MLK Day 2016.

My son and I were up early to make our way to Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 30th annual celebration of Dr. King. It was a beautiful morning.  The sunlight dazzled off of the white snow and the energy in the neighborhood felt particularly weightless. Folks warmly greeted one another with smiles and proud nods as we entered the Peter Jay Sharp Building and made our way to the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House for the morning’s festivities. Esteemed guests New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city’s First Lady Chirlane McCray, as well as keynote speaker Michael Eric Dyson were among those who attended what has become the city’s largest public celebration of King. Choirs sang, attendees prayed and a massive image of Dr. King loomed gloriously over the stage. It was one of the most befitting tributes that I had ever attended, and it meant so much to me that my son was there to bear witness.

Inspired by the uplifting series of events, at the close, he enthusiastically said, “I can’t wait until we do this again on Malcolm X’s birthday!” I stood frozen for a moment, before getting out a slippery, “Yyyyeah… I can’t wait either!”

Malcolm X is my personal hero and my favorite minister and activist. By the time I was born in the late 1970s, both Malcolm and Martin had been assassinated. But by the early 1980s, the nation had been galvanized into action in support of a King holiday. Stevie Wonder was a principle player using his 1980 Hotter Than July tour to build momentum while championing the legislation. Wonder’s hit song and rallying cry “Happy Birthday” remains one of the most quintessential examples of the symbiotic relationship between art and activism at work, and was profoundly instrumental in the process of getting the bill passed while exposing the bigoted politicians who refused to vote in favor (four of whom are still serving on the Senate today). The opening lyrics capture the climate of staunch opposition advocates had been facing since the legislation was introduced four days after King’s assassination.

“You know it doesn’t make much sense

There ought to be a law against

Anyone who takes offense

At a day in your celebration”

The bill was finally passed in 1983. The first King holiday was observed in 1986 (the same year Mrs. Coretta Scott King wrote the Senate Judiciary Committee requesting their rejection of President Regan’s nomination of Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship due to his openly racist stances.) As a kid growing up in the 80s, it was all so palpable to me. Pop culture was fully engaged in the recognition, and the year began with “King Holiday”, a “We Are the World” style anthem spearheaded by Dexter King and performed by the King Dream Chorus whose members included Whitney Houston, Run-DMC and New Edition. McDonald’s even launched a duo of commercials in honor of the newly established holiday. Recognition at last.

But in my house, Malcolm reigned. Perhaps, because I’m a New Yorker. My mother would often paint vivid pictures of the social, cultural and political environment in 1960s New York City, and I’d always get a distinct chill when she’d talk about gathering with friends to catch Malcolm preaching “down on 125th Street.” Growing up, I remember watching him on Gil Noble’s Like It Is and having a small painting of him in our apartment. The distinctiveness of Malcolm’s message resonated with me, as did his prose, phrasing, style and flair. His cool and collected debate style; his Harlem swag; his big, bright, flashing smile; and his tall and regal stature were magnetic. He had this ability to take on America with blunt precision and iron clad substance and to also admonish his people with simultaneous electrifying love, striking a brilliant balance that has never since been achieved. He was the chief progenitor of #Woke-ness.

The courage and consequences around being who Dr. Cornel West describes as “the greatest truth teller about the black condition that we’ve known in the 20th century” also captivated me. In Muhammad Ali’s autobiography, The Soul of a Butterfly, Ali described Malcolm as “a visionary, ahead of us all.” It was Malcolm’s foreknowledge and prodigious wisdom which made him such a force. He made you, whoever “you” was, deal with “you”. It was that very thing which Ali was not ready to reconcile as a young Muslim coming into the Nation of Islam as Malcolm was preparing his exit. However, he would later call his ultimate shunning of his greatest mentor “one of the mistakes that I regret most in my life.” For all of his heroism, I can only imagine how isolating and saddening it may have been for Malcolm to see so much more than many could.

“Malcolm X did something that was very rare in Black leadership,” says West in a 2015 special about Malcolm’s assassination. “He viewed white fears, insecurities and anxieties as an afterthought.  Most black leaders have to deal with white fears, insecurities and anxieties in order to get about.  Malcolm viewed white fears, insecurities and anxieties as tertiary.  What was at the center was Black suffering, what was at the center was a need for Black awakening. That pits him radically against the mainstream and white America.”

