Waiting For Spider-Man

_______________

"...YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN!"

There's a new SPIDER-MAN in town, and it's a wonderful thing.

'Not a dream! Not a hoax! Not a bad musical!'

Marvel Comics built their empire on the character of Spider-Man, as important to their survival as Superman is to their rival, DC Comics. It would be easy for them to play it safe with their breadwinner, but they have a second option to get bold with.

Marvel publishes a regular line of comic titles with all their classic heroes, but they also publish a separate line of Ultimate Comics. In this alternate universe, the characters have been re-imagined as their ultimate best selves for a modern era. The regular comic Spider-Man, that ever wisecracking Peter Parker, is alive and well. But over in the Ultimate Spider-Man comic, Peter Parker has just passed away and a young teen kid named Miles Morales will replace him in September. >

Your friendly neighbor's hood.

There seems to be some kind of flustered fuss about this.

Having an African-American and Hispanic kid as the new Spider-Man is a great thing in multiple ways. Most smart people understand why and said so. But a few fringe voices from the old hate had problems with it, which only reveals their sad flaws.


_______________

"HEY, WAY TO MAKE A GUY FEEL WELCOME!" -Peter Parker
a.k.a., 'Who says only Stan The Man can have a soapbox?', dept.

Spider-Man's 1960s creators, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

Well, let's get it out of the way, and point out the elephant irrelevant in the room.

ITEM: Here's the straight-up, pilgrims: there are no such things as races. There is only one race, the Human Race. This isn't idealism, it's simply a scientific fact. > >

When people speak of different races, they are mistaken. The flat scientific reality is... there is only one race, the Human Race, Homo sapiens ("wise man", "knowing man"). You can't divide people by minor physical quibbles, by religion, by map borders, or by cultural traditions and call them races. > It's ignorant and no better than superstition. So terms like 'bi-racial' are just (brace yourself) compounded dumbness. > > >

This may sound like idealism, but it is actually a smack-exact scientific fact, Jack.


"The Journey Of Man: A Genetic Odyssey";
How humanity is one race that branched from Africa



(Let's cut to the quick: a single African tribe seeded every person on Earth, we are all family, stop hitting your cousin and grow up or I'll turn this car around right now.) > >

Races don't exist, but racism does. Racism is the belief in races, and justifying acting badly to others because of it. The results of that mistaken belief are very real, even if it is as stupid as we could possibly be. > I would've skipped all this as a given, effendi, but all the articles -whether pro or con- about Miles prove that the bulk of us still haven't grasped this.

Repeat: When you say 'bi-racial' or 'mixed-race', you're being double-dumb. Like bubble gum.

"Hey, tigers, time to get with reality!" concurs Mary Jane, "Get wise, man; act like you know and let's go. Next."

Stan Lee's Soapbox column, 1968.

_______________

"...SPIDER SENSE IS TINGLING!"

Some folks think this is a heavy subject for such light reading. They're judging covers on mags they've never read.

But you know the score, true believers!

Comic books are as advanced in story and craft as any book, film, or series, and have been for many decades. Four generations worth of hip folks have enjoyed this, while some hack journalists and their clueless readers still have their head up their comics code authority.> >

Regardless, the generation who grew up on graphic novels now writes the best blogs, mags, books, shows, and films, which is turning the tide of public awareness; these professionals know that comics at their best have the pulse of the times, and often accelerate it. > >

Marvel Comics (alias Jack Kirby) introduced the first Black superhero,
the African king, Black Panther, in 1966.
> > > > > > > >

There's ways to do a good thing right, and still ways to go wrong anyway.

When the character Batwoman was announced as a lesbian (2006), it was decried by some as a stunt.> But, in practice, the character's confident sexual identity only enhanced some of the most essential stories and art of the decade. By focusing on depth and strength of character, in strong stories with stunning art, the creators showed that quality of craft and humanity of heart are the best keys for progress.

