Now that we, Ella Baker’s boys and girls, (Ella Baker founded the SNCC) want nothing more than societal prosperity (may it be as good jobs, great education, respect for Barack Obama’s legacy, beautiful dresses, content children) coming to terms with the movement that led us all here, the Civil Rights Movement, is ever so crucial. What exactly was the Civil Rights Movement for most black folk? Some might argue that it was a time of phenomenal leadership. A position with which I agree, but I would also add that it was an age of epiphany, political epiphany, the sort that shall break any rusting chain.
The story, as we all know, begins on the shores of West Africa, where ancestors of ours were being sold as slaves. The details of this story are pretty important though: secret societies, conspiracies (especially in Igbo Nigeria), were part and parcel of the cultures of those being held captive. And with them, through the now infamous voyage across the Atlantic, they brought their culture of secrecy. One Igbo secret society in Old Kalabar is particularly well known and studied. The great secrets in the Americas became one’s identity and one’s wanting to be free despite the “yes, massa” and the “no, massa” that some deluded themselves in thinking could define people from whom had sprung some of this world’s great cultures. The Igbo were prone to committing suicide as slaves; Toni Morrison ever so important novel Beloved is perhaps the greatest translation of black conspiracy, at the heart of our community, into art.
How does epiphany come into play? Let’s just say that conspiracy, more than just community (this crab in a barrel thing you hear being said by blacks about this community is not just a joke) is the reason why, despite the caricatures, we have produced this constant renaissance of music, style, posture, intellect, law, language, health, etc., in a society that tries to do the very opposite to every single one of us in his or her particular way. Robert Faris Thompson, an art historian professor at Yale, found that the word funk comes from the ki-kongo word, "lufuki." The conspiracy preserved in when it was not advised to be funky, until James Brown made it a staple of American culture as a working class bard of beauty and liberty. The same goes for the kikongo word, "mojo."
Epiphany in the civil rights movement was an evolution of that conspiracy. The Epiphany in New York a bit before had been to go back to Africa. The new Epiphany, the one that produced a strong mass, was that, however hard it was, whatever cost, change will be legal. It then morphed into wanting the end of the Vietnam War, etc., but that's a story for another day, and the end of the Epiphany and serious factions of political thought in black community. According to our grand conspiracy, religion could be the salvation of human beings, despite the contradictions that have come with every religion. According to Matthew 2:1–12, “for out of you will come a ruler / who will shepherd my people Israel” came true in a Christ, or salvation. Secular Epiphany is a revelation, or an insight. It’s what some people refer to as "woke," but as something more than millennial culture: it’s a revelation to all, young and old. It was a popular Epiphany, wherein the human being did not doubt, but believed that he or she had an answer to a better life in this polity, and a better way to live in this world. Epiphany was the unity of SNCC, SCLC, etc, into one movement: for salvation would come legally.
Why did kids chose to march on their own, to be hosed down? Why did young boys and girls go on freedom rides in the south? Why did people believe that Civil Rights Act would be passed if a coalition of Midwestern Republicans and Southern Dixiecrats had been produced expressly in the Senate to benefit from Southern racism? Who knew that Senator Everett Dirksen, a initial member of this coalition, would be such a huge force in getting it passed? Salvation was seen and felt; epiphany had added itself to conspiracy.
Today, there is some prophecy, but no epiphany. What I see as a millennial is not what an older woman coming out of church in her white hat, as proper as a magnolia flower of her southern yesterday, who actually votes, sees. We agree that Michael Brown’s death is repulsive, but the way forward is not only up in the air, but in truth, up to the lady in the large white hat who votes with her pastor. I am more than likely a leftist, she a Christian Democrat. She believes that she is woke enough and I also do, for there has not yet been an epiphany of 60’s perception, that united us both. Some may also call it euphoria, what an epiphany will do to us all.
