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dippedanddripped · 5 years

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his past Sunday, Supreme shared a very special video with its 12.9 million IG followers. The clip features Buju Banton toasting over King Tubby’s dub version of the classic “Love I Can Feel” riddim. Capturing a spontaneous moment of celebration, the video was shot just after the legendary reggae artist wrapped up a Supreme photo shoot at his Gargamel Music headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica. The voice you hear in the background throwing out ad-libs—“Oh Gosh!” … “Really & truly!”—is my own. Something magical happened in that moment, as it often does on this magical island. Right place, right people, right time.

I’ve known Buju since 1993, before he started letting his dreadlocks grow. At the time I was a senior editor at a new magazine called VIBE and Buju was the biggest dancehall artist on the planet. Fresh off the success of his classic album Mr. Mention, Buju had so many #1 tunes in Jamaica that people were comparing him to Bob Marley. Descended from Jamaica’s Maroon freedom fighters, the youth born Mark Myrie was the youngest of 15 children raised in a humble abode on Salt Lane, a desolate stretch of road in the slums of western Kingston. As a teenager he began deejaying (Jamaican slang for rapping) on local sound systems, using the microphone to transform his life, speak truth to power, and give voice to the voiceless.

When we first met he’d recently signed a deal with a major American label that would result in two more landmark albums: Voice of Jamaica and Til Shiloh. I will never forget hearing Til Shiloh for the first time inside my office at VIBE. Buju brought a cassette and we closed the door and turned up the sounds. “I’m living while I’m living to the Father I will pray,” he sang on “Untold Stories,” one of the album’s most haunting tracks. “Only H.I.M. know how we get through every day…”

Oddly enough, there was no elaborate plan to make this historic collab happen. It started as a casual conversation with an old friend from VIBE days who recently joined the Supreme team. “Are you going to the Buju show?” I texted him, referring to Buju’s triumphant homecoming concert at Jamaica’s National Stadium.

Performing before a crowd of more than 30,000, Buju became the first artist to headline that prestigious arena since—you guessed it—Bob Marley. The emotionally charged stage show kicked off Buju’s ongoing Long Walk to Freedom Tour (named after Nelson Mandela’s autobiography), a well-deserved victory lap following nearly a decade behind bars. The artist had been set up by a paid government informant and convicted on questionable charges following not one but two problematic trials. Refusing a plea deal on principle, Mark Myrie did his time and finally returned home last December.

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After spending time reconnecting with his family, he released his first recordings—the blazing sociopolitical critique “Country For Sale” as well as “Holy Mountain” and “Holy Ground,” which open and close DJ Khaled’s Father of Asahd album—leaving no doubt that Buju’s lyrical sword is sharper than ever. Aside from a brief statement to Boomshots, the media platform I founded in the 2000s, Buju has not given any interviews. Rest assured that the Banton has nuff things to talk about when he is good and ready. In a way, this collab is part of that conversation.

The Supreme squad didn’t make it to that first show, but a seed was planted. Boomshots was soon setting up conference calls with Buju’s management team and the iconic skate brand’s creative director. Before we knew it the date was set. I flew down with Reshma B a reggae journalist and filmmaker who’s been a key Boomshots contributor, to meet up with Supreme’s production crew for the shoot. Reshma wrote the first major piece about Buju’s homecoming for Billboard and she’s had a great vibe with him since they met. Our main priority was to make sure Buju felt comfortable and that everything flowed smoothly. It was good to see Buju’s father at Gargamel HQ that day, as well as Buju’s sons Markeem (who helps with his dad’s social media), and Jahazeil (who’s following his father’s footsteps into the music business). They seemed more excited than anybody over what was about to happen.

Supreme couldn’t have asked for a greater Photo Tee to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Buju joins an eclectic pop culture pantheon that includes Raekwon, Kate Moss, and Kermit the Frog. Judging by the initial IG comments, public reaction has been divided between ecstatic jubilation and too-cool-for-school remarks like “What do these hypebeasts know about Buju?” My hope is that the collaboration will introduce a world-renowned, GRAMMY-winning artist’s music and message to a new generation.

Of course, this whole thing is about so much more than a T-shirt. “Forward Ever,” Buju wrote on one of the box logo tees with a Sharpie. “Stand Firm.” I was happy to see this handwritten inscription included on the final shirt design. Name-checking classic songs by Jacob Miller and Peter Tosh, Buju made clear that he is determined to use every available platform to advance his lifelong mission of upliftment. The Long Walk to Freedom continues.

