History – TIM HAYES'

Another formative memory of a boy who loved books and grew up under Apartheid

November 8, 2022 by Tim Hayes Comments

On this day in Nov 3rd 1958 I was a small child at T.H. Slater Elem. school in Atlanta Ga. I had been reading about the great capitalist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and how he had built libraries all over the country. My teacher Mrs. Williamson told me that the Atlanta main library was a slightly larger version of the buildings he had built in cities as well as small towns all over America. My father had given me the “nickname” “Professor” in 1954 because I had an early love affair with books.. I decided that I was going to go. I sneaked out of school early. And walked the long distance from the Carver Homes housing project to 126 Carnegie Way. Right across the street from Loew’s Grand Theatre, where they had the opening of the film “Gone With The Wind” about 20 years earlier. I walked up the stairs and into the lobby. I saw a white man wearing a gun talking to the clerk. I had never actually spoken to a white person before, unless you count the Polish death camp survivors that lived across the road from us. And my great grandma had told me that “Jews are not really white, but some of them think they are” I asked the man “where can I find books that Mark Twain wrote” …..he turned and looked at me and said “get the hell out of here you little nigger”….put it this way , he aggressively helped me back down the steps. I cried and walked the long distance home. I still have bad dreams about this story…About one year later in May 1959, Irene Dobbs Jackson—Spelman Professor and mother of Maynard Jackson, future Atlanta mayor was the first Black person to get an Atlanta Library card. That same year a bus we called the “bookmobile” began coming to our housing project every two weeks. My mother made sure that me and my older sister Rugenia were among the first kids to get Library cards….every two weeks I was always the first kid waiting for that bus. When I went back to Atlanta to bury my Mom in 1996. I found out that the old Carnegie Library ….a place I had come to know ever brick of and in high school spent hundreds of hours exploring had been torn down sometime in the late 1970s and replaced with a plastic looking piece of shit building……what a waste, I don’t talk about this much but I think it’s one of the most profound experiences of my life. I mean all the stuff in the civil rights movement that consumed me later, the Panthers and my going to Africa to fight in those anti-colonial wars..had to have come from something…this was not the only thing that drove that ….but it was big….an example of what’s in the book I have been too busy trying to end gun violence or maybe just too lazy to finish …I have been advised to continue writing here and let a later version of myself turn this into a published volume

Tribute to Curtis Mayfield on his birthday

June 3, 2022 by Tim Hayes Comments

Today I celebrate the memory of Curtis Lee Mayfield (3 June 1942 – 26 December 1999)..The first time I ever heard Mayfield and paid attention to him was in the 1961 “Impressions” song “Gypsy Woman”..it can not be overstated that you cannot judge the importance of a song or record release by how high it scores on the sales charts. But the real “tell” is how much the piece touched the public and influenced the culture. Mayfield began as a gospel singer in the group ” Northern Jubilee Gospel Singers” in Chicago. He was seven years old. Curtis got his first guitar when he was ten, he was fond of saying ” he loved his guitar so much he used to sleep with it” Curtis was a self taught guitar player and learned to play along with gospel and Doo-Wop records and was really influenced by Muddy Waters and Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia.. But the first big move for him was in high school when he joined his friend Jerry Butler’s group “The Roosters” Curtis began to write songs for them..and they became “The Impressions” two years later. When I was a teen who joined many others in my age group in the civil rights marches and demonstrations of the 60s it was often songs by the “The Impressions” that became our “fight songs” . Often I heard this music on a record player of one of the older activists in SNCC ( Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee ) before we heard them on the radio. Tunes like “Keep On Pushing,” “People Get Ready”, “It’s All Right” “We’re a Winner” “Move on Up”…These were the songs we listened to and sang as a whole generation of “kids” went off to war to fight “Jim Crow”..I like to say that Mayfield wrote the “soundtrack” to the civil rights movement. If all Curtis Mayfield ever did was that , it would make him a “giant” among American musicians and composers. But after Mayfield became a “solo” artist he became much more. With his historic political commentary music and movie soundtracks Curtis Mayfield pushed the envelope of using music to point the finger at oppression and repression , crime and “benign neglect”..pulling no punches in political commentary like no other American artist before or since. His driving anti-drug commentary in the soundtrack to the film “Super-Fly” broke new ground in innovative music, re-defining what we were calling “funk” music ..and adding east African and west African rhythms to the mix and blazing a new trail with each album. But Mayfield never strayed far from his roots in gospel and “love” songs Just listen to his songs like “We the people who are darker than Blue” or “The makings of You “..mixing those “sweet” lyrics with a powerful message in a way only Mayfield could do. And a whole soundtrack in the movie “Claudine” that was a tribute to “Black Love” in hard times in America. The soundtrack to the fictional musical ‘bio-pic” “Sparkle” dug into the roots of R&B music but remained fresh and innovative . The prison drama “Short Eyes” a soundtrack that took “funk” and blues to places they never went before. I could go on writing about Curtis Mayfield all day long……I WANT TO…but even though I have a big day ahead talking to people about the gun violence plague…I will from time to time go up to my office and post a song by Mayfield…the supply is generous…We won’t see another like Curtis…even in his last years when he was disabled after a tragic accident while getting ready for a show Curtis found a way to keep telling us about our world….a powerful talent.

