In my email box last week…
Anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom August 28
“You are all invited to a commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the March on Washington at First Parish Watertown, 35 Church Street, on Monday, August 28th at 6:00pm. Following the reading of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech, local folk singer Jean Gauthier will lead us in singing songs sung at the march.
“Please join the First Parish Watertown Social Action Committee for a reading of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 's speech, "I Have a Dream," as we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington August 28. We will gather on the patio of the First Parish Watertown Memorial Garden at 6:00 PM Monday. After the reading we will take a few moments to discuss what the speech means for us today. We will end the program by singing songs of the Civil Rights Era, including "We Shall Overcome."
Monday August 28, 2023
About two dozen people spanning 8 decades gathered on the patio of the First Parish Watertown Memorial Garden at 6:00 PM. Using copies of the speech, we were invited to take turns reading passages from the iconic speech. As I suppose happened in 1968, the speech gained momentum and meaning paragraph by paragraph.
Living history. A woman in the audience was in that crowd at the mall in Washington. Mary talked about coming out of Union Station and being only100 feet away from MLK, Jr. on his way to the event at which he would deliver one of the most eloquently stirring speeches in American history.
After the reading, in the tradition of Friends Meetings, we were invited to say something about what the speech means for us today.
“His speech has no impact unless you and I do something to propel the cause of equality, inclusion, and a just society, When friend and world class sailor Rich Wilson rounded Cape Horn in 2009, he considered efforts to eliminate Apartheid and wrote 'Hope without action is of no use.' " True today more than ever.
Young black men and women put their lives on the line to sit at the "Whites Only" lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina in on February 1, 1960. On March 7, 1965, men and women were beaten by police as they attempted to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Montgomery on March 7, 1965. In hindsight, a page in history was turned by those ordinary men and women who felt the call to act.
Led by Joan Gautier, we sang “We Shall Overcome” to close the meeting...and have no idea how much courage it took to sit at those lunch counters in Selma in February 1960 and the "Bloody Sunday" march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge led by 25 year old John Lewis on March 7, 1965. Broadcast on TV, the brutality shocked a national audience.
We have a long way to go. Martin's speech is a call to action...action that starts with one person at a time. It's my turn.
Organizer Eileen Ryan (second from left) heads the Social Action Committee at the First Parish Watertown.
Joan Gauthier leads us in "We Shall Overcome".
Living history...seated woman in blue attire recalls attending MLK 1968 "I Have A Dream" speech in Washington.
POST SCRIPT 1
A little known fact about how How a ten cent comic book read by John Lewis fueled a movement,
A link to Rich Wilson's initiative that resulted in connecting to thousands of school children in a round the world solo ocean race.
Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
Little Richard Penniman: The Architect of Rock 'n Roll Part 1
PART 1
Little Richard Penniman (1932 - 2020)
“I am a creator, emancipator, inventor, the king, originator, a beauty, the Bronze Liberace, original Georgia peach, a human atom bomb, international treasure, living flame and a Southern child.” Last paragraph of this link.
It ain't bragging when you're telling the truth.The man was a fearless showman, "out" and loud and proud before it was acceptable to acknowledge. Unapologetic. Makeup. Wild attire. Pompadour atop his head as formidable as the prow of an ocean liner.
A genius, extrovert and trail blazer on the national stage, Richard Penniman was totally certain of his destiny and willed it to become reality. His white audience (me included) had no clue what the lyrics of his songs meant. Like me, they were swept up with the rocket fueled energy whether on the radio or on 12 inch black and white TVs in the 1950s. His falsetto that punctuated his songs nearly punctuated the speakers on the radio turned up to maximum volume.
In the early1950s, Elvis was a meteor. Little Richard was a super nova.
Rhythm 'n Blues began to surface on the charts. "Race music" was not a feature of the two AM stations in my home town. Hell, it wasn't even a thing people discussed...all we knew was that radio stations in Troy, NY whose signal barely reached Pittsfield, MA spoke to our budding teenage energy and yearnings in the midst of puberty.
I listened to the music in my best friend's living room. All we knew was Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley and The Comets, Buddy Holley and The Crickets. Then came Ray Charles, do wop music of the Penguins, Johnny Otis, The Coasters.
Tutti Frutti released in 1956 was the beginning of a Penniman tsunami.
His 1956 “Long Tall Sally, (the best-selling 45 in the in history of Specialty Records spotlighting Little Richard's distinctive boogie piano was recorded in New Orleans' famed J&M Studios of Cosimo Matassa).
Little Richard was the Big Bang that is still reverberating today.
September 03, 2023 in Commentaries, Music | Permalink | Comments (0)