#supreme #buju banton #collaborations #music blog #reggae #streetwear blog #fashion blog

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truthinhistorycharlestonsc-blog · 7 years

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Tour Charleston Today’s Historic Walking Tour, King Cotton, Slavery and the Planter Aristocracy is like so much of our American History, both a celebration and a tragedy. We think it important to note that many of the world’s greatest leaders have been a product of an extreme and hostile environment. Greatness can indeed come out of despair. Charleston has had many great examples of that who have long passed, including the Reverend Jenkins, United States Congressman Robert Smalls and National Vice President of the NAACP and leading suffragette Archibald Grimke. Charleston’s “Peculiar Institution” continues to inspire and influence today, Mr. Joseph McGill’s current and innovative Slave Dwelling Project is attacking and bringing awareness to the Institution of Slavery in a way that no one else ever has.

We have also had many great women who have directly descended from this institution that went on to impact this nation in ways that are unimaginable and I can think of no better example of that than Mrs. Septima Poinsett Clark.

The determination, courage and leadership that Mrs. Clark displayed, at the time she displayed it, is without compare. Mrs. Clark was born here in 1897 and died here, not that long ago in 1987.

Mrs. Clark was the daughter of a former Gullah slave Peter Poinsett, you may recognize the last name from our lovely Christmas plant the Poinsettia. It was Peter’s “Master” Joel Poinsett who that plant was named for.

For the first 67 years of Septima Clark’s life she knew only of the “Jim Crow” South.For many of you who have heard the term “Jim Crow” the first thing that comes to mind is this insulting black faced caricature. The effects of Jim Crow were far more reaching than degrading White Supremacist propaganda print ads. What or who exactly was Jim Crow?

Jim Crow was a set of laws created by and enforced by a White Supremacist establishment that called for complete racial segregation in the south. That definition is also exactly the definition for another set of laws that we are more familiar with known as Apartheid. If this were a math equation Jim Crow equals Apartheid, they are synonymous. Jim Crow is yet another example of a long line of southern euphemisms used to deflect blame and lessen the travesty of humanity that was afflicted on the Black American population.

SEPTIMA POINSETT CLARK ON EDUCATION Septima Poinsett Clark first and foremost was an educator. Mrs. Clark used every limited resource she had to educate herself and then to educate others. Her core belief was a simple yet empowering one and one that I most definitely choose to subscribe to “knowledge could empower marginalized groups in ways that legal equality could not”.

That was true when Mrs. Clark said it, it was true before she said it and it is most definitely true today as it will be for every tomorrow to come.

CITIZENSHIP SCHOOLS Mrs. Clark as an educator is most remembered for establishing all throughout the South, “Citizenship Schools” with the first one being right here on Charleston’s Johns Island.

What these schools did was teach rural black people how to read and write and teach them how to become teachers themselves. These schools, run often times in dilapidated rural one room prayer houses did much more than that. What Mrs. Clark’s Citizenship Schools did was teach Black Americans what their rights now were as United States citizens. Rights that amendments to our U.S. Constitution, did grant them, but rights that the local Southern Municipalities ensured they would have to fight extremely hard to ever get.

The program ultimately trained over 10,000 Citizenship School Teachers who then went on to lead citizenship schools throughout the South. The impact Clark’s work had was staggering. In 1958, 37 adults in the south were able to pass the voter registration literacy test as a result of the first sessions of her schools, by 1969 that number had grown to 700,000 largely thanks to Clark’s dedication and the dedication of those she influenced.

WHO SEPTIMA INFUENCED The list of who else Mrs. Clark worked with and influenced in the Civil Rights Movement is mind boggling and why we as Americans have not been taught about this woman is equally mind boggling. But because she was a woman she had to fight for her rights individually even within the male Christian dominated Civil Rights Movement.

Her work with the local Charleston NAACP began in 1920 and was the beginning of her activism and involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. Mrs. Clark would later be a student of both NAACP founder W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. Mr Washington was too, yet another great example of an African American leader who was born into slavery.

BOOKER T. & W.E.B. DU BOIS Mr W.E.B.. Du Bois and Mr. Booker T. Washington represented the leading voices of African Americans in this country in the earliest days of the Civil Rights Movement. It is interesting to note that while the two did share a common goal of expanding the rights of those former enslaved and Black America their ideas on how this should be done could not have been more different. Just as Malcolm X had his issues with Dr. King’s more passive approach so did W.E.B. Du Bois have with Booker T.