Another good character move was the debut of an Asian Batgirl named Cassandra Cain (1999)>, but she was mishandled. The creators seemed to think the vague concept 'Asian' was enough and blurred her background in a hodgepodge of pan-Asian cultural cliches. In the major city I live in, where everyone comes from all the radically diverse cultures grouped under Asia, this was infuriating instead of empowering.

And you know writers are clueless when they descend to the whole 'hero/now villain/now hero' ricochet. The creators seemed equally tonedeaf to the resulting backlash; "Huh?", blink, blink. Newsflash: way to ruin a great character in no time flat, ya boneheads. (What was their solution? They just replaced her with a blond. Yeh. Nuff said.)

Batwoman; Batgirl

Good stories about good people are the whole point of superhero comics. They're fantasies of our inner spirit personified as its ultimate best.>>

Sadly, some bad people with their own problems slung a lot of abuse at Batwoman for having love in her life; and have so again at the casting of Perry White with a fine actor; and of course at our fledgling spider-kid, Miles for being... in a book they're unskilled to read anyway. So I was really impressed when the main man at Marvel Comics, Joe Quesada, responded to all the bigot blowhards by saying, "if people with racist tendencies disagree with the things we do, then I know we're doing the right thing."

Joe Quesada is hispanic, and extends the proud history of immigrant underdogs that made comics (and culture) great. Comic books were invented in the melting pot of 1930s Depression-era New York City, cranked out by idealistic young Italians, Jews, Poles, Irish, and more who yearned to empower themselves in a better world. > From the later waves of Filipino, French, and Spanish artists in the '70s, to the English and Scottish writers in the '80s, to the rise of African-American artists in the '90s, and Asian artists in the '00s, American comics are only improved by inclusion and empowerment.

"Sayyy, aren't you forgetting something there, buddy?" interjects Mary Jane.

Woman make up the majority of the human race, but they are the most neglected and marginalized part of the comics community.> > > > > So it's even better that the series is being drawn by a woman, which there can never be enough of in comics creation. Sara Pichelli has a keen eye for telling a story, particularly through the humanity imbued in clothes, expressions, and gestures. And what an excellent job with the costume! Totally new and yet totally identifiable as Spidey.

Hey, wake up over there, I'm on a roll. Wow, tough room. Did we run out of women-in-leather pics? Cue the film, Irving!


_______________

"WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY." -Uncle Ben Parker

But what really put the passion in me was in seeing how much they were influenced by the documentary WAITING FOR SUPERMAN.

WAITING FOR SUPERMAN trailer (2010)


This indie film has clearheaded prescriptions for solving the education crisis in America, using the metaphor that we can't depend on any messianic agency when we should focus on saving ourselves. > >

The cruelest and most moving part of the film is seeing all of the bright kids from poor homes pinning all their hopes on a random lottery system that might let them into a school that can save them. The horror of seeing qualified kids thrown to the wind by sheer chance is almost too heartbreaking to take.

In a sequence in ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN #1, it's clear that writer Brian Michael Bendis has adapted this exact scene from the film. At that point my empathy for Miles Morales was absolute, and I knew I was going to buy this book every month.

Waiting for hope


WAITING FOR SUPERMAN nails what's criminally wrong about our current education system. We strobe to kids that they can do anything with an education. But we don't provide them with the education which allows them to do anything. When we reduce their chances to a lottery, we tell them that all their hard work means nothing against fickle fate, and they should just give up.

I say, tell fate to go fickle itself.

Kids reading comics, 1939-1947. source

Comic books were first created to lift kids' dreams. Their sole purpose is to empower the hero within you.

In this new Depression, we need to believe that quality will win, that the inner spirit is stronger than evil or fate, that the dreams of our own youth weren't delusions, and that the dreams of the new youth can be given a fair chance. That we have humanity and decency in common, and that together we can make a better world.

We need a narrative of belief that we make happen ourselves. Miles Morales is the hero for our times because we are Miles Morales.

President Obama meets the kids from "Waiting For Superman".
Miles Morales was almost certainly inspired
by the two people shaking hands.

