History 176

    I recently discovered the newsletter of Kareem Abdul Jabbar, the famous basketball player, now retired.  I subscribed and found his take on various events in the news both well-written and most enjoyable.   I'm not surprised, as I've read some of his books and followed his on and off-the-court career for years.

    We go way back, Kareem and I.  I'm about 6 months older than he, and we shared some of the same classes in college at UCLA.    Most noteworthy were the two African-American history classes taught by Dr. Ron Yakaki in 1967 and 1968.  These were among the first Black history courses in the University of California system.  As history majors at UCLA, it was probably inevitable that our paths would cross in a classroom or two.  

    Occasionally I'd see Kareem on campus walking to class like any other student.  He was hard to miss.  I recall he often walked with a woman who may have been one of the cheerleaders. She was barely 5 feet tall.

    Years later, I realize how special those courses were.  Of course back then they were listed as History 176, History of the American Negro.  They must have been titled by some academic dean who hadn't read Malcolm X and didn't know,  as Malcolm said, "Negro attaches you to nothing. there is no place called Negroland."  Soon afterward, the preferred term became Black, with a capital B.

    Dr. Takaki's lectures were stimulating and very informative.  We were learning things that had been missing from our education for years.  Probably the day I recall most was the afternoon that Kareem stood up, all 7 feet 1 1/2 inches of him, and announced to the class that his name was no longer Lew Alcindor.  He had a copy of Life Magazine with him that featured a profile of him.  He explained to the class that though the article in Life referred to him as Lew Alcindor, it was wrong, his name was now Kareem Abdul Jabarr and he was now a Muslim.  That was not surprising as we all knew about the conversion of Muhammad Ali and other sports figures.  

    I've often wondered what happened to some of my classmates from those two history courses.  I became friendly with a young African American man named David Morris who, I think, was headed for the clergy, and a Latino man named Gerald Padilla, who was then a graduate student in history.  Gerald used to say that the chances of his marrying a Latina were greatly reduced because he was an intellectual and the statistics for Latina graduate students were virtually non-existent.  He worried about that.

    There was another classmate from those two courses that crossed my mind the other day.  Her name was Wallace Albertson.  She was the wife of Jack Albertson, the actor (Chico and the Man, Days of Wine and Roses), and had put together a little discussion group in their home in the Hollywood Hills.  It was an attempt to bring together a diverse group of people to rationally discuss key issues and learn from each other.  As I recall, some of the other participants in Dr. Takaki's classes and those discussions had entertainment industry connections.  There was Eddie Anderson Jr., the son of the famous Eddie Anderson who played Jack Benny's man Friday named Rochester.  

    UC Berkeley got most of the national attention in those days, but the UCLA campus was the site of a number of big anti-war demonstrations, the all-campus People's Park Strike, and the assassination of two Black Panther Party members.  

    Many history classes met in Haines Hall, the beautiful Italian Romanesque building that stood next to the UCLA landmark, the iconic Royce Hall.

    I recall I once stayed after class to ask Dr. Kakaki a question and Kareem and a couple of his friends were close by.  They were discussing something that had been the topic of the lecture that day and I soon joined in with them.  Craning my neck to look up at Kareem while I was addressing him was definitely memorable.  It's nice to reconnect with him again, in some small way.  

Come Out and Play

     Psychologists have long studied the nature of play in and for children.  Often, the bottom line here is imagination.  The essence of play for many children is the ability to imagine and then model the people and things we see.

    But Play, like most social institutions is changing...rapidly.  Kids don't play the way they used to, quite simply.  Something is lost and gained because of that.  Take three generations and sit them down and discuss the nature of play.  What and how did you play as a child and how does that differ from kids today and how did it differ from your parent's generation?

    The technology developed in the last few decades seems to be the driving factor in describing these differences.  Today everything is virtual as opposed to real.  Sure kids still play Monopoly and maybe even Clue but they rarely invent their own games.  

