Podcasts about rap brown

Get ready for an exciting morning this Wednesday as the hilarious George Wallace joins our classroom! He’ll be sharing insights about his new TV show, *Clean Slate*, where he stars as an outspoken, old-school car wash owner thrilled to reconnect with his estranged child who is finally returning home to Alabama. But that’s not all! Before George takes the mic, the Faith Brothers will shed light on the critical support the Black church is providing to survivors of the Altadena/Pasadena wildfire. We’ll also hear from Belinda Parker Brown of Louisiana United International, who will update us on the ongoing trial of several white Louisiana State Troopers accused of killing a Black motorist and trying to cover it up. Plus, DC activist Dr. Kokoyi Patterson will discuss the current whereabouts of Imam Jamil Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Follow Fr Alex on X @alexdjfrost order his book here https://www.waterstones.com/book/our-daily-bread/father-alex-frost/alastair-campbell/9780008556556 Follow Arun Kundnani on X his website is here https://www.kundnani.org/ Arun Kundnani is a writer interested in race, Islamophobia, surveillance, political violence, and radicalism. A good introduction to his overall political perspective is this article, first published in the Guardian: There are two kinds of antiracism. Born in London, Kundnani moved to New York in 2010 and now lives in Philadelphia. The Guardian has described him as “one of Britain's best political writers.” Kundnani is the author of What is Antiracism? (Verso, 2023), The Muslims are Coming! (Verso, 2014) and The End of Tolerance (Pluto, 2007), which was selected as a New Statesman book of the year, and co-author of Homeland Security: Myths and Monsters (Common Notions, 2024). He has written for the Nation, the Guardian, the Washington Post, and The Intercept. A former editor of the journal Race & Class, he holds a PhD from London Metropolitan University and is an Associate of the Transnational Institute. Kundnani is currently working on a biography of Jamil Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, to be published by Doubleday. The project has been supported with a 2024 Whiting Creative Nonfiction grant, and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at New York Public Library.

#hrapbrown #JamilAlAmi #BlackPantherParty Podcast link Join us as we play 2 lectures by our brother and comrade Jamil Al Amin, formally known as. H.Rap Brown.

Join us for an engaging session with Griot Baba Lumumba, who will challenge us with insightful discussions. This time he will delve into the crucial topic of how ego often hinders Black Liberation. Before Baba Lumumba, DC activist Dr. Kokayi Patterson will provide updates on the ongoing efforts to free Imam Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, also known as H. Rap Brown. Additionally, Brother Obie will bring you the latest news straight from Cuba. How Do You Know When You’re in a Relationship With a Narcissist? Each Nation In The Caribbean Top Places To Travel Each Month Of 2025! The Big Show starts at 6 am ET, 5 am CT, 3 am PT, and 11 am BST Listen Live on WOL 95.9 FM & 1450 AM, woldcnews.com, the WOL DC NEWS app, WOLB 1010 AM or wolbbaltimore.com. Call 800 450 7876 to participate on The Carl Nelson Show! Tune in every morning to join the conversation and learn more about issues impacting our community. All programs are available for free on your favorite podcast platform. Follow the programs on Twitter & Instagram and watch your Black Ideas come to life!✊

H. Rap Brown once said "violence is as American as cherry pie." We've seen an increase in rhetoric around violence in American politics particularly from the far right. We've seen many incidents of escalated violence that include the Capitol riot on January 6th, 2021 and the recent assassination attempt of Donald Trump. In our latest, we dive into the question of political violence with American University professor, and author of "Nasty Politics," Thomas Zeitzoff (@zeitzoff). Bio// Thomas Zeitzoff is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University. He is author of “Nasty Politics,” and a forthcoming book on the radical environmental movement called “No Option But Sabotage: The Radical Environmental Movement and the Climate Crisis.” ---------------- Outro- "Green and Red Blues" by Moody Links// + Thomas' Website: https://www.zeitzoff.com/ Follow Green and Red// +G&R Linktree: ⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/greenandredpodcast⁠⁠⁠ +Our rad website: ⁠⁠⁠https://greenandredpodcast.org/⁠⁠⁠ + Join our Discord community (https://discord.gg/uvrdubcM) Support the Green and Red Podcast// +Become a Patron at https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast +Or make a one time donation here: ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/DonateGandR⁠⁠⁠ Our Networks// +We're part of the Labor Podcast Network: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.laborradionetwork.org/⁠⁠ +We're part of the Anti-Capitalist Podcast Network: linktr.ee/anticapitalistpodcastnetwork +Listen to us on WAMF (90.3 FM) in New Orleans (https://wamf.org/) This is a Green and Red Podcast (@PodcastGreenRed) production. Produced by Bob (@bobbuzzanco) and Scott (@sparki1969). Edited by Isaac. Music by Moody. Executive producer- Hep.