_______________

If you haven't seen the film, I can't urge it enough. Then see how you feel about our friendly new neighbor....

ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN #1 goes on sale at comic shops September 14, 2011.

(This is a variant cover.)


Excelsior!

_______________


BONUS UPDATE:
"For only love can conquer hate." -Marvin Gaye

Spider-Man (Miles Morales)
and Spider-Woman (Gwen Stacy), 2016.

Update II: Miles Morales and "Spider-Gwen" Stacy became famous in the mainstream with the smash success of the CG-animated film, SPIDER-MAN: Into the Spider-Verse (2018).


© Tym Stevens

---

See also:

• The Struggle For the Moral Soul: MARTIN LUTHER KING and Civil Rights


• BEST COMICS: 2000-2010!
• BEST COMICS: 2011
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• The Big Bang of STARSTRUCK: The Roots and Branches of Elaine Lee & Michael Kaluta's space opera


• The Real History of Rock and Soul!: The Music Player Checklist

---

---

The Struggle For the Moral Soul: MARTIN LUTHER KING and Civil Rights

"Justice at its best is power
correcting everything that stands against love."
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I think the Civil Rights Movement was the best thing that ever happened to America, because it forced us to redeem ourselves. And it still is.

I grew up in the South and Midwest during the Civil Rights years and their aftermath. It challenged everything about my world and deepened my appreciation of humanity. Not a single day passes where the lessons learned are not affecting my perceptions, my outlook, or my aspirations. What is right nowadays stems from their moral paths, what is wrong tends to come from where any of us have lost the way. It's on each of us to make it better for each other. Selflessness brings us into the better angels of our nature. This is my psalm of love to my heroes, the bravest of the brave.

When you look back at the black and white photos of the tense events of the civil rights struggle in the '50s and '60s, like those shot by Charles Moore, there is a strangely brutal clarity. It seems like all artifice strips away leaving only hate and heroism. There is no theatre. There's only that queasy moment when something terrible is happening, when someone is doing wrong to someone, or recklessly trying to stand up in the face of danger. It is immediate, it's serious, it's real. A black woman cringing from a swung baseball bat. People slammed to the ground by the high-pressure firehoses of Alabama firemen. State Troopers charging church marchers with batons through tear gas. College students bludgeoned by horseback cops. And this was America.

There is a sickness so terrible in those frames, it chills the heart. Studying those snapshots and films, you look in the faces of the racist cop, the klanswoman, the corrupt governor, and you can perhaps also see their fear...of the modern, of change, of the truth. They look like sad relics not quite grasping that their hold is slipping, that critical mass is tiding against them. That every wrong they've ever done is coming up for account.

Hindsight is one thing, but living through that revolution was far more intense; it was painful, personal, and ongoing. And there was really nothing black and white about any of it. Black And White was just ink on a copy page, photos on newsprint, flickers on a television. It was the medium for conveying this moral war, but the reality was too complex for polar absolutes. Those shocking events were actually an alarmingly clear mirror showing the spectrum of our neglect. It ripped up laissez-fair dismissals about the reality of racism to shreds. It stripped away the firewalls that we used to separate it from our lives. Most of all, it forced us to question our national identity, and our personal character. Were you really what you said you were, who you thought you were? Where did you stand, and why? This was no civics lesson or some marketing campaign. This was the new true reality. Not shopping, not cruising, not the cinema. Those images and stories radically challenged how you behaved and what you believed in.

This was a new era where the political was a personal as it gets. Who was the Enemy here; was it the Klan South, the segregationist politicians, outmoded laws? Or also benign ignorance, local injustice, personal acts? Racism was as pervasive in all regions of the country and society as the South. People may have been carefully segregated by opposing terms like Black or White, male or female, Christian or heathen. But that aritifice stripped away when you had to stand at the mirror and face who you really were inside. The truth was that the real enemy was the ugliness in the human heart. There was no Us and Them. There was only each of us having to atone for any flaws in our own daily actions going forward. The moral struggle for the soul of the nation had to happen ultimately within each of us.

