Say It Loud. I'm Black and I'm Proud!
Elvert Xavier Barnes Photography . Writings . Ads
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In the spring of 1969 when my grandfather's health was failing my brother, Joe, and I, stayed mostly with our grandparents on St. Jeromes Neck Road. Our parents lived in Lexington Park. Dressing for school, in the mornings, we'd listened to the radio. There was one in the living/dining room and a second in the bathroom. Joe, usually, took his bath first and I followed.
It was when taking a morning bath at my grandparents, in the spring of 1969 that I would first hear James Brown's "Say It Loud. I'm Black and I'm Proud!" on the bathroom radio. Which, actually, had been recorded in August 1968, 4 months after Martin Luther King's 4 April 1968 assassination.
Not unlike King, Parks, Malcolm and Ali "Say It Loud! at first, was received with mixed-reactions. In fact, when in the fall of 1969 that SGA President Francine Dove and advsior Delores Fleming demanded that Great Mills High School and the St. Marry's County School system develop a black studies program protesters cited 'Say It Loud!" and the demand, as reversed racism.