Clinical Psychologist Dr. Jerome E Fox joins us for an engaging and enlightening session. Dr. Fox, the author of the best-selling workbook "Addicted to White: The Oppressed in League with the Oppressor, A Shame-Based Alliance," will discuss the five core white values that many African Americans are addicted to, which inadvertently support white domination. Also, don't miss author Arun Kundnani talking about his book on Imam, Jamil Al-Amin AKA H. Rap Brown, along with DC activist Imamu Kwame Baucum, who will provide a sneak peek of Friday's anti-violence summit in Washington D.C. Text “DCnews” to 52140 For Local & Exclusive News Sent Directly To You! The Big Show starts at 6 am ET, 5 am CT, 3 am PT, and 11 am BST Listen Live on WOL 95.9 FM & 1450 AM, woldcnews.com, the WOL DC NEWS app, WOLB 1010 AM or wolbbaltimore.com. Call 800 450 7876 to participate on The Carl Nelson Show!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“Time for an Awakening” with Bro.Elliott & Bro. Richard, Sunday 7/21/2024 at 7:00 PM (EST) guest was  Journalist, Author, and former Research Fellow and scholar in residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the NY Public Library, Dr. Arun Kundnami. The discussion centered around the upcoming book ” I Rise In Fire”, about the life and struggle of our Elder and incarcerated Political Prisoner,  Jamil Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown) written by our guest, Dr. Arun Kundnami.

คอลัมน์ “สดแต่เช้า”ปีที่4(62) จะจัดการกับหนี้ฝ่ายวิญญาณ อย่างไรดี? “เพราะฉะนั้น พี่น้องทั้งหลาย เราเป็นหนี้ แต่ไม่ใช่เป็นหนี้ฝ่ายเนื้อหนัง ที่จะดำเนินชีวิตตามเนื้อหนัง เพราะว่าถ้าท่านดำเนินชีวิตตามเนื้อหนังแล้ว ท่านจะต้องตาย แต่ถ้าโดยทางพระวิญญาณ ท่านทำลายกิจการของร่างกาย ท่านก็จะดำรงชีวิตได้ เพราะว่าพระวิญญาณของพระเจ้าทรงนำใคร คนนั้นก็เป็นบุตรของพระเจ้า” ‭‭ ~โรม‬ ‭8‬:‭12‬-‭14‬ ‭THSV11‬‬ “Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” ‭‭ ~Romans‬ ‭8‬:‭12‬-‭13‬ ‭NIV‬‬ H. Rap Brown กล่าวว่า “เมื่อคุณเข้าใจหนี้ ของคุณต่อพระเจ้าเมื่อใด เมื่อนั้น คุณจะเข้าใจหนี้ ของคุณต่อสังคม!” (When you understand your obligations to God then you can understand your obligations to society.) คำว่า “หนี้ ”ในตอนนี้ มาจากคำภาษาอังกฤษว่า “obligation “ หมายความถึง “ภาระผูกพัน” และยังแปลได้อีกว่า “พันธะ, ความจำเป็น, ภาวะหน้าที่, หน้าที่, ข้อผูกพัน, เกณฑ์, หนี้, การบังคับ, บุญคุณ, ความรู้สึกเป็นหนี้บุญคุณ, สัญญา, พันธบัตร, ตั๋วเงิน, เงินชำระหนี้” อีกทั้งยังสามารถใช้คำว่า ”To be obligated “และ"To be obliged"ด้วย ในความหมายว่า “ตกอยู่ภายใต้ เงื่อนไข ขัอบังคับ มารยาท ศีลธรรม ที่จะต้องทำอะไรสักอย่าง หรือ ยกเว้นไม่ทำอะไรสักอย่าง “ พี่น้องที่รัก เราต้องเข้าใจก่อนว่า เราไม่มีหนี้ หน้าที่ หรือ พันธะผูกพันให้ต้องทำบาป เพราะเวลานี้ เราเป็นคนของพระเจ้าแล้ว เราจึงมีภาระผูกพันที่ต้องทำ หรือ ต้องไม่ทำ เฉพาะตามที่พระวิญญาณบริสุทธิ์ 1.ทรงนำ หรือ 2.ทรงบัญชา เรื่องนี้ อาจารย์ เปาโล เข้าใจดี เมื่อท่านและทีมเป็นพยานไว้ว่า “พระวิญญาณบริสุทธิ์ทรงไม่ให้กล่าวพระวจนะของพระเจ้าในแคว้นเอเชีย พวกท่านจึงไปทั่วแว่นแคว้นฟรีเจียกับกาลาเทีย เมื่อมาถึงเขตแดนแคว้นมิเซียแล้ว ก็พยายามจะเข้าไปยังแว่นแคว้นบิธีเนีย แต่พระวิญญาณของพระเยซูไม่โปรดให้ไป แล้วพวกท่านเดินทางผ่านแคว้นมิเซียมายังเมืองโตรอัส ในเวลากลางคืน เปาโลได้รับนิมิตเห็นชาวมาซิโดเนียคนหนึ่งยืนอ้อนวอนว่า “ขอมาช่วยเราในแคว้นมาซิโดเนียด้วย” เมื่อท่านเห็นนิมิตนั้นแล้ว เราจึงหาโอกาสไปยังแคว้นมาซิโดเนียทันที เพราะแน่ใจว่าพระเจ้าทรงเรียกเราไปประกาศข่าวประเสริฐกับชาวแคว้นนั้น” ‭‭ ~กิจการ‬ ‭16‬:‭6‬-‭10‬ ‭THSV11‬‬ คำว่า “obligation” นี้ จึงมีความหมายกว้างกว่าคำว่า “หนี้”หรือ “หนี้สิน”(debt)โดยทั่วๆไป เพราะหนี้สิน เป็นเรื่อง ของบางสิ่ง ซึ่งหลักๆก็คือเรื่องเงิน ที่เรามีพันธะหน้าที่ หรือ วาระกำหนดที่ต้องใช้คืน แต่ในพระธรรมโรม อาจารย์ เปาโล เตือนพวกเราถึง “หนี้“ที่ 1).ใหญ่กว่า และ 2).สำคัญกว่า หนี้เงินทอง นั่นคือเราเป็นหนี้ ที่จะต้องบอกข่าวประเสริฐของพระเยซูคริสต์แก่ทุกคน เพื่อคนทั้งปวงในโลกนี้ได้รับความรอด ดุจดังที่อาจารย์บอกไว้ตั้งแต่ต้นจดหมายว่า “ข้าพเจ้า 1.เป็นหนี้ทั้งพวกกรีกและชาติอื่นๆ ด้วย 2.เป็นหนี้ทั้งพวกนักปราชญ์และคนที่ไม่มีการศึกษาด้วย ฉะนั้นข้าพเจ้าจึงขวนขวายที่จะประกาศข่าวประเสริฐแก่พวกท่านที่อยู่ในกรุงโรมด้วย” ‭‭ ~โรม‬ ‭1‬:‭14‬-‭15‬ ‭THSV11‬‬ (“I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.”) ‭‭ ~Romans‬ ‭1‬:‭14‬-‭15‬ ‭NIV‬‬ วันนี้ พี่น้องที่รัก 1.ท่านได้รับข่าวประเสริฐ จากคนใกล้ตัวที่เชื่อในพระคริสต์ และได้รับความรอดมาแล้ว แล้วหรือไม่? 1).ถ้ายัง ~ก็ขอให้ท่านจงไปหาพวกเขา และขอให้เขาจ่ายหนี้แห่งข่าวดีนั้นแก่ท่านในทันทีได้เลย แต่ 2).ถ้าได้รับข่าวประเสริฐ หรือได้รับความรอดแล้ว ~ก็ขอให้ท่านจ่ายหนี้ที่ต้องจ่ายนี้ แก่ทั้ง 1.คนใกล้ตัว 2.คนรอบตัว และ 3.คนทั้งหลายที่ได้พบปะ แม้อยู่ไกลตัว ไปจนสุดปลายแผ่นดินโลก แล้ว วันนี้ คุณได้จ่าย“หนี้”นี้ ให้แก่ใครแล้วยัง? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ธงชัย ประดับชนานุรัตน์ 1มิถุนายน 2024 #YoutubeCJCONNECT #thongchaibsc #คริสตจักรแห่งความรัก #churchoflove #ShareTheLoveForward #ChurchOfJoy #คริสตจักรแห่งความสุข #NimitmaiChristianChurch #คริสตจักรนิมิตใหม่ #ฮักกัยประเทศไทย #อัลฟ่า #หนึ่งล้านความดี --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soulfood-podcast/message