Part of the pain of living in the South and Midwest was seeing that poison directly in the ones you loved, in yourself. It's easy for someone to stand outside of an area and point out cardboard villains. It was another thing to live there and see the loved ones you trusted -who put church above all else, were wise and kind, who raised you- also believing in the same cruel hatred that compelled Sheriff James Clark to violently assault protesters. Another thing then to find some of these seeds in yourself and weed them out. Facing these truths left you feeling like a smashed windshield after a collision. It called into question your faith in love itself. How could these very moral people teach such immoral attitudes? How could they be Christian while excluding everyone they were afraid of? The sadness was compounded by watching these people you respected -who cared about family, led decent lives, worked hard every day- then having their sad fears twisted into hate for personal power by men in suits: pastors, police, politicians. Who could you believe in anymore?

"It may well be that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition is not the glaring noisiness of the so-called bad people, but the appalling silence of the so-called good people."
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Rosa Parks was tired. She'd worked hard all day and she didn't want to give up her seat on the bus. The law said she should but the law was immoral. By trying to hold on to her dignity in one small moment, Rosa took a stand that changed everything. People stepped forward to stand with her, and more, and more. Now we all had to make decisions on what was better for everyone, even if the written law was unequal to the task.

You could instead choose an honest love, a compassionate outlook, a giving hand, that left hate and hypocrisy behind. The Civil Rights Movement forced you to make a choice. Often between relationships and principle, selfishness and selflessness, between the past and the future, repression or progress. It was the hardest break of all but it was necessary for the soul.

Dr. King never succumbed to hate. He steadfastly remembered that his enemies were just people who could still be reached, befriended, forgiven. Resorting to brutality or hatred only dehumanized any of us. He put all his faith in human dignity, and in the world's support when they saw it being assailed. He was right to and always will be. No one could see the bombing of the church which killed four little girls and not be moved on the deepest level. King believed foremost in our humanity, that we would come through for another in pain. This redemptive love ennobled our nation and inspired us to be better people.

When a flash flood hits, it's pretty overwhelming and dramatic. Then it seeps down out of view, only to flourish seeds in the future. The 1960s and the empowerment ethos ignited by the Civil Rights Movement were like a flash flood worldwide.

Before, the mainstream culture at large had been strictly for the Included. TV ads and shows, churches, schools, and industry were very good about reminding everyone what those parameters were, and how you did or didn't fit into them. But in the biggest generation ever, that left a lot of ostracized people to meet each other and bond together. There was nothing black or white about any of them, they were like a prism of possibilities; Ban The Bomb activists, Folk protestors, Rock hedonists, Jazz boppers, ecologists, vegetarians, student uprisers, international dissidents, disillusioned soldiers, young college women, banned writers, progressive teachers, pacifist clergy, migrant workers, repressed voters, closeted gays, starving artists, fashion forwards, philosophers, shafted unions, poor people...the list was limitless. No one had a monopoly on pain. Its universality connected them. By sharing common grievance they began to see an end to limitations when they pooled their strengths. That's the true '60s...the Empowerment era. En masse, their alienation created a sort of sub-nation, a counterculture. This humanist movement's mantra was freedom, in the sense of personal emancipation.

There's a clear throughline from the Civil Rights movement to Farmworkers' rights, the Paris revolts, Prague Spring, the Counterculture, Feminism and ERA, Chicano pride, AIM, Solidarnosc, Eastern European liberation, ecology, Apartheid's end, and Gay rights. They are all the seeds that grew from the flood that Rosa Parks unleashed that fateful day she made her stand.

For his humane efforts, King was called "an extremist" by conservative attackers. Though never elected to the office, Martin Luther King was the moral President of the United States...and he still is.

"Why have we substituted the arrogant undertaking of policing the whole world, for the high task of setting one's own house in order?