    I think my childhood, growing up in the 1950s was typical of the post-war generation.  My memories of play are vivid.  With the boys, it was always war, with lots of army gear and running through the neighborhood attacking and defending various areas. But with the many kids in my neighborhood, all being between 8 and 12 years old, we had elaborate games and scenarios that included boys and girls playing all day in summertime together.

We played Western Town, and  Office, the most.  Sure the sex roles were rigid, but that's what we knew.  We created a restaurant with a bar and called it the Candlelight Inn.  When my uncle gave my folks some retired bowling pins ( his job was refinishing bowling alley lanes) we grabbed the best-looking ones before they could be burned in the fireplace and played Bowling Alley using a basketball to knock over the pins in our driveway.

    When one of our neighbors who was an executive for the Carnation Company dumped a load of file folders containing invoices and correspondence in his trash, we salvaged the best-looking ones and played office.  I was the vice president of a firm called Rockwell and Rockwell.  The President was the oldest kid in our group.  I'm afraid the girls were secretaries and wives.  But that's what we knew.  That's what we saw on television, in our parent's lives, and in our society in general.  It was a true Mad Men universe.

    When my nieces' children were young, about 15 years ago,4 cousins used to go into their Great Grandma's closet and put on all her costume jewelry and play.  Invited to join them one day, I agreed to have them adorn me with all manner of costume jewelry.  According to them, I was the "King" even though I was wearing their Nana"s earrings, scarves, hats, and necklaces.  It all looked rather sparkly and therefore fit for a king.  I rejoiced that they were using their imagination much like I recall I did with my peers.  How often does that happen today?  I hope it is not lost, for I fear the consequences.  

    In the next few years, I expect there will be studies that answer some of these questions.  Already we, as a culture, seem to be concerned about the amount of outdoor time kids spend, and how they often are online for hours at a time.  All of us need to be concerned about the latter, I'm told.  

Sweet Home in the Delta

     With the release of the long-awaited work of the late blues scholar Mack McCormick, I decided to read what blues enthusiasts and ethnomusicologists were crowing about.  McCormick was reputed to be the best source on the subject of Robert Johnson, the Mississippi Delta bluesman that is generally regarded as the force for much of what later became Rhythm and Blues and Rock and Roll. 

    His archive was enormous if organized.  Filled with notes, photos, records, and clippings, and Mack was always going to write a book.  After his death, the entire bundle went to the Smithsonian. Fortunately, the book that was always promised came to light posthumously.  It did not disappoint. However, it is not the last word on Johnson, whose short life, (he died at 27) was always shrouded in myth and legend.  

    Slowly, the veil is lifting and the real Johnson is beginning to emerge after decades of misinformation and just plain nonsense.  One of Johnson's sisters released a book called Brother Robert, along with a wonderful work called Escaping the Delta, Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, by Elijah Wald the man emerges from the weight of the mythology like a beautiful butterfly from a cocoon. 

    Johnson was a master of the slide guitar style so typical of the Mississippi Delta. No, he did not go to the crossroads and sell his soul to the Devil.  But he did almost miraculously improve his playing skills in a short time.  He played in small Delta towns and ultimately went to larger venues in Chicago and New York.  He was a loner,  a rambler, and a hard-drinking survivor who loved the attention from the women who came to the Juke joints and country stores where he most often played.  

    Reading all these books has settled some things for me.  It has also given me new insights into who many of these sketchy figures really were.  For example,  many Delta blues figures, Robert Johnson included, loved and could play other kinds of music.  They were well aware of current trends and tastes but the record companies who grudgingly recorded them were only interested in one stereotypical genre.  The fact that Johnson liked and played tunes by Gene Autry or Fats Waller, comes as a huge surprise, but it need not.  These guys were real people who went to movies when they could, listened to the radio, and occasionally bought phonograph records.  They cared little about what was "authentic" and more about where and how they could make a living.