Pod Crashing Episode 295 with Mosi Secret from the podcast Radical On March 16, 2000, two police officers were shot in one of Atlanta's oldest neighborhoods. One officer died and the other claimed the shooter was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the leader of a local mosque. Once known as H. Rap Brown, a charismatic leader of the Black Panther Party, Al-Amin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. But was Al-Amin truly guilty? Or was it payback for decades of work against the establishment? Episodes available here: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-radical-128726881

Pod Crashing Episode 295 with Mosi Secret from the podcast Radical On March 16, 2000, two police officers were shot in one of Atlanta's oldest neighborhoods. One officer died and the other claimed the shooter was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the leader of a local mosque. Once known as H. Rap Brown, a charismatic leader of the Black Panther Party, Al-Amin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. But was Al-Amin truly guilty? Or was it payback for decades of work against the establishment? Episodes available here: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-radical-128726881

On March 16, 2000, two police officers were shot in one of Atlanta's oldest neighborhoods. One officer died and the other claimed the shooter was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the leader of a local mosque. Once known as H. Rap Brown, a charismatic leader of the Black Power Movement, and an honorary officer in the Black Panther Party, Al-Amin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. But was Al-Amin truly guilty? Or was it payback for decades of work against the establishment?Listen to Radical on Apple Podcasts here, or wherever you get your podcasts. Radical is a production of Campside Media, Tenderfoot TV, and iHeart Podcasts. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 2000, a deputy was killed and another wounded in Atlanta's West End while trying to serve an arrest warrant. Authorities said the gunman was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the leader of the local mosque and caretaker of the predominantly Muslim neighborhood. In the years before becoming Imam Jamil he'd been known as H. Rap Brown, a leader in the 1960s Black Power Movement accused by the FBI of inciting violence. West End residents did not think their spiritual leader was behind the fatal shooting and wondered if his arrest was motivated less by the contradictory evidence and more by his past as an outspoken activist.From Campside Media, Tenderfoot TV and iHeartMedia comes “Radical.” Host Mosi Secret investigates the night of the shooting and attempts to find out who Iman Jamil really is. Is he truly a man of God? Is he a dangerous extremist? Or is the answer somewhere in the middle?OUR SPOILER-FREE REVIEWS OF "RADICAL" BEGIN IN THE FINAL 10 MINUTES OF THE EPISODE.In Crime of the Week: fowl language.  For exclusive podcasts and more, sign up at Patreon.Sign up for our newsletter at crimewriterson.com

Before converting to Islam, Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin was a Black Power activist named H. Rap Brown. Like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, he was targeted by COINTELPRO the FBI's counter intelligence program. In 2000, he was convicted of shooting two sheriff's deputies — one fatally — outside a mosque in Atlanta's West End. Tonight, the Ben and Matt join journalist Mosi Secret to learn more about his new podcast Radical, an exclusive deep dive into https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/radical/id1716418988They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The man who rose to fame –some would say infamy– as H. Rap Brown has a uniquely American story, inventing and reinventing himself over the course of decades. He turned himself from a teenage tough guy into a civil rights leader. He abandoned the philosophy of non-violence to become a Black Power pioneer. He underwent a jailhouse conversion to Islam, and became Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, a guiding force of an insular Black Muslim community. And then, almost 40 years after he stepped into the public consciousness, he was convicted of fatally shooting a cop.  