March 2022 - “Music and the Moon"
On July 20, 1969, 8000 New Yorkers watching giant screens in Central Park cheered as humans landed on the moon. At the Harlem Culture Festival fifty blocks north, announcement of the same achievement was greeted with boos. This illustration of America’s racial divide was just one of many history lessons taught through Ahmir “QuestLove” Thompson’s Oscar-winning documentary Summer of Soul (...or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised).
Given that the film featured Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Gladys Knight, and Sly and the Family Stone, I wasn’t expecting such a searing historical narrative. But then again, like most white Americans, until this film I didn’t know about the festival. John Warner of the Chicago Tribune recently explained that the festival “was marginalized because it was Black artists playing for Black audiences.” This explained why Woodstock dominated concert news of 1969. As Warner added, race is still central to debates about what gets our attention, whether in film or in our public school system.
Summer of Soul taught me how much the 1969 Harlem Culture Festival meant to so many. Attendees and performers repeated how seeing so many Black people in one place brought them joy and tears. After viewing such testimony, contemporary film critic Odie Henderson said, “Every time they said it, I started to cry.”
The festival also commemorated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., offering balm to those wounded by his death and the death of Malcolm X, the Kennedys, and many others. Jesse Jackson Sr. described it that way when speaking from the festival stage, perhaps launching his political career. Some suggest that the festival served to distract residents of Harlem and avoid the sort of violence that convulsed communities of Black people the year before after King’s murder.
Most white Americans, worried about the Vietnam War, found the moon landing a great distraction. But, like many American institutions with money and power, NASA was viewed with suspicion by the Black community. Jet magazine criticized NASA for “the poorest minority hiring records [sic] among U.S. agencies.” Ralph Abernathy argued that the $25.4 billion spent then (over $150 billion in today’s dollars) should have been spent to ameliorate the poverty gripping Black communities.
Abernathy took his greivances to the Kennedy Space Center, protesting our nation’s “distorted sense of national priorities.” He, along with 25 poor families, appealed to NASA administrator Thomas O. Paine right up to an Apollo launch pad. Paine’s response, which mixed sympathy with evasion, promoted the idea that maybe the “can-do attitude” of the space program would spread to civil rights causes.
Sadly, America rarely focuses its “can-do attitude” on ending systemic racism and poverty. As NAACP attorney Sylvia Drew was quoted by the New York Times, “If America fails to end discrimination, hunger, and malnutrition, then we must conclude that America is not committed to ending discrimination, hunger, and malnutrition. Walking on the moon proves that we do what we want to do as a nation.”
Further Actions:
1) While acknowledging racial critiques of the space race, contributions to it by Black people can still be honored. Though it didn’t happen until we had a Black president, the appointment of Charles Bolden as the first Black person heading NASA can be celebrated. When discussing the 2016 Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures, share admiration for Katherine Johnson and other African American women “computers,” but also point out the constant racist hurdles they had to endure as well as the “white-savior” character played by Kevin Costner. Engender empathy for those who express hesitation in praising the moon landing. As Sylvia Drew (now Sylvia Drew Ivie) put it, “It wasn’t that we didn’t have enough money to do both [in 1969], we just didn’t have a desire to do both….” Read more about this aspect of America’s racial divide here.
2) Read and share Gil Scott-Heron's biting poem about misplaced priorities, “Whitey on the Moon”, read by the author and printed here:
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arms began to swell.
(and Whitey's on the moon)
I can't pay no doctor bill.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
Ten years from now I'll be payin' still.
(while Whitey's on the moon)
The man jus' upped my rent las' night.
('cause Whitey's on the moon)
No hot water, no toilets, no lights.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
I wonder why he's uppi' me?
('cause Whitey's on the moon?)
I was already payin' 'im fifty a week.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Taxes takin' my whole damn check,
Junkies makin' me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is goin' up,
An' as if all that shit wasn't enough
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face an' arm began to swell.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
Was all that money I made las' year
(for Whitey on the moon?)
How come there ain't no money here?
(Hm! Whitey's on the moon)
Y'know I jus' 'bout had my fill
(of Whitey on the moon)
I think I'll sen' these doctor bills,
Airmail special
(to Whitey on the moon)
3) Though the New York Parks Department sponsored the event and Mayor John Lindsay spoke on the stage praising the event, municipal police officers – fearful of becoming targets themselves - hesitated to help at the festival. After members of the Black Panther Party stepped in to serve as crowd control, did the city police offer to help out. Relationships between municipal police forces and Black communities are still hampered by mistrust. Look into supporting organizations working today to improve police accountability and racial justice.