For the evils of racism, poverty, and militarism to die, a new set of values must be born.

Our economy must become more person-centered
than profit- and property-centered."

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967

Let's keep going forward together.

© Tym Stevens

---

See Also:

• REVOLUTION! - A 'Fight The Power' Music Player

• SHAKE AND FINGER POP! Soul Music and the Interior Truth, with Music Player!

• "I Fought the Law and I Won!" - The Crickets > Bobby Fuller > The Clash > Metric

• "For What It's Worth": - Buffalo Springfield > Led Zeppelin > Public Enemy

• "Chase the Devil Out of Earth!" - Max Romeo > Lee Perry > The Prodigy


• The Real History of Rock and Soul!: The Music Player Checklist

---

The Struggle For the Moral Soul: MARTIN LUTHER KING and Civil Rights

"Justice at its best is power
correcting everything that stands against love."
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I think the Civil Rights Movement was the best thing that ever happened to America, because it forced us to redeem ourselves. And it still is.

I grew up in the South and Midwest during the Civil Rights years and their aftermath. It challenged everything about my world and deepened my appreciation of humanity. Not a single day passes where the lessons learned are not affecting my perceptions, my outlook, or my aspirations. What is right nowadays stems from their moral paths, what is wrong tends to come from where any of us have lost the way. It's on each of us to make it better for each other. Selflessness brings us into the better angels of our nature. This is my psalm of love to my heroes, the bravest of the brave.

When you look back at the black and white photos of the tense events of the civil rights struggle in the '50s and '60s, like those shot by Charles Moore, there is a strangely brutal clarity. It seems like all artifice strips away leaving only hate and heroism. There is no theatre. There's only that queasy moment when something terrible is happening, when someone is doing wrong to someone, or recklessly trying to stand up in the face of danger. It is immediate, it's serious, it's real. A black woman cringing from a swung baseball bat. People slammed to the ground by the high-pressure firehoses of Alabama firemen. State Troopers charging church marchers with batons through tear gas. College students bludgeoned by horseback cops. And this was America.

There is a sickness so terrible in those frames, it chills the heart. Studying those snapshots and films, you look in the faces of the racist cop, the klanswoman, the corrupt governor, and you can perhaps also see their fear...of the modern, of change, of the truth. They look like sad relics not quite grasping that their hold is slipping, that critical mass is tiding against them. That every wrong they've ever done is coming up for account.

Hindsight is one thing, but living through that revolution was far more intense; it was painful, personal, and ongoing. And there was really nothing black and white about any of it. Black And White was just ink on a copy page, photos on newsprint, flickers on a television. It was the medium for conveying this moral war, but the reality was too complex for polar absolutes. Those shocking events were actually an alarmingly clear mirror showing the spectrum of our neglect. It ripped up laissez-fair dismissals about the reality of racism to shreds. It stripped away the firewalls that we used to separate it from our lives. Most of all, it forced us to question our national identity, and our personal character. Were you really what you said you were, who you thought you were? Where did you stand, and why? This was no civics lesson or some marketing campaign. This was the new true reality. Not shopping, not cruising, not the cinema. Those images and stories radically challenged how you behaved and what you believed in.

This was a new era where the political was a personal as it gets. Who was the Enemy here; was it the Klan South, the segregationist politicians, outmoded laws? Or also benign ignorance, local injustice, personal acts? Racism was as pervasive in all regions of the country and society as the South. People may have been carefully segregated by opposing terms like Black or White, male or female, Christian or heathen. But that aritifice stripped away when you had to stand at the mirror and face who you really were inside. The truth was that the real enemy was the ugliness in the human heart. There was no Us and Them. There was only each of us having to atone for any flaws in our own daily actions going forward. The moral struggle for the soul of the nation had to happen ultimately within each of us.