On a film starring the late Sidney Poitier that later in his life he came to see in a different light

January 8, 2022 by Tim Hayes Comments

This article is one of several I wrote in the wake of the death of the great actor Sidney Poitier. This one concerns one of two films he was in that portrayed historical events in a way that the actor came to feel differently about later in life.

Still writing about the legacy of the late Sidney Poitier. I thought about this for a long time before writing about this film. “Something of Value”. Sidney Poitier rarely talked about the films that he made that “troubled” him. There were two. This one made in 1957 and another that I will talk about later. I never got a chance to speak personally with Poitier. I was once blessed to be in the same room with him but I couldn’t even get close. What’s wrong with this film ?. Well it’s good…well written and the acting is superb. The great William Marshall …one of my favorite actors is riveting as the “intellectual” of the “mau mau” resistance movement. Wonderful to watch. and Poitier playing a young recruit gives an Oscar level performance. The problem is in the historically “bullshit” portrayal of the so-called Mau Mau rebellion, in truth there was no such thing as the “Mau Mau”. The “Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA)” had it’s roots in the “Kenya African Study Union”, in the 1940s . who attempted a negotiated solution to end colonialism in Kenya. After many failures the KASU changed its name to the “Kenya African Union” (KAU) in 1946. And slowly became more militant. What we know as the Mau Mau rebellion began in 1952…. Amiri Baraka and I were for a long time bitter enemies. Mostly because for a time Baraka was caught up in the “cointelpro” inspired rivalry of “Cultural Nationalist” vs Marxist revolutionaries .In 1970 at the “Congress of African Peoples” in Atlanta Ga.We both talked about how we saw through this manipulation of Black activists and how the FBI inspired conflict had become deadly. Baraka had begun to distance himself from Ron Karenga and this conflict. We ran a workshop together and actually became friends. One night we sat up with a few bottles of wine and spoke of how this film “rewrote” the history of the rebellion in Kenya. The “Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA)” did not call themselves Mau Mau. The term was for the most part an attempt by the British to paint a picture of “blood thirty” savages rather than a legitimate rebellion with an anti-colonialist agenda. Branding the KLFA as a group of savages that could not be reasoned with the British used a time honored tactic of “divide and rule” There were factions of tribal groups who were encouraged by the British to actually fight against the KLFA. The portrayal of the resistance as seen in this film is totally false. To Baraka and myself the film itself was an attempt to make the British colonialists seem “noble” and the anti-colonialists as a “murdering horde”,the real truth was the reverse. Baraka a great thinker and I maintained a friendly and respectful relationship for the rest of his life. In this clip you see a scene where “would be” resistance fighters were asked to swear to “kill a white man” I have talked to several veterans of the KLFA over the years and none of the people I have ever talked to knew of an “oath” that asked that..most say it’s a myth made up by people who were not really there….I don’t know, but I think that as Poitier got more involved with the civil rights movement in the early 1960s it may be one of the reasons he began to see this 1957 film in a new light. “Something of Value” 1957 directed by Richard Brooks and starring Rock Hudson, Dana Wynter, and Sidney Poitier and William Marshall. A great film, and a pack of lies. But Sidney Portier’s performance is superb. use the link below to see the scene from the film

