Riding on Common Ground – Celebrating Black History Month

(from www.btco.net)

By Jeanné Isler

As I was riding the bus the other night in Washington, DC, several high school students from Duke Ellington School of the Arts boarded the bus. It was 9:00 pm, so I figured they were coming from a rehearsal at school.

Instead of stereotypical teenaged, public bus revelry, these kids offered a different kind of noise – song and poetry. The group split up; half sat in the back of the bus, half in the front. The kids in the back of the bus started talking – loudly – about a poetry performance they were practicing.

“You know me; my verse has to be about sex,” said one girl.

She proceeded to freestyle a graphic verse that made her friends laugh and tease her for being “nasty.” Meanwhile the kids on the front of the bus started quietly singing Negro spirituals a capella, in complex harmony. “Well,” I thought, “Isn’t this ironic.” I felt like a character in an independent film, brimming with symbolism. But what was the lesson to take from the situation?

While the poets had no shame about sharing their sexual fantasies with the whole bus, the kids in the front were taking pains not to sing too loudly, so as not to disturb the other passengers. Eventually the poets transitioned from erotica to other themes – social inequalities and emotional struggles. The tone, rhythm and content started to match the spirituals being sung in the front. It almost sounded intentional – lyrics about the current challenges that black people face in the United States layered over an intricate harmony, born of the pain black people suffered in the past. The impromptu concert seemed designed to display art forms that Americans have developed to tell our stories. When the singers started to worry they were making too much noise, I encouraged them to continue singing – to the chagrin of some of my fellow passengers. The poets weren’t so concerned with bothering others, and didn’t seem to need extra encouragement.

Then the bus stopped… and didn’t move again. An ambulance was blocking the road, and we sat and sat and sat. The kids kept performing; I kept enjoying the free concert. The other passengers were checking their smart phones to find alternative routes, determine how cold it was, and wondering if they would really have to walk home. Eventually their patience withered and everyone got off except me and another person. “I’m glad those kids got off,” the bus driver said. “That singing was getting on my nerves.” My independent film was over, and shockingly, I seemed to have been the only one who enjoyed being in it.

I realized later that I wanted to share this story, because the event captured what I have been feeling about Black History Month for several years now. The scenario also provided a glimpse on where common ground on race in the United States might be found. February, which is Black History Month in the United States, is crammed with events, stories, commemorations, memorials, and other attempts to shout – “Hey! Don’t forget that black people have contributed to this society. Positively, significantly, and permanently!” But sometimes we forget to draw the link between the past and the present. Not only are black people still making history in the United States, but the history of black people in this country informs the legacies – positive and negative – that all Americans share.

The symbolism of that thirty-minute bus ride astounded me; I couldn’t have written a better scene if I tried. For black people, sitting in the front of a bus was not only illegal but unimaginable in the Jim Crow South. To hear spirituals being sung from the front of a public bus by black youth is in itself an affront to historical injustice. But why were they ashamed? Didn’t they know that they were talented, that their singing was beautiful, and eerily symbolic? The kids who chose to sit in the back of the bus also affronted history. Not only do they have a choice in where to sit, but their freedom to say “lewd” things, in the same breath as acute observations about the state of our society, is also a victory. It means they have a voice, and they have the freedom and confidence to share it. These young people unintentionally displayed how powerful and beautiful the result can be when the voices of the past are layered with those of the present.

We are now in the middle of Black History Month. Many people choose to learn something new about black people by visiting a museum, reading a book, or watching a film. Some people do community service, attempting to help their neighbors and improve their communities. Still others celebrate black culture and experiences by creating or re-creating art. And some do nothing, just trying to move through winter as quickly as possible. As I reflect on my role at Search for Common Ground, I realize that the most important thing for me to do this year to celebrate Black History Month is to help others, and myself, to remember. Remember the legacies that inform the present; remember to look for and encourage history that is being made now; and remember that I am not an observer, but an actor in creating those legacies, as are all Americans. Black History Month is an opportunity to reflect and decide what we want our legacy to be, and how each of us can manifest that legacy throughout the year.

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Jeanné Isler is the Project Director of SFCG on Race, with Search USA. She has previously worked in community mediation and with organization such as America Speaks and Initiatives of Change on projects that include dialogues on race and trainings on cross-cultural communication skills.

Learn more about our work on race in the US, like the One America Project.