Part of the pain of living in the South and Midwest was seeing that poison directly in the ones you loved, in yourself. It's easy for someone to stand outside of an area and point out cardboard villains. It was another thing to live there and see the loved ones you trusted -who put church above all else, were wise and kind, who raised you- also believing in the same cruel hatred that compelled Sheriff James Clark to violently assault protesters. Another thing then to find some of these seeds in yourself and weed them out. Facing these truths left you feeling like a smashed windshield after a collision. It called into question your faith in love itself. How could these very moral people teach such immoral attitudes? How could they be Christian while excluding everyone they were afraid of? The sadness was compounded by watching these people you respected -who cared about family, led decent lives, worked hard every day- then having their sad fears twisted into hate for personal power by men in suits: pastors, police, politicians. Who could you believe in anymore?

"It may well be that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition is not the glaring noisiness of the so-called bad people, but the appalling silence of the so-called good people."
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Rosa Parks was tired. She'd worked hard all day and she didn't want to give up her seat on the bus. The law said she should but the law was immoral. By trying to hold on to her dignity in one small moment, Rosa took a stand that changed everything. People stepped forward to stand with her, and more, and more. Now we all had to make decisions on what was better for everyone, even if the written law was unequal to the task.

You could instead choose an honest love, a compassionate outlook, a giving hand, that left hate and hypocrisy behind. The Civil Rights Movement forced you to make a choice. Often between relationships and principle, selfishness and selflessness, between the past and the future, repression or progress. It was the hardest break of all but it was necessary for the soul.

Dr. King never succumbed to hate. He steadfastly remembered that his enemies were just people who could still be reached, befriended, forgiven. Resorting to brutality or hatred only dehumanized any of us. He put all his faith in human dignity, and in the world's support when they saw it being assailed. He was right to and always will be. No one could see the bombing of the church which killed four little girls and not be moved on the deepest level. King believed foremost in our humanity, that we would come through for another in pain. This redemptive love ennobled our nation and inspired us to be better people.

When a flash flood hits, it's pretty overwhelming and dramatic. Then it seeps down out of view, only to flourish seeds in the future. The 1960s and the empowerment ethos ignited by the Civil Rights Movement were like a flash flood worldwide.

Before, the mainstream culture at large had been strictly for the Included. TV ads and shows, churches, schools, and industry were very good about reminding everyone what those parameters were, and how you did or didn't fit into them. But in the biggest generation ever, that left a lot of ostracized people to meet each other and bond together. There was nothing black or white about any of them, they were like a prism of possibilities; Ban The Bomb activists, Folk protestors, Rock hedonists, Jazz boppers, ecologists, vegetarians, student uprisers, international dissidents, disillusioned soldiers, young college women, banned writers, progressive teachers, pacifist clergy, migrant workers, repressed voters, closeted gays, starving artists, fashion forwards, philosophers, shafted unions, poor people...the list was limitless. No one had a monopoly on pain. Its universality connected them. By sharing common grievance they began to see an end to limitations when they pooled their strengths. That's the true '60s...the Empowerment era. En masse, their alienation created a sort of sub-nation, a counterculture. This humanist movement's mantra was freedom, in the sense of personal emancipation.

There's a clear throughline from the Civil Rights movement to Farmworkers' rights, the Paris revolts, Prague Spring, the Counterculture, Feminism and ERA, Chicano pride, AIM, Solidarnosc, Eastern European liberation, ecology, Apartheid's end, and Gay rights. They are all the seeds that grew from the flood that Rosa Parks unleashed that fateful day she made her stand.

For his humane efforts, King was called "an extremist" by conservative attackers. Though never elected to the office, Martin Luther King was the moral President of the United States...and he still is.

"Why have we substituted the arrogant undertaking of policing the whole world, for the high task of setting one's own house in order?

For the evils of racism, poverty, and militarism to die, a new set of values must be born.

Our economy must become more person-centered
than profit- and property-centered."

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967

Let's keep going forward together.

© Tym Stevens

---

See Also:

• REVOLUTION! - A 'Fight The Power' Music Player

• SHAKE AND FINGER POP! Soul Music and the Interior Truth, with Music Player!