Harriet the film…more than what most of us expected

November 4, 2019 by Tim Hayes Comments

I guess the first time I heard the name Harriet Tubman would have been in the 4th grade..My teacher Mr. Cash was very serious about issues around race back then with awakening civil rights movement 1957. Even then he called her “Moses” This new film “Harriet” should in no way be just an introduction to Harriet Tubman..Like me most of us should have been hearing about her for our whole lives. But of course that’s not true. In these times when we are actually talking about honoring Tubman by putting her likeness on the 20 dollar bill. And with a person in the White House who seems to be determined to turn back the clock on race relations..This could be just the right time to remind this country that it belongs to African Americans as much as it belongs to any body else. This particular film “Harriet” ..directed by Kasi Lemmons …best remembered as director of “Eves Bayou” ( 1997 ) and starring Cynthia Erivo and Leslie Odum Jr. Opened last week BIG..First off by any standards it’s a beautifully shot film, that begins with a bang and never let’s up. The title character is first drawn in bold strokes…but they spend the rest of the movie filling in the details..We learn how in scene after scene just how the very real Harriet Tubman earned her place in American history. One area where the film walks over new ground is that there is no place in the film where slavery is romanticized or stereotyped ..Even the very first scene shows a slave preacher played by old friend Vondie Curtis-Hall who turns out to be nothing like who he seems in the first scene or what we may expect…In fact the best thing about this film is just how complex life as a slave was. It’s shown in ways no matter how well informed you think you were about slavery most of us would have never expected…YES there were actually times when running or escaping may not have been the best thing to do. Yes there were times when the worst enemy of an escaping slave was a free black person. And yes ..the fate of women in antebellum America was linked directly with the fate of the non-white..in good ways and in perverse ways. So yes this is a film that covers a lot of familiar territory ..but one of the best things it does is educates us to the fact that the current position of a lot of “newly minted’ black activists ..who love to say..”We don’t need to see any more slave movies”..well they are wrong totally wrong. We have not seen enough slave movies or heard enough slave stories..Because so much of the “slave” still haunts the way Black people think in America ..and the way we act in America..and how much of the western individualistic ..”me first” culture we learned from our masters is still there. That being said..for all Americans no matter what color…It’s long past time we learned about one of the great patriots in our county’s history ..and see that Harriet Tubman is not just the old lady picture we have all seen hundred of times ..but a vibrant, brave woman of action…Now here comes the “tricky” part.. this was a fictional movie based on the life of a very real person..But this story is an adaptation ..and it took many “liberties”..Harriet Tubman made many trips back to rescue slaves …just like anyone else she made mistakes ..many..but she learned from them and became with much effort one of the best conductors on the “Underground Railroad”…in the film they make a little bit of a stretch ..they give her what I like to call “spidey senses”..she in the film is sort of made to see the future, Tubman did have fainting spells due to a brain injury she suffered early in life ..but seeing the future ??…this is simply not true but I have to admit it did add to the drama…a cheap trick..made a GREAT story…The other even more strange thing is that all over the internet there are conspiracy theory people already saying that the fact that a couple of the bad guys in the film were black ..means that ..”they” are trying to “smear” black people …well the truth is just like now there were black good guys and black bad guys ..so…GO SEE THE FILM..don’t expect it to be perfect NO FILM IS ..help people raise funds to make another like it if you don’t like it. Timothy L. Hayes

