Booker T & Them: A Blues

1. Which Treats the New Century in the New Nation & a Couple of Movers & Shakers Who Shake & Move It

“. . . a people full of hope and aspiration and good cheer.” Mark Twain, “A Greeting from the 19th Century to the 20th Century” Changes. Speed. Land, sea, & air. Radio. Telegraph. Telephone. Phonographs. Music. Film. Emigration. Booker T. Washington. Hear the oompa oompa oompa oompa as the rich get richer, the poor need more, time & the Press & Church & State & the AWhich Treats the New Century in the New Nation & a Couple of Movers & Shakers Who Shake & Move It 1 ( 1 ) 01 Harris text.indd 1 12/13/11 11:25 AM ( 2 ) merican populace consumers , the Americanists , Forward March, as the band plays on. “Give the public what it wants,” is Edison’s Barnum-influenced creed. & still it is a tough time for negroes. Flicker: In the beginning see 1900. See deep darkness upon the face of the new century. See the spirit of Edison, Thomas A. move. Let there be light, Edison says, & there is . . . & the lights see that it is good that the light is still divided from the dark’s formless void. & the lights say let it continue to be: them under, & us above: & it is so. & it is good, & still it is a tough time for negroes. “I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun.” Thomas A for Alva Edison (1847–1931 ) tinkers, & is a man of business. “I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it.” See the “Wizard of Menlo Park” at the “electric Mecca.” Operating on 3 hours’ nightly sleep. “To invent you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” Invents the light bulb + the electric 01 Harris text.indd 2 12/13/11 11:25 AM ( 3 ) generator + the motion picture projector + the phonograph. “Of all my inventions, I liked the phonograph best. . . .” + one thousand 89 patent-worthy others. He dreams of devising a device to cross-circuit death’s dark & formless divide & converse with the late lamented lights extinguished from one’s life. 1900 Over There: the Sousa Band, the best (ho-hum) America has to offer , “The most famous band of all time,” their earlier scheduled trip postponed by Theodore Roosevelt’s set-to with the Spaniards over some bully business in Cuba, march, through France, Germany, England, Belgium, & Holland Oomphoomphoomph & boomboom -booming the gospel of American liberty & ratatattattat, while Sibelius, Toulouse-Lautrec, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Renoir, Elgar, Conrad, & Freud, with their shifts & changes, their sleights-ofhand , their cultural & intellectual charge advancing tricks of light, light a new way. Next year (sigh) Sousa’ll load up & do it all over again, two 3 four. Over Here: 1900 Lynchings: 106 are on the books. Census: Negroes @ a shade under 9 million = 11.6% of the population. Over There: Paris Expo World’s Fair. U.S. pavilion. Assembled works, signs, & symbols of self-improvement, by & about African Americans, & photographs curated by W.E.B. Du Bois & his intellectual Atlanta Historic Black College cronies of clean, Exposition des Negres d’Amerique, “picturing their life and Development,” Du Bois says, “without apology or gloss.” Over here: Tom E., home-schooled-whip-smart-killer-diller & ½ 01 Harris text.indd 3 12/13/11 11:25 AM ( 4 ) deaf, nose to the grindstone, hustler-bustler, says, “There’s a way to do it better—find it,” “I start where the last man left off.” Ear to the ground, like the conjurers of blackened-faced minstrelsy, or Buffalo Bill, or Barnum, listening for rumblings of the public’s cravings, while tinkering, with high-tech ways to beat the time of man & beast & call the tune of fun for, & profit from the common folk. “The thing with which I lose patience most is the clock. Its hands move too fast.”—T.A.E. Re Time, it is Booker T. Washington Time. Some chroniclers call black history from 1881 to 1915 “The Age of Booker T. Washington.” See Booker Taliaferro (originally Tagliaferro, “iron cutter” in Italian) Washington. Born 1856, in the 4th year of Franklin Pierce’s one-term presidency. The South-leaning New Englander acquires New Mexico & Arizona & lets pro & antislavers shed blood over land opening in the West. Alcoholism, separation, supporting the Confederacy, & cirrhosis follow—for Pierce, that is. 01 Harris text.indd 4 12/13/11 11:25 AM ( 5 ) Edison will, in time, make moving pictures (often restaged) of ’most anything in motion. Will make possible the performance without the presence (or bother) of the performer. He also produces Ten Pickaninnies, a documentary. A litter of...