Malcolm and his importance as what my son would describe as “a change maker” had been the subject of many conversations between us, and he had subsequently deemed Malcolm just as worthy as Martin of a celebration which would bring out the city’s most meritorious leaders, thinkers, and performers. I couldn’t find it in my heart to tell him that as far as I was aware, there was no such celebration of this magnitude in New York City, let alone that there was no such national holiday for the man the great Ossie Davis referred to as “Our Shining Black Prince.”  I had to figure something out. Fast.

Flash back to November 18, 1992.

Just six years after the first MLK holiday was observed, Spike Lee set Hollywood afire with the release of his tour de force feature film, Malcolm X. It was an innovative biopic that captured the electricity and timelessness of Malcolm. Lee brilliantly branded Malcolm as an enduring and relatable figure, bringing the spirit of Malcolm to the language, music and style of the 90s generation. I was in high school when the movie was released and I can tell you first hand that there was nothing more dope than donning a black, snap-back baseball cap with the white X embroidered on the front with your baggy Cross Colours jeans. Alternative hip hop group Arrested Development wrote the rousing “Revolution” for the end credits as images of real-life Malcolm scrolled up the black backdrop, followed by cameos from Janet Jackson, Tracy Chapman, Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson.  Malcolm had become the revolutionary of the 90s, and seemed to have finally been given his rightful seat among the greatest American leaders in history. But now, exactly a quarter century later, it’s not enough. And my son’s statement made that clear to me.

When cultural critic Touré wrote a 2012 piece for TIME championing the need for a federal holiday for Malcolm, it spoke to my innermost reasoning.  “There are several black Americans who it could be argued should have a day — Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells, Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall and others,” he writes, “but I think we should seriously consider a national holiday celebrating the life of a man who indelibly changed America: Malcolm X.”

Throughout the essay, Touré brings clarity to the true essence of Malcolm while outlining what we would use the day to celebrate. “Malcolm was someone who saw himself as a global citizen, traveling and taking his critique of America to the rest of the world and treating America like the global citizen it is. This country is special in part because we are composed of people who relatively recently came from somewhere else and Malcolm fully embraced the diasporic nature of Americanness and thought of himself as a member of the world community.”

As we grapple with the ambush of a White House transparently steeped in white supremacy and resistance becomes a unifying refrain, Malcolm’s messages which exposed American hypocrisy and fake liberalism; his highly evolved and illuminating ideologies around restoration, reorientation, education, economic security and self-defense for the disenfranchised have never been more constitutive. And for that reason, a holiday to honor Malcolm seems more timely than ever before.

In trying to find a way to solve the Malcolm X holiday issue for my son, my thoughts raced. When we got home from that inspiring day at BAM, I walked to the calendar in semi-panic to see if Malcolm’s birthday would land on a weekend.

 Maybe he won’t notice that it’s not a national holiday if Malcolm’s birthday lands on the weekend!
But what if it lands on a weekday?
Then what?
Will you take the day off to celebrate?
But he will still know it wasn’t a national celebration because his friends will ask where he was once he returned to school.
Womp!
What are you going to do??

The truth is, I really didn’t want to tell him there was no holiday. I didn’t want him to equate the absence of a holiday with the idea that Malcolm’s legacy was somehow not as important as King’s. This wore on me for months until I finally decided I would have to relinquish those anxieties.

I decided that ultimately I couldn’t and shouldn’t shield him from the truth that there is not equal reverence or recognition of these two leaders. However, I also decided to clarify things by breaking down the real American view of King and the truth that the King holiday wasn’t granted without years and years of persistence against those in opposition. And that even then, it also took the American powers that be to reinvent King to a tolerable dreamer who they could stomach celebrating every year. Recognition at last, yes… and for a price. I brought sobering context to “the dream” (read my essay about that subject here). For me, this was the perfect way of leveling these two men whom I revered. One was not despised while the other was adored. They were both despised… and America created an oversimplified narrative of one which helped them not lose their shit at the thought of honoring. Two young men who, by the time they were nearing their deaths, were drawing closer to the other’s ideologies.

I had to trust that my teachings and exposures of Malcolm, and his own understanding of Malcolm as a humanitarian, a person with faith in the younger generations of all people, a gallant truth teller, and a man with extraordinary character of strength, would suffice. I decided to let Malcolm do in death as he had done so veraciously in his life – speak for himself.  The lack of federal observation led me to finding all kinds of events in the city and around the country that do celebrate his legacy. And my son, on his own, asked to do something he’d never asked to do in anyone else’s honor – to visit Malcolm’s resting place. We are planning a trip to do just that for Malcolm’s anniversary next year. We will read books and we will continue to talk about Malcolm’s legacy. We even came up with the idea to write a letter to Malcolm every year.