But was Imam Jamil being punished for his actions, or his past? In today's episode of A Word, host Jason Johnson dives into the tangled history of the man once known as H. Rap Brown, and the murder case that landed him in jail for life. His guest is Mosi Secret, journalist and the host of the Radical podcast, which explores the case and the complicated search for justice. Guest: Mosi Secret, investigative journalist and host of the Radical podcast  Podcast production by Kristie Taiwo-Makanjuola You can skip all the ads in A Word by joining Slate Plus. Sign up now at slate.com/awordplus for $15 for your first three months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The man who rose to fame –some would say infamy– as H. Rap Brown has a uniquely American story, inventing and reinventing himself over the course of decades. He turned himself from a teenage tough guy into a civil rights leader. He abandoned the philosophy of non-violence to become a Black Power pioneer. He underwent a jailhouse conversion to Islam, and became Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, a guiding force of an insular Black Muslim community. And then, almost 40 years after he stepped into the public consciousness, he was convicted of fatally shooting a cop.  But was Imam Jamil being punished for his actions, or his past? In today's episode of A Word, host Jason Johnson dives into the tangled history of the man once known as H. Rap Brown, and the murder case that landed him in jail for life. His guest is Mosi Secret, journalist and the host of the Radical podcast, which explores the case and the complicated search for justice. Guest: Mosi Secret, investigative journalist and host of the Radical podcast  Podcast production by Kristie Taiwo-Makanjuola You can skip all the ads in A Word by joining Slate Plus. Sign up now at slate.com/awordplus for $15 for your first three months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The man who rose to fame –some would say infamy– as H. Rap Brown has a uniquely American story, inventing and reinventing himself over the course of decades. He turned himself from a teenage tough guy into a civil rights leader. He abandoned the philosophy of non-violence to become a Black Power pioneer. He underwent a jailhouse conversion to Islam, and became Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, a guiding force of an insular Black Muslim community. And then, almost 40 years after he stepped into the public consciousness, he was convicted of fatally shooting a cop.  But was Imam Jamil being punished for his actions, or his past? In today's episode of A Word, host Jason Johnson dives into the tangled history of the man once known as H. Rap Brown, and the murder case that landed him in jail for life. His guest is Mosi Secret, journalist and the host of the Radical podcast, which explores the case and the complicated search for justice. Guest: Mosi Secret, investigative journalist and host of the Radical podcast  Podcast production by Kristie Taiwo-Makanjuola You can skip all the ads in A Word by joining Slate Plus. Sign up now at slate.com/awordplus for $15 for your first three months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The man who rose to fame –some would say infamy– as H. Rap Brown has a uniquely American story, inventing and reinventing himself over the course of decades. He turned himself from a teenage tough guy into a civil rights leader. He abandoned the philosophy of non-violence to become a Black Power pioneer. He underwent a jailhouse conversion to Islam, and became Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, a guiding force of an insular Black Muslim community. And then, almost 40 years after he stepped into the public consciousness, he was convicted of fatally shooting a cop.  But was Imam Jamil being punished for his actions, or his past? In today's episode of A Word, host Jason Johnson dives into the tangled history of the man once known as H. Rap Brown, and the murder case that landed him in jail for life. His guest is Mosi Secret, journalist and the host of the Radical podcast, which explores the case and the complicated search for justice. Guest: Mosi Secret, investigative journalist and host of the Radical podcast  Podcast production by Kristie Taiwo-Makanjuola You can skip all the ads in A Word by joining Slate Plus. Sign up now at slate.com/awordplus for $15 for your first three months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On March 16, 2000, two police officers were shot in one of Atlanta's oldest neighborhoods. One officer died and the other claimed the shooter was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the leader of a local mosque. Once known as H. Rap Brown, a charismatic leader of the Black Panther Party, Al-Amin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. But was Al-Amin truly guilty? Or was it payback for decades of work against the establishment? Episodes available here: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-radical-128726881