• "I Fought the Law and I Won!" - The Crickets > Bobby Fuller > The Clash > Metric

• "For What It's Worth": - Buffalo Springfield > Led Zeppelin > Public Enemy

• "Chase the Devil Out of Earth!" - Max Romeo > Lee Perry > The Prodigy


• The Real History of Rock and Soul!: The Music Player Checklist

---

The Struggle For the Moral Soul: MARTIN LUTHER KING and Civil Rights

"Justice at its best is power
correcting everything that stands against love."
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I think the Civil Rights Movement was the best thing that ever happened to America, because it forced us to redeem ourselves. And it still is.

I grew up in the South and Midwest during the Civil Rights years and their aftermath. It challenged everything about my world and deepened my appreciation of humanity. Not a single day passes where the lessons learned are not affecting my perceptions, my outlook, or my aspirations. What is right nowadays stems from their moral paths, what is wrong tends to come from where any of us have lost the way. It's on each of us to make it better for each other. Selflessness brings us into the better angels of our nature. This is my psalm of love to my heroes, the bravest of the brave.

When you look back at the black and white photos of the tense events of the civil rights struggle in the '50s and '60s, like those shot by Charles Moore, there is a strangely brutal clarity. It seems like all artifice strips away leaving only hate and heroism. There is no theatre. There's only that queasy moment when something terrible is happening, when someone is doing wrong to someone, or recklessly trying to stand up in the face of danger. It is immediate, it's serious, it's real. A black woman cringing from a swung baseball bat. People slammed to the ground by the high-pressure firehoses of Alabama firemen. State Troopers charging church marchers with batons through tear gas. College students bludgeoned by horseback cops. And this was America.

There is a sickness so terrible in those frames, it chills the heart. Studying those snapshots and films, you look in the faces of the racist cop, the klanswoman, the corrupt governor, and you can perhaps also see their fear...of the modern, of change, of the truth. They look like sad relics not quite grasping that their hold is slipping, that critical mass is tiding against them. That every wrong they've ever done is coming up for account.

Hindsight is one thing, but living through that revolution was far more intense; it was painful, personal, and ongoing. And there was really nothing black and white about any of it. Black And White was just ink on a copy page, photos on newsprint, flickers on a television. It was the medium for conveying this moral war, but the reality was too complex for polar absolutes. Those shocking events were actually an alarmingly clear mirror showing the spectrum of our neglect. It ripped up laissez-fair dismissals about the reality of racism to shreds. It stripped away the firewalls that we used to separate it from our lives. Most of all, it forced us to question our national identity, and our personal character. Were you really what you said you were, who you thought you were? Where did you stand, and why? This was no civics lesson or some marketing campaign. This was the new true reality. Not shopping, not cruising, not the cinema. Those images and stories radically challenged how you behaved and what you believed in.

This was a new era where the political was a personal as it gets. Who was the Enemy here; was it the Klan South, the segregationist politicians, outmoded laws? Or also benign ignorance, local injustice, personal acts? Racism was as pervasive in all regions of the country and society as the South. People may have been carefully segregated by opposing terms like Black or White, male or female, Christian or heathen. But that aritifice stripped away when you had to stand at the mirror and face who you really were inside. The truth was that the real enemy was the ugliness in the human heart. There was no Us and Them. There was only each of us having to atone for any flaws in our own daily actions going forward. The moral struggle for the soul of the nation had to happen ultimately within each of us.

Part of the pain of living in the South and Midwest was seeing that poison directly in the ones you loved, in yourself. It's easy for someone to stand outside of an area and point out cardboard villains. It was another thing to live there and see the loved ones you trusted -who put church above all else, were wise and kind, who raised you- also believing in the same cruel hatred that compelled Sheriff James Clark to violently assault protesters. Another thing then to find some of these seeds in yourself and weed them out. Facing these truths left you feeling like a smashed windshield after a collision. It called into question your faith in love itself. How could these very moral people teach such immoral attitudes? How could they be Christian while excluding everyone they were afraid of? The sadness was compounded by watching these people you respected -who cared about family, led decent lives, worked hard every day- then having their sad fears twisted into hate for personal power by men in suits: pastors, police, politicians. Who could you believe in anymore?