We attended The Schomburg Center For Research In Black Culture’s annual commemoration last Friday. Poets, musicians, and dancers performed pieces inspired by Malcolm’s quest for human rights, anti-colonialism and internationalism. Poet/playwright, activist and educator Sonia Sanchez presented a brilliant and emotional stream of consciousness. It was a tremendous gift that Malcolm was honored in such a beautiful and truthful way in Harlem, the community he loved and called home for the most influential years of his life.

In an ironic twist, at the close of the celebration, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio proclaimed May 19, 2017 Malcolm X Day. He said, “Malcolm was a true intellectual who had a vision for a better, more inclusive society where all people lived in harmony. And his powerful words have inspired people of all backgrounds and galvanized generations into action. His analysis is alive and well. Over the years [his is] a truth which has become clearer and clearer. This is why people who have such powerful ideas really don’t die.” My son witnessed this! It was a proud moment, and in some ways a bit of kismet, when I think about our walk home from BAM that January morning. I’m not lost on the fact that we have a long way to go toward federal holiday recognition, but this journey is teaching me a lot.

When Spike Lee emotionally recounted the initial financial challenges of getting Malcolm X made on an episode of Inside the Actors Studio, he said something that I had to remind myself of as a parent. “Malcolm always talked about self-reliance,” he said. “We as black people have all the resources we need to rely on ourselves.” I ultimately understand that I have to do what Malcolm would have wanted me to do, holiday be damned: take matters into my own hands by using my ingenuity to liberate the mind of my own child. By any means necessary.

Hey, Toure… maybe this is a start!

When I was growing up, I wasn’t allowed to eat “sugar cereals”. Before you think to yourself, “Big deal!” let me give you some context. I was born in the late 1970s, which placed me precisely at the onset of the 1980s cereal craze, when Smurf-Berry Crunch and Count Chocula were all the rage. Even Mr. T had a cereal, and I so wanted to be on “The team that knows how cool breakfast can be.”

While my friends were comparing FD&C Yellow #6-inspired tongue shades, my siblings and I were counting ingredients on the narrow side of cereal boxes — my mom had tolerance for only about five or six of them — trying to appeal to her sense of reason by desperately attempting to convince her why our cereal requests weren’t “too bad.” Our efforts thwarted, Shredded Wheat or Raisin Bran it was, with the occasional Rice Krispies for good measure [enter eye roll here]. The sweetness came from some stiff, raw, organic honey that was purchased at the Hipster Park Slope Food Coop (sorry, I couldn’t resist a good Brooklyn gentrification jab).

Needless to say, our cold cereal breakfast landscape was pretty flat. But my mom had a theory: we would make our own choices about food when we were grown. Until then, she felt it was her responsibility to give our bodies a good foundation; to expose and direct our palates toward healthier food in the hopes that we would soon inherently reach for those things, treating the bad/yummy stuff as an every-now-and-again treat that we, as a result of our acclimatized systems, wouldn’t be able to stomach on a regular basis anyhow.

It worked. Although we didn’t wait until we were adults (I snuck candy in school and my sister and I hid Apple Jacks in a locked trunk as teens . . . no, seriously), we all ultimately opted for a healthier dietary lifestyle, sprinkling our buds with the bad stuff only here and there. Mom’s mission: accomplished.

Now a parent too, I find myself using my mom’s winning formula in many areas of my childrearing — most specifically with music. When I was growing up, good music wasn’t hard to come by. I’m from a profoundly musical family, but even if that weren’t the case, it was the early ’80s and video hadn’t killed the radio star quite yet. I had a pretty good stockpile of quality music to reference simply because the music that was commercial at the time was actually good, Soul Train was on the air, and innovation was still the artistic bullseye.

Nowadays . . .

When Paul McCartney collaborated with Kanye West early last year, the Twitterverse lost its proverbial wits when fans of West ignorantly praised him for shining a light on “newcomer” McCartney. “Who is Paul Mcartney [sic]?” and “This Paul McCartney guy gonna be huge!” were just a couple of the eyebrow-raising, jaw-dropping blunders that spread across the internet like wildfire — sparking outrage, laughs, and SMH-like responses from people who understood how reckless, ridiculous, and sad it was that the twenty-one-time GRAMMY^® Award winner and two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee had slipped through the cracks of American music history.