Hi, Wrongfrul Conviction fans! Tenderfoot TV, iHeartPodcasts, and Campside Media have teamed up for a riveting podcast called Radical. Hosted by journalist Mosi Secret, Radical investigates an Atlanta crime story to assess if justice was truly served. Since you enjoyed our show, we think you'll like this podcast too. Don't just take our word for it, though. Check out this trailer and start listening on 12/5! Show Description: On March 16, 2000, two police officers were shot in one of Atlanta's oldest neighborhoods. One officer died and the other claimed the shooter was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the leader of a local mosque. Once known as H. Rap Brown, a charismatic leader of the Black Power Movement, and an honorary officer in the Black Panther Party, Al-Amin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. But was Al-Amin truly guilty? Or was it payback for decades of work against the establishment? Listen to Radical on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, listeners! Campside Media has teamed up with Tenderfoot TV and iHeartPodcasts for a riveting podcast called Radical. Hosted by journalist Mosi Secret, Radical investigates an Atlanta crime story to assess if justice was truly served. Since you enjoyed our show, we think you'll like this podcast too. Don't just take our word for it, though. Check out this trailer and listen now! On March 16, 2000, two police officers were shot in one of Atlanta's oldest neighborhoods. One officer died and the other claimed the shooter was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the leader of a local mosque. Once known as H. Rap Brown, a charismatic leader of the Black Power Movement, and an honorary officer in the Black Panther Party, Al-Amin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. But was Al-Amin truly guilty? Or was it payback for decades of work against the establishment? Listen where you get your podcasts now.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, listeners! Tenderfoot TV, iHeartPodcasts, and Campside Media have teamed up for a riveting podcast called Radical. Hosted by journalist Mosi Secret, Radical investigates an Atlanta crime story to assess if justice was truly served. Since you enjoyed our show, we think you'll like this podcast too. Don't just take our word for it, though. Check out this trailer and start listening on 12/5! Show Description: On March 16, 2000, two police officers were shot in one of Atlanta's oldest neighborhoods. One officer died and the other claimed the shooter was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the leader of a local mosque. Once known as H. Rap Brown, a charismatic leader of the Black Power Movement, and an honorary officer in the Black Panther Party, Al-Amin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. But was Al-Amin truly guilty? Or was it payback for decades of work against the establishment? Listen to Radical on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts!They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, 85 South Show fans! Tenderfoot TV, iHeartPodcasts, and Campside Media have teamed up for a riveting podcast called Radical. Hosted by journalist Mosi Secret, Radical investigates an Atlanta crime story to assess if justice was truly served. Since you enjoyed our show, we think you'll like this podcast too. Don't just take our word for it, though. Check out this trailer and start listening on 12/5! Show Description: On March 16, 2000, two police officers were shot in one of Atlanta's oldest neighborhoods. One officer died and the other claimed the shooter was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the leader of a local mosque. Once known as H. Rap Brown, a charismatic leader of the Black Power Movement, and an honorary officer in the Black Panther Party, Al-Amin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. But was Al-Amin truly guilty? Or was it payback for decades of work against the establishment? Listen to Radical on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, listeners! Tenderfoot TV, iHeartPodcasts, and Campside Media have teamed up for a riveting podcast called Radical. Hosted by journalist Mosi Secret, Radical investigates an Atlanta crime story to assess if justice was truly served. Since you enjoyed our show, we think you'll like this podcast too. Don't just take our word for it, though. Check out this trailer and start listening on 12/5! Show Description: On March 16, 2000, two police officers were shot in one of Atlanta's oldest neighborhoods. One officer died and the other claimed the shooter was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the leader of a local mosque. Once known as H. Rap Brown, a charismatic leader of the Black Power Movement, and an honorary officer in the Black Panther Party, Al-Amin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. But was Al-Amin truly guilty? Or was it payback for decades of work against the establishment? Listen to Radical