POST SUPERBOWL THOUGHTS 2019

February 7, 2019 by Tim Hayes Comments

POST SUPER BOWL THOUGHTS….The last time I watched an entire Super Bowl game was in 1998 when my son Will and I watched the Falcons lose to New England in 1998. But I didn’t watch last nights game and in fact didn’t know the outcome until just now…Monday morning 6:38 am..There were several reasons ..In December of 2016 I lost my beloved sister Mary..As the motorcade with her remains drove from one end of Atlanta to the other we passed by the Georgia Dome..and right next to it the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium at that time under construction..I have not lived in Atlanta since 1973…but as we drove past that site ..which is adjacent to the area we still called Vine City..I realized that both the site of the original “Free Breakfast program” originally opened by the Georgia Black Liberation Front in 1969 and taken over by me and that Black Panther Party in 1970 and moved to another church..as well as another location that ( according to current historians ) may have been the very first (1970) shelter for battered spouses if not in the country at least in the southern United States..It was also opened by the Atlanta Black Panther Party. Both sites were wiped out to build the Georgia World Congress Center Authority ..the site of both stadiums. If I had known this when the Georgia Dome broke ground in 1989 I probably would have tried to have some event to commemorate this. So I guess saying that here for Black History month will have to do. Back in June 2018 when I was in Atlanta for a week and lectured to three different audiences and got interviewed by several students and historians and journalists ..all these things were acknowledged and I made sure to mention the other people involved..I also didn’t watch because I was just a little mad at Gladys Knight…but I can’t stay mad at my “homegirl” for long..she not only went to my high school but .she has been making kids from Atlanta proud since she first gained national attention when she won a nation wide “talent search”.. Ted Mack’s The Original Amateur Hour TV show contest at the age of seven in 1952..see the very “cute” Gladys in the picture..So while ya’ll were watching the Super Bowl I watched all of season one of Star Trek “Discovery” ..from what I’m reading today…it was a much better show.

About me and my Dad …thoughts on Father’s Day 2017

June 20, 2017 by Tim Hayes Comments

This post is another fond remembrance of my Dad. Who had the unfortunate task of raising me as a son. I was that kind of kid who questioned everything..But mostly the “Jim crow” apartheid system he was forced to make a life for his family under. Like a lot of young “newly militant” people of that time we made the stupid mistake of thinking that because our parents took up the challenge to take care of their families even in that evil system. That it meant that our parents were somehow “okay” with being 3rd class citizens in our own country…It took a lot of growing up for me to see that my Dad fought me so hard about joining SNCC, about joining the Black Panther Party..about going to Africa..was because every person he had ever known who openly challenged the “status quo” of white supremacy …..was dead..And not just him, as I grew older it seemed almost every family had a tale of somebody who had challenged the way things were …back in the 1920s..or during WW II or even back in WW I..those stories all ended with a person who died under “strange circumstances” like my Dad’s father..or had to secretly leave town “forever” like my Moms Uncle Arthur..or sometimes they just hung you from a tree..My Father fought me on those things out of love…….and fear. When he passed away in 1984 …I found out from my brother and from my Dad’s old army buddies that he not only gave money secretly to SCLC and SNCC..but that at night when he drank with his VFW buddies he would brag about his son who had the “whiteys” so scared…it’s awful that I didn’t really know that side of my father while he was alive. But when I talk about him today I always mention the guts and bravery it took to dare to just take good care of your family in that awful time that I grew up in..This picture is from the late fortys or early 50s…my Dad walking to work in downtown Atlanta. He was the Chef in a white Restaurant that he was NOT allowed to eat at himself…He once during the civil rights movement beginnings told me about how he saw all the Black students picketing the place..and getting beaten up by the cops…He made me and my sister promise that we would never get involved . what he didn’t know is that I already knew them all…But what I didn’t know it that it was not lost of Dad that he cooked there all day long and could never bring his family in for a meal…Dad helped to bail out several of those people…that was called “The Atlanta Student Movement”.. Those people….those parents were ALL heroes.And I salute ALL the Black fathers of those times..and a profound apology to my Father.

