You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself. --Galileo
I only just started reading The Black Jacobins, devouring the foreword, introduction, prologue and first chapter over the weekend. I'd had the book in my house for at least eight years now. My mother's copy, a valued copy if the presence of her signature on several random pages is any indication. She wanted to ensure that no one ever got away with stealing it, or at least pricked their conscience if they did. I never saw the use of it. The cover was impressive. The dark skinned man in Victorian style refinements spoke to an underdeveloped black pride within me every time I saw it. But my mind, up until now, was not prepared to take on the the tiresome (as I saw it) task of actually reading it. Its a matter of maturity. I had to wait until now. Until I was ready. And even so, I didn't know I was ready. I simply couldn't find the book I'd started reading in time to pack it for the trip to Flores, and instead decided to grab it off the shelf, just to see what it was all about. When I opened it and started reading about C.L.R. James, and about his ideas, and about Haiti, I realized that it was time. Had I read it at any point before now, before those very same thoughts came to life in the cultivated garden of my own mind, I wouldn't have really cared about what it had to say. I wouldn't be sitting in my office, as I am now, with the presence of the book in my messenger bag glowing like a bright beacon in the back of my mind. I wouldn't have the appreciation and hunger for it that I have now had it been forced upon me in high school. If I had read it at any point before now, I wouldn't give a rats ass who C.L.R. James was.
This is a universal thing. Perhaps it might be a generational peculiarity, but I doubt it. While my upbringing has instilled within me an unconditional respect for my elders, my own self-education efforts actually revolve around breaking down those things that were instilled in me, and not taken on by my own volition. Also, I've come to learn that all things have conditions. To this end I can say that previous generations were no more enlightened or prone to enlightenment than my own. Those who came before me were no more or no less hungry for knowledge than I am. However, perhaps they had more barriers to that knowledge and in their youth, they had just the same amount of rebellion as I do. So while I have the information at my fingertips, acquiring it isn't as exciting as it was back then.
It's just a theory.
But things work a little differently now. Now we have to present knowledge like we do Easter-eggs: Paint them conspicuously, and hide them in plain sight. For instance, there is a street in Harlem, a boulevard actually, named Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard. Navigating Harlem, you're main allies are the broad bordering streets named after Black heroes and famous personalities. Malcom X Boulevard. Frederick Douglass Blvd. Martin Luther King Boulevard. Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard?
"Hey man, Who's Clayton Powell?" I asked one of the neighborhood guys that worked at the Hostel. He was younger than I was, but just barely. A handsome guy who was just growing his dreads and 'trying' to be vegetarian. They were either the first, struggling signs of someone seeking some kind of enlightenment, or a complete poseur. He admitted that he didn't know, and the pretty Puerto Rican girl who worked at the front desk made a disgusted sound and elbowed him, saying "Don't you live around here?"
"I live ten blocks that way!" he retorted, pointing in the direction of the rest of Manhattan.
"So?" She replied. "You're supposed to know this stuff."
"Why, cause I'm black?" He asked sardonically.
"Yeah!" She said, sounding perplexed that he even had to ask.
The next day he brought me a pamphlet about the heroes the streets were named after, and had highlighted The Reverend Adam Clayton Powel Jr., first African American elected to congress. It may be that he'd just missed learning about Adam Clayton Powel Jr. in class. He might have matriculated just before it was decided to add that information to the public school curriculum. Its also possible that former senator Powell was right there in his history books, but a congressman who, among other accomplishments, dined with a contingent of black constituents in the 'Whites Only' House restaurant and passed a record number of bills in a single session of congress, doesn't shine as brightly beside his Harlem Boulevard contemporaries. "If the Law is wrong, change the Law" perhaps doesn't resonate in the heart as much as "By any means necessary." or the 'I have a dream.' speech. But that Easter-egg was hidden on a street walked my thousands each day, and painted brighter than the grey of the city. All it required, all it still requires, is for someone to point it out, and let young, hungry curiosity handle the rest.
And if there was no Adam Clayton Powell jr Boulevard? If it were forever to be called ' 7th Avenue'? Then obviously it would be just another gilded street in an increasingly gentrified Harlem. And with no knowledge of the true history of the neighborhood, why would anyone want to stay somewhere they're not wanted? The argument against gentrification and the tools for combating it is another conversation all its own. But we are talking about knowledge, access to knowledge, and the drive to educate oneself. Again, I've only made it through the preliminary text and the first chapter, but being a long time fan of all kinds of narratives, I can tell that its these very same factors on which the plot of this story; the liberation of Saint Domingue, and the creation of Haiti; hinges. The same factors, perhaps, presented the Easter egg of Marxism to James, and inseminated within him the idea to share history to the Caribbean and Black Communities. The same factors that now lead me to explore, stumble upon, and learn from James, his writing, and the history of the region. And if there were, perhaps, a library in a predominantly black neighborhood somewhere that, all of a sudden, was no longer called the CLR James Library? Then we will be left with those still waiting to stumble over brightly coloured enlightenment hidden in plain sight, and all we'll be able to tell them is: 'It used to be there. But now its not.'
Inspired by: CRB • Antilles • Transformative reading
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