on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, Missionary fans! Tenderfoot TV, iHeartPodcasts, and Campside Media have teamed up for a riveting podcast called Radical. Hosted by journalist Mosi Secret, Radical investigates an Atlanta crime story to assess if justice was truly served. Since you enjoyed our show, we think you'll like this podcast too. Don't just take our word for it, though. Check out this trailer and start listening on 12/5! Show Description: On March 16, 2000, two police officers were shot in one of Atlanta's oldest neighborhoods. One officer died and the other claimed the shooter was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the leader of a local mosque. Once known as H. Rap Brown, a charismatic leader of the Black Power Movement, and an honorary officer in the Black Panther Party, Al-Amin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. But was Al-Amin truly guilty? Or was it payback for decades of work against the establishment? Listen to Radical on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, Operation Midnight Climax fans! Tenderfoot TV, iHeartPodcasts, and Campside Media have teamed up for a riveting podcast called Radical. Hosted by journalist Mosi Secret, Radical investigates an Atlanta crime story to assess if justice was truly served. Since you enjoyed our show, we think you'll like this podcast too. Don't just take our word for it, though. Check out this trailer and start listening on 12/5! Show Description: On March 16, 2000, two police officers were shot in one of Atlanta's oldest neighborhoods. One officer died and the other claimed the shooter was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the leader of a local mosque. Once known as H. Rap Brown, a charismatic leader of the Black Power Movement, and an honorary officer in the Black Panther Party, Al-Amin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. But was Al-Amin truly guilty? Or was it payback for decades of work against the establishment? Listen to Radical on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, Deliver Us from Ervil fans! Tenderfoot TV, iHeartPodcasts, and Campside Media have teamed up for a riveting podcast called Radical. Hosted by journalist Mosi Secret, Radical investigates an Atlanta crime story to assess if justice was truly served. Since you enjoyed our show, we think you'll like this podcast too. Don't just take our word for it, though. Check out this trailer and start listening on 12/5! Show Description: On March 16, 2000, two police officers were shot in one of Atlanta's oldest neighborhoods. One officer died and the other claimed the shooter was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the leader of a local mosque. Once known as H. Rap Brown, a charismatic leader of the Black Power Movement, and an honorary officer in the Black Panther Party, Al-Amin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. But was Al-Amin truly guilty? Or was it payback for decades of work against the establishment? Listen to Radical on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, Atlanta Monster fans! Tenderfoot TV, iHeartPodcasts, and Campside Media have teamed up for a riveting podcast called Radical. Hosted by journalist Mosi Secret, Radical investigates an Atlanta crime story to assess if justice was truly served. Since you enjoyed Atlanta Monster, we think you'll like this podcast too. Don't just take our word for it, though. Check out this trailer and start listening on 12/5! Show Description: On March 16, 2000, two police officers were shot in one of Atlanta's oldest neighborhoods. One officer died and the other claimed the shooter was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the leader of a local mosque. Once known as H. Rap Brown, a charismatic leader of the Black Power Movement, and an honorary officer in the Black Panther Party, Al-Amin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. But was Al-Amin truly guilty? Or was it payback for decades of work against the establishment? Listen to Radical on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, DC Sniper fans! Tenderfoot TV, iHeartPodcasts, and Campside Media have teamed up for a riveting podcast called Radical. Hosted by journalist Mosi Secret, Radical investigates an Atlanta crime story to assess if justice was truly served. Since you enjoyed DC Sniper, we think you'll like this podcast too. Don't just take our word for it, though. Check out this trailer and start listening on 12/5! Show Description: On March 16, 2000, two police officers were shot in one of Atlanta's oldest neighborhoods. One officer died and the other claimed the shooter was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the leader of a local mosque. Once known as H. Rap Brown, a charismatic leader of the Black Power Movement, and an honorary officer in the Black Panther Party, Al-Amin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. But was Al-Amin truly guilty? Or was it payback for decades of work against the establishment? Listen to Radical on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 168 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Say a Little Prayer”, and the interaction of the sacred, political, and secular in Aretha Franklin's life and work. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-five-minute bonus episode available, on "Abraham, Martin, and John" by Dion. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Aretha Franklin. Even splitting it into multiple parts would have required six or seven mixes. My main biographical source for Aretha Franklin is Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz, and this is where most of the quotes from musicians come from. Information on C.L. Franklin came from Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America by Nick Salvatore. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom is possibly less essential, but still definitely worth reading. Information about Martin Luther King came from Martin Luther King: A Religious Life by Paul Harvey. I also referred to Burt Bacharach's autobiography Anyone Who Had a Heart, Carole King's autobiography A Natural Woman, and Soul Serenade: King Curtis and his Immortal Saxophone by Timothy R. Hoover. For information about Amazing Grace I also used Aaron Cohen's 33 1/3 book on the album. The film of the concerts is also definitely worth watching. And the Aretha Now album is available in this five-album box set for a ludicrously cheap price. But it's actually worth getting this nineteen-CD set with her first sixteen Atlantic albums and a couple of bonus discs of demos and outtakes. There's barely a duff track in the whole nineteen discs. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick warning before I begin. This episode contains some moderate references to domestic abuse, death by cancer, racial violence, police violence, and political assassination. Anyone who might be upset by those subjects might want to check the transcript rather than listening to the episode. Also, as with the previous episode on Aretha Franklin, this episode presents something of a problem. Like many people in this narrative, Franklin's career was affected by personal troubles, which shaped many of her decisions. But where most of the subjects of the podcast have chosen to live their lives in public and share intimate details of every aspect of their personal lives, Franklin was an extremely private person, who chose to share only carefully sanitised versions of her life, and tried as far as possible to keep things to herself. This of course presents a dilemma for anyone who wants to tell her story -- because even though the information is out there in biographies, and even though she's dead, it's not right to disrespect someone's wish for a private life. I have therefore tried, wherever possible, to stay away from talk of her personal life except where it *absolutely* affects the work, or where other people involved have publicly shared their own stories, and even there I've tried to keep it to a minimum. This will occasionally lead to me saying less about some topics than other people might, even though the information is easily findable, because I don't think we have an absolute right to invade someone else's privacy for entertainment. When we left Aretha Franklin, she had just finally broken through into the mainstream after a decade of performing, with a version of Otis Redding's song "Respect" on which she had been backed by her sisters, Erma and Carolyn. "Respect", in Franklin's interpretation, had been turned from a rather chauvinist song about a man demanding respect from his woman into an anthem of feminism, of Black power, and of a new political awakening. For white people of a certain generation, the summer of 1967 was "the summer of love". For many Black people, it was rather different. There's a quote that goes around (I've seen it credited in reliable sources to both Ebony and Jet magazine, but not ever seen an issue cited, so I can't say for sure where it came from) saying that the summer of 67 was the summer of "'retha, Rap, and revolt", referring to the trifecta of Aretha Franklin, the Black power leader Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (who was at the time known as H. Rap Brown, a name he later disclaimed) and the rioting that broke out in several major cities, particularly in Detroit: [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "The Motor City is Burning"] The mid sixties were, in many ways, the high point not of Black rights in the US -- for the most part there has been a lot of progress in civil rights in the intervening decades, though