress to earn extra money. Walker, the youngest of eight children, was first enrolled in school when she was just four years old at East Putnam Consolidated.

When eight, Walker sustained an injury to her right eye after one of her brothers fired a BB gun. Since her family did not have access to a car, Walker could not receive immediate medical attention, causing her to become permanently blind in that eye. It was after the injury to her eye that Walker began to take up reading and writing. The scar tissue was removed when Walker was 14, but a mark still remains. It is described in her essay Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self.

More information: Poetry Foundation

As the schools in Eatonton were segregated, Walker attended the only high school available to blacks: Butler Baker High School. She went there to become valedictorian and enrolled in Spelman College in 1961 after being granted a full scholarship by the state of Georgia for having the highest academic achievements of her class. She found two of her professors, Howard Zinn and Staughton Lynd, to be great mentors during her time at Spelman, but both were transferred two years later.

Walker was offered another scholarship, this time from Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and after the firing of her Spelman professor, Howard Zinn, Walker accepted the offer. Walker became pregnant at the start of her senior year and had an abortion; this experience, as well as the bout of suicidal thoughts that followed, inspired much of the poetry found in Once, Walker's first collection of poetry. Walker graduated from Sarah Lawrence in 1965.

Alice Walker

Walker wrote the poems of her first book of poetry, Once, while she was a student in East Africa and during her senior year at Sarah Lawrence College.

Walker would slip her poetry under the office door of her professor and mentor, Muriel Rukeyser, when she was a student at Sarah Lawrence. Rukeyser then showed the poems to her agent. Once was published four years later by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Following graduation, Walker briefly worked for the New York City Department of Welfare, before returning to South. She took a job working for the Legal Defense Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Jackson, Mississippi. Walker also worked as a consultant in black history to the Friends of the Children of Mississippi Head Start program.

She later returned to writing as writer-in-residence at Jackson State University (1968–69) and Tougaloo College (1970–71). In addition to her work at Tougaloo College, Walker published her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, in 1970. The novel explores the life of Grange Copeland, an abusive, irresponsible sharecropper, husband and father.

In the fall of 1972, Walker taught a course in Black Women's Writers at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

More information: My Black History

In 1973, before becoming editor of Ms. Magazine, Walker and literary scholar Charlotte D. Hunt discovered an unmarked grave they believed to be that of Zora Neale Hurston in Ft. Pierce, Florida. Walker had it marked with a gray marker stating ZORA NEALE HURSTON / A GENIUS OF THE SOUTH / NOVELIST FOLKLORIST / ANTHROPOLOGIST / 1901–1960. The line a genius of the south is from Jean Toomer's poem Georgia Dusk, which appears in his book Cane. Hurston was actually born in 1891, not 1901.

Walker's 1975 article In Search of Zora Neale Hurston, published in Ms. Magazine, helped revive interest in the work of this African-American writer and anthropologist.

Alice Walker

In 1976, Walker's second novel, Meridian, was published. Meridian is a novel about activist workers in the South, during the civil rights movement, with events that closely parallel some of Walker's own experiences.

In 1982, she published what has become her best-known work, The Color Purple. The novel follows a young, troubled black woman fighting her way through not just racist white culture but patriarchal black culture as well. The book became a bestseller and was subsequently adapted into a critically acclaimed 1985 movie directed by Steven Spielberg, featuring Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg, as well as a 2005 Broadway musical totaling 910 performances.

Walker has written several other novels, including The Temple of My Familiar and Possessing the Secret of Joy, which featured several characters and descendants of characters from The Color Purple. She has published a number of collections of short stories, poetry, and other writings. Her work is focused on the struggles of black people, particularly women, and their lives in a racist, sexist, and violent society.

More information: PBS

In 2000, Walker released a collection of short fiction, based on her own life, called The Way Forward Is With a Broken Heart, exploring love and race relations. In this book, Walker details her interracial relationship with Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, a civil rights attorney who was also working in Mississippi. 

The couple married on March 17, 1967 in New York City, since interracial marriage was then illegal in the South, and divorced in 1976. They had a daughter, Rebecca, together in 1969. Rebecca Walker, Alice Walker's only child, is an American novelist, editor, artist, and activist. The Third Wave Foundation, an activist fund, was co-founded by Rebecca and Shannon Liss-Riordan. Her godmother is Alice Walker's mentor and co-founder of Ms. Magazine, Gloria Steinem.

Alice Walker

In 2007, Walker donated her papers, consisting of 122 boxes of manuscripts and archive material, to Emory University's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library.

In addition to drafts of novels such as The Color Purple, unpublished poems and manuscripts, and correspondence with editors, the collection includes extensive correspondence with family members, friends and colleagues, an early treatment of the film script for The Color Purple, syllabi from courses she taught, and fan mail. The collection also contains a scrapbook of poetry compiled when Walker was 15, entitled Poems of a Childhood Poetess.

In 2013, Alice Walker published two new books, one of them entitled The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm's Way. The other was a book of poems entitled The World Will Follow Joy Turning Madness into Flowers (New Poems).

Walker met Martin Luther King Jr. when she was a student at Spelman College in the early 1960s. She credits King for her decision to return to the American South as an activist in the Civil Rights Movement. She took part in the 1963 March on Washington. Later, she volunteered to register black voters in Georgia and Mississippi.

More information: Guernica

On March 8, 2003, International Women's Day, on the eve of the Iraq War, Walker was arrested with 26 others, including fellow authors Maxine Hong Kingston and Terry Tempest Williams, at a protest outside the White House, for crossing a police line during an anti-war rally. Walker wrote about the experience in her essay We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For.

Walker's specific brand of feminism included advocacy of women of color. In 1983, Walker coined the term womanist in her collection In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, to mean a black feminist or feminist of color. The term was made to unite women of color and the feminist movement at the intersection of race, class, and gender oppression.

Walker states that, 'Womanism' gives us a word of our own,  because it is a discourse of Black women and the issues they confront in society. Womanism as a movement came into fruition in 1985 at the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature to address Black women's concerns from their own intellectual, physical, and spiritual perspectives.

Walker has been a longtime sponsor of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. In early 2015, she wrote: So I think of any movement for peace and justice as something that is about stabilizing our inner spirit so that we can go on and bring into the world a vision that is much more humane than the one we have dominant today.

Download The Color Purple by Alice Walker

For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle;

and one faces down fears of today

so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.

Alice Walker