My favorite woman leader from the 1960s civil rights era Gloria Richardson

February 11, 2017 by Tim Hayes Comments

This is one of my favorite historical pictures of all time ….This is Gloria Richardson…and she was one of Malcolm X’s heroes …Gloria Hayes Richardson was born on May 6, 1922 in Baltimore, Maryland to parents John and Mabel Hayes. During the Great Depression her parents moved the family to Cambridge, Maryland, the home of Mabel Hayes. Young Gloria grew up in a privileged environment. Her grandfather, Herbert M. St. Clair, was one of the town’s wealthiest citizens. He owned numerous properties in the city’s Second Ward which included a funeral parlor, grocery store and butcher shop. He was also the sole African American member of the Cambridge City Council through most of the early 20th Century.

Gloria attended Howard University in Washington at the age of 16 and graduated in 1942 with a degree in sociology. After Howard, she worked as a civil servant for the federal government in World War II-era Washington, D.C. but returned to Cambridge after the war. Despite her grandfather’s political and economic influence, the Maryland Department of Social Services, for example, refused to hire Gloria or any other black social workers. Gloria Hayes married local school teacher Harry Richardson in 1948 and raised a family for the next thirteen years.

When the civil rights movement came to Cambridge in 1961 in the form of Freedom Riders, the town was thoroughly segregated and the African American unemployment rate was 40%. Gloria Richardson’s teenage daughter, Donna, became involved with the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) effort to desegregate public accommodations. Gloria, however, refused to commit herself to non-violence as a protest tactic.

When the SNCC-led protests faltered in 1962, Gloria and other parents created the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC) which became the only adult-led SNCC affiliate in the civil rights organization’s history. CNAC enlarged the scope of grievances to include housing and employment discrimination and inadequate health care. Richardson was selected to lead CNAC.

This Richardson-led effort differed from most other civil rights campaigns of the era. It took place in a border state rather than the Deep South. It addressed a much wider array of issues rather than the one or two that motivated other campaigns. Since Richardson and her followers refused to commit to non-violence as a philosophy or a tactic, CNAC protests were far more violent and confrontative. Protests in 1963, for example, prompted Maryland Governor J. Millard Tawes to send in the Maryland National Guard. The Guard remained in the city, which was effectively under martial law, for nearly a year. The Cambridge Movement also drew the attention of U.S. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy who unsuccessfully attempted to broker an agreement between Cambridge’s white political leaders and Richardson’s CNAC.

By the summer of 1964 Richardson resigned from the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee citing her exhaustion from leading nearly two years of continuous demonstrations. Richardson, who had divorced Harry Richardson in the late 1950s, married freelance photographer Frank Dandridge. The couple moved to New York City with Richardson’s younger daughter Tamara.

Yes, there really are some good people who happen to be police officers…I’ve known them and been saved by them.

September 25, 2016 by Tim Hayes Comments

Why am I posting a picture like this you might ask. I’m Tim Hayes ..the guy that the chief of police in Atlanta Georgia. Herbert Jenkins .once described as a “mad dog cop killer”…That was when I was the founder of and for a while until I left for Cuba and Africa the Captain of the Atlanta Chapter of the Black Panther Party.. But The fact that after those days I like to consider myself an honest historian. Meaning when you speak of history …you have to say what your research has revealed ….whether you like it or not or whether it fits your preferred world view or not. That’s what separates real historians from hacks….and there are a lot of hacks out there…The history of Black community relations with city police forces for the most part has been a history of an “occupying force” rather than people who are there to “protect and serve”…But I know from over fifty years of observation that there really are decent people out there who wear the blue suit…When I got the worst beating of my life..by a cop….and I have gotten several, it took two rookie cops to come and pull the sadistic pig Sgt.. Eldren Bell off of me…he still managed to crack my skull..The officer who took care of me later and got me medical attention.. Later sued the Atlanta police Dept. for police brutality…his name was DeWitt Smith…I will never forget him..that was 1970…Since that time I have seen that the culture of the urban American police officer has changed very little..They usually don’t tell when a fellow officer ignores someone’s rights…and most of the times when they do they get ugly treatment from their co-workers. But there are real people on the police force who step up from time to time and many of them have been people I know ..or the child of someone I know…and one of the most decent people I know is a nephew of mine who is an officer in Georgia…so yes we should keep shedding the light on those pigs on the force who abuse the people they are sworn to protect..but we also need to help create a culture where those people on the police force who REALLY are there to “protect and serve” are more willing to step up when they are protecting one of us from one of their co-workers…..I know I will get a lot of flack for this….I just had a talk with a Philadelphia policeman who I know from my days as a counselor at Olney High School in Philly where he was student..he will be reporting another officer tonight for assaulting a woman he had already arrested …I wish him well..oh yes and by the way ….I never killed a police officer.