not without inevitable setbacks and attacks from the far right, and as movements like the Black Lives Matter movement have shown there is still a long way to go -- but of *hope* for Black rights. The moral force of the arguments made by the civil rights movement were starting to cause real change to happen for Black people in the US for the first time since the Reconstruction nearly a century before. But those changes weren't happening fast enough, and as we heard in the episode on "I Was Made to Love Her", there was not only a growing unrest among Black people, but a recognition that it was actually possible for things to change. A combination of hope and frustration can be a powerful catalyst, and whether Franklin wanted it or not, she was at the centre of things, both because of her newfound prominence as a star with a hit single that couldn't be interpreted as anything other than a political statement and because of her intimate family connections to the struggle. Even the most racist of white people these days pays lip service to the memory of Dr Martin Luther King, and when they do they quote just a handful of sentences from one speech King made in 1963, as if that sums up the full theological and political philosophy of that most complex of men. And as we discussed the last time we looked at Aretha Franklin, King gave versions of that speech, the "I Have a Dream" speech, twice. The most famous version was at the March on Washington, but the first time was a few weeks earlier, at what was at the time the largest civil rights demonstration in American history, in Detroit. Aretha's family connection to that event is made clear by the very opening of King's speech: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Original 'I Have a Dream' Speech"] So as summer 1967 got into swing, and white rock music was going to San Francisco to wear flowers in its hair, Aretha Franklin was at the centre of a very different kind of youth revolution. Franklin's second Atlantic album, Aretha Arrives, brought in some new personnel to the team that had recorded Aretha's first album for Atlantic. Along with the core Muscle Shoals players Jimmy Johnson, Spooner Oldham, Tommy Cogbill and Roger Hawkins, and a horn section led by King Curtis, Wexler and Dowd also brought in guitarist Joe South. South was a white session player from Georgia, who had had a few minor hits himself in the fifties -- he'd got his start recording a cover version of "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor", the Big Bopper's B-side to "Chantilly Lace": [Excerpt: Joe South, "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor"] He'd also written a few songs that had been recorded by people like Gene Vincent, but he'd mostly become a session player. He'd become a favourite musician of Bob Johnston's, and so he'd played guitar on Simon and Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme albums: [Excerpt: Simon and Garfunkel, "I am a Rock"] and bass on Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, with Al Kooper particularly praising his playing on "Visions of Johanna": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Visions of Johanna"] South would be the principal guitarist on this and Franklin's next album, before his own career took off in 1968 with "Games People Play": [Excerpt: Joe South, "Games People Play"] At this point, he had already written the other song he's best known for, "Hush", which later became a hit for Deep Purple: [Excerpt: Deep Purple, "Hush"] But he wasn't very well known, and was surprised to get the call for the Aretha Franklin session, especially because, as he put it "I was white and I was about to play behind the blackest genius since Ray Charles" But Jerry Wexler had told him that Franklin didn't care about the race of the musicians she played with, and South settled in as soon as Franklin smiled at him when he played a good guitar lick on her version of the blues standard "Going Down Slow": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Going Down Slow"] That was one of the few times Franklin smiled in those sessions though. Becoming an overnight success after years of trying and failing to make a name for herself had been a disorienting experience, and on top of that things weren't going well in her personal life. Her marriage to her manager Ted White was falling apart, and she was performing erratically thanks to the stress. In particular, at a gig in Georgia she had fallen off the stage and broken her arm. She soon returned to performing, but it meant she had problems with her right arm during the recording of the album, and didn't play as much piano as she would have previously -- on some of the faster songs she played only with her left hand. But the recording sessions had to go on, whether or not Aretha was physically capable