I make a point to say American history because although the British Invasion forerunners hailed from across the pond, their foundation was indisputably influenced by and dependent on Black American artists like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Arthur Alexander, and the monster roll call of Motown masters. In the Kanye West generation of utter oblivion, this becomes a multi-layered concern, for if you don’t know the members of The Beatles, then the music they built their legacy upon — Black music — is pushed even further into the shadows, swallowed up by the abysm of crafted negligence and consequential indifference.

Ahmir Thompson aka Questlove took to Facebook soon after McCartneygate to vent his frustration on the matter, poignantly waving his finger at those of us raising young children today. “Music ain’t so magical that it will transcend and trickle down to the next generation,” he warned. “Music has to be passed down, not just left at the side of the road to be discovered.”

Well, yeah. It’s my daily mantra. The arts are as weaved into my family’s life as any of our daily routines, but the narrative is essential. Otherwise, not only will the music sit stranded on the side of the road, but the inextricable cultural context will park a seat right next to it. But it’s not solely for the purpose of my son not embarrassing me or himself on social media in ten years. The honorable act of ensuring the receipt of his cultural inheritance is a portal to self-discovery.

Sure, my son knows a Fetty Wop song or two (and as a native New Yorker born in the South Bronx at the dawn of hip hop, that does grate a bit), but more often he will quote a Michael Jackson lyric, casually sing several bars of Thelonious Monk’s intricate “Light Blue” while coloring, and look in the mirror after a haircut to gleefully report that he looks “just like Nat ‘King’ Cole.” Black culture is embedded in his everyday living, and that’s completely intentional. The key is, it’s not observed from the outside looking in through a nostalgic lens. It’s a living, breathing, circulation in the heart, mind, and soul.

It’s lessons in life: Listening to Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday” ode to MLK creates an opportunity to discuss the impetus of the song, activism, courage, and artist responsibility; watching Motown 25 teaches him about artistic lineage, the embodiment of community, torch-bearing and torch-passing; seeing a documentary on Clark Terry’s inspiring lifetime of generosity helped my son to be less hard on himself while shedding his instrument, and inspired a compassion for our elderly that is now entirely and uniquely his own.

The return on my investment is completely gratifying, entertaining, and mind-blowing. When I’m on the phone with a friend and we are trying to remember the year Marvin Gaye was born, both get it wrong, but my eavesdropping seven-year-old pops in to say, “No, it’s 1939, mama!” and then nonchalantly footnotes that he shares a birthday with Sam Cooke, it’s like every bit of Christmas rolled into one brilliant moment. As Baldwin said, “Know from whence you came.” My son’s ability to discuss his history or rattle off facts is amazing. But the various ways in which he envisions and places himself in the narrative is the real prize.

There is a “back in my day” reflex that attaches itself to every parent in some way, and how we embrace it, balance it, or resist it is a deeply personal decision and experience. Still, I think what my son and I have in common is an organic, innate interest in what came before us, with chronological sequence for chronological sequence’s sake being quite moot.

When I lived with my grandparents as a child, I’d often be left to entertain myself. A journalist at heart, I used a broken-down tape recorder that had the best sound to interview my grandparents, asking a ton of questions and making on-the-fly requests. On one of the cassettes, I’m heard asking my grandmother, born in 1920, about the songs her mother would sing to her. While she recalls a Tin Pan Alley tune or two, you can hear Michael Jackson faintly in the background singing “Man in the Mirror” from the 1988 film Moonwalker, which I had popped into the VCR moments earlier. Later that afternoon, I might take her portable suitcase record player downstairs to listen to Sam Cooke’s 1956 recording of “Touch the Hem of His Garment”.  After that, I might pop a cassette from De La Soul, Slick Rick, or Al B. Sure into the same rickety tape player. It was all mystical to me, and release dates were not only inconsequential, they weren’t something to contemplate in the first place.

I’m grateful that my son inherited the piece of my DNA which seeks out the beauty and mysteries of his culture. There is a consistent and rotating buffet of greatness that I present with a tremendous deal of conviction, and personally, there’s no way I can do it starting with the likes of the aforementioned Fetty Wop. It becomes that much more complex when at every turn my son hears, — against my will and despite my best efforts, — a barrage of violent and misogynistic sentiments bellowing over grossly uninspired music production, which sounds more and more like Freddy Krueger entrance cues than actual songs. Like those untainted cereals my mom served us, that buffet of quality I’m providing isn’t capsulized in a specific place and time, but rather sets a benchmark for my son as he navigates through the often rough music terrain of today, where he still finds himself victorious in plucking out the gems on his own. It’s a little tougher to do in 2016, but once the palate has been turned on to greatness… his greatness… the rest is history – — past and in the making.