THURGOOD MARSHALL Mrs. Clark’s refusal to renounce her affiliation with our local chapter of the NAACP caused her to be fired from her teaching position by Charleston’s White Supremacist establishment in 1956. This was a position she proudly held for 40 years.

Mrs. Clark would later work side by side with Thurgood Marshall in a teacher’s pay equalization law suit in Columbia, our state’s capital. Thurgood Marshall, like Mrs. Clark was too a direct descendant of a slave and would later go on to victory in the famous 1954 Supreme Court case, Brown vs The Board of Education, which declared racial segregation of public schools to be unconstitutional.

This would not be the only time he would be before our United States Supreme Court. Thurgood won 29 out of 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court. President Lyndon Johnson would eventually appoint Mr. Marshall to join those White Justices that he argued before so many times, becoming the first Black United States Supreme Court Justice our nation has ever had.

ROSA PARKS Another, Mrs. Clark profoundly influenced in “The Movement” was a woman who you have heard of, a woman regarded as “The Mother of the Civil Right Movement”, Rosa Parks. The two met in 1955 at a Civil Rights Workshop that Mrs. Clark organized, by then Septima Clark was some 30 years entrenched in this battle for civil and equal rights for her fellow Black Americans.

Rosa Parks describes their first meeting “at that time I was very nervous and troubled by what was going on in Montgomery”. “But, then I had the chance to work with Septima. She was such a calm and dedicated person in the midst of all this danger. I thought if I could just catch some of her spirit! I wanted to have courage to accomplish the kinds of things she had been doing for years”.

After the numerous sessions Parks had with Clark she returned home to Montgomery saying “I had a firmness and self confidence I never had before”

Three months later she refused to give up her bus seat so a white person could sit down. This singular act is often credited with starting the “Modern Civil Rights Movement”.

Clark had that type of inspirational effect on those she taught and many of her students went on to have that type of effect on the rest of the world.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR Martin Luther King Jr. too, worked side by side with Septima Clark and often referred to her as “The Queen Mother or Grandmother of the Movement”. Our next and last stop will be a church in which Dr. King spoke in and on that visit to Charleston, Dr. King stayed at Mrs. Clark’s home.

Mrs. Clark was not only met with great opposition from the white establishment but even from within the Black Christian male dominated Civil Rights Movement, including Dr. King. Because she was a woman many of the leaders resented her especially Ralph Abernathy, Dr. King’s successor.

INEQUALITY WITHIN THE MOVEMENT They all wished she would just go away but because of the shear numbers of people she influenced and help bring into the Civil Rights Movement many of which were from the rural South, her standing and place alongside Dr. King and so many others could never and would never be denied.

Clark lamented later that women being treated unequally “was the greatest weakness of the Civil Right Movement”.

In her 1962 autobiography, “Echo In My Soul”, Clark remembered a time that she was with Dr. King in a packed meeting and Dr. King “dropping his hands by his side making no effort to resist while a white man beat him in his face again, and again and again as the audience looked on in horror”.

HER WORDS Septima Poinsett Clark, her father born a Gullah slave, should always be remembered for the incredible work and determination she displayed and for the countless she influenced. Mrs. Clark is my favorite Charleston example of greatness coming out of tragedy.

In 1975 in her specially printed Christmas card she famously gave to her friends every year she wrote “The greatest evil in our country is not racism but ignorance……I believe unconditionally in the ability of people to respond when they are told the truth. We need to be taught to study rather than to believe, to inquire rather than to affirm”.

We at Tour Charleston Today attempt every day to live up to Mrs. Clark’s words and she is one that inspires this walk. Thank you Mrs. Clark.

Where is our monument in Charleston celebrating this woman?

For more information and stories like this or if you want to go beyond print and experience these types of events for yourself in the magical setting that is Historic Charleston, South Carolina, “come and walk with us today” and you will never look at the Holy City in the same way ever again!!……..

#TruthInHistoryBecauseItMatters #TheTruthInHistoryInitiative

MRS. SEPTIMA POINSETT CLARK Tour Charleston Today's Historic Walking Tour, King Cotton, Slavery and the Planter Aristocracy is like so much of our American History, both a celebration and a tragedy.

#Booker T. Washington #Charleston South Carolina #Citizenship Schools #Civil Rights #Historic Charleston Walking Tours #Jim Crow #Martin Luther King Jr.#Racism #Rosa Parks #Slavery #The Truth In History Initiative #Truth In History #W.E.B. Du Bois #White Supremacy

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