"It may well be that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition is not the glaring noisiness of the so-called bad people, but the appalling silence of the so-called good people."
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Rosa Parks was tired. She'd worked hard all day and she didn't want to give up her seat on the bus. The law said she should but the law was immoral. By trying to hold on to her dignity in one small moment, Rosa took a stand that changed everything. People stepped forward to stand with her, and more, and more. Now we all had to make decisions on what was better for everyone, even if the written law was unequal to the task.

You could instead choose an honest love, a compassionate outlook, a giving hand, that left hate and hypocrisy behind. The Civil Rights Movement forced you to make a choice. Often between relationships and principle, selfishness and selflessness, between the past and the future, repression or progress. It was the hardest break of all but it was necessary for the soul.

Dr. King never succumbed to hate. He steadfastly remembered that his enemies were just people who could still be reached, befriended, forgiven. Resorting to brutality or hatred only dehumanized any of us. He put all his faith in human dignity, and in the world's support when they saw it being assailed. He was right to and always will be. No one could see the bombing of the church which killed four little girls and not be moved on the deepest level. King believed foremost in our humanity, that we would come through for another in pain. This redemptive love ennobled our nation and inspired us to be better people.

When a flash flood hits, it's pretty overwhelming and dramatic. Then it seeps down out of view, only to flourish seeds in the future. The 1960s and the empowerment ethos ignited by the Civil Rights Movement were like a flash flood worldwide.

Before, the mainstream culture at large had been strictly for the Included. TV ads and shows, churches, schools, and industry were very good about reminding everyone what those parameters were, and how you did or didn't fit into them. But in the biggest generation ever, that left a lot of ostracized people to meet each other and bond together. There was nothing black or white about any of them, they were like a prism of possibilities; Ban The Bomb activists, Folk protestors, Rock hedonists, Jazz boppers, ecologists, vegetarians, student uprisers, international dissidents, disillusioned soldiers, young college women, banned writers, progressive teachers, pacifist clergy, migrant workers, repressed voters, closeted gays, starving artists, fashion forwards, philosophers, shafted unions, poor people...the list was limitless. No one had a monopoly on pain. Its universality connected them. By sharing common grievance they began to see an end to limitations when they pooled their strengths. That's the true '60s...the Empowerment era. En masse, their alienation created a sort of sub-nation, a counterculture. This humanist movement's mantra was freedom, in the sense of personal emancipation.

There's a clear throughline from the Civil Rights movement to Farmworkers' rights, the Paris revolts, Prague Spring, the Counterculture, Feminism and ERA, Chicano pride, AIM, Solidarnosc, Eastern European liberation, ecology, Apartheid's end, and Gay rights. They are all the seeds that grew from the flood that Rosa Parks unleashed that fateful day she made her stand.

For his humane efforts, King was called "an extremist" by conservative attackers. Though never elected to the office, Martin Luther King was the moral President of the United States...and he still is.

"Why have we substituted the arrogant undertaking of policing the whole world, for the high task of setting one's own house in order?

For the evils of racism, poverty, and militarism to die, a new set of values must be born.

Our economy must become more person-centered
than profit- and property-centered."

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967

Let's keep going forward together.

© Tym Stevens

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See Also:

• REVOLUTION! - A 'Fight The Power' Music Player

• SHAKE AND FINGER POP! Soul Music and the Interior Truth, with Music Player!

• "I Fought the Law and I Won!" - The Crickets > Bobby Fuller > The Clash > Metric

• "For What It's Worth": - Buffalo Springfield > Led Zeppelin > Public Enemy

• "Chase the Devil Out of Earth!" - Max Romeo > Lee Perry > The Prodigy


• The Real History of Rock and Soul!: The Music Player Checklist

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