Why there is nothing wrong about another slave movie.

August 27, 2016 by Tim Hayes Comments

One of the things that has really bothered me in this crazy election year. has been the way so many people become victim to the “bandwagon” mentality. If something becomes popular with enough people to reach a certain “critical mass” then it becomes something many people think they just have to do, or think, or at least try to say they believe in. I mean you can’t be considered “hip” or cool unless you embrace certain ways of seeing things or making certain “talking points” a part of your normal conversation.No matter how stupid..if enough people think it’s cool ..you say it too..Among many Black people this had lead to a type of anti-intellectualism . You shut down critical analysis because it just “ain’t cool” any more.One of the ways this manifests itself in today’s world is the “I’m tired of hearing about slavery” crowd..I consider this a childish and backward rejection of a part of our history that still affects us more than any. While I understand why one would say this, from my experience to make such a statement has more to do with ones sense of “racial self esteem”..As Important as it is to study the complete Black Historical experience..from pre-history to now. We still are being influenced by the experience of slavery as a people ..and as a nation… I was a part of that generation that while maybe not the first but certainly was the first in mass to begin to study and research Black History beyond the time of slavery. Fifty years ago we were making pilgrimages to west Africa, saving up to go to Ethiopia, Somalia, Seeing sites in the Middle East. I went to Algeria, and Israel , and Tunisia as well yes Egypt. in search of Black History before slavery. I wanted to find out as much as i could about Moorish history and religion. Important stuff, true. What this all lead me back to is that we still don’t have a really complete understanding of the psychological impact of slavery. or the long lasting pathology that causes us as Black people to act out is some ways over and over in generation after generation. I’m tired of hearing people say “I don’t want to see any more movies about slavery.” Well true there is a lot more to our story than that……a lot more. And I would like to see more films and published studies on Pre-slavery Black history. But we have only scratched the surface of the peculiar institution of slavery. So yes I’m looking forward to another film that deals with slavery…but this one..called “Birth of a Nation” deals with a part of the slave experience most of the films have stayed away from….Rebellion…so it may turn out to be a good film….and it may not. But that anti-intellectual bullshit about “I don’t want to see another slave film” will not keep me out of the theater..to see the trailer use this link.....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIlUerVomDE

LAW AND ORDER

July 22, 2016 by Tim Hayes Comments

JUST IN CASE YOU DON’T KNOW. Donald Trump has now called himself the “Law and Order” candidate..and has said at least three times that Law and order will be the “hallmark” of his presidency. Well I remember very well the last time a person ran for president as the “law and order” president…1968. This person used the fact that people were organizing in mass movements to protest an unjust war. The fact that the civil rights movement had grown to the point of addressing economic issues and foreign policy. A national organization born of the struggle to end police brutality and fight the militarization of police forces had grown to take on many of the responsibilities that aid to dependent children should have been taking on…was demonized and had hundreds of it’s members vilified ..murdered..incarcerated ..framed..This person used all those things happening in our country to scare the shit out of the majority of white Americans… won that election….turned the Presidency into an Imperial office..literally formed a separate government agency for the purpose of cheating in the re-election campaign, stole the re-election …got caught by it’s own arrogance and the President ended up having to resign in disgrace…Guess what ?? last night the republicans put up another “Law and order” candidate…And rather than seeing how this is happening …many alleged “progressives” are still bathing in the “sour grapes” of not getting the nomination for their “darling ” candidate….they need to shut the hell up and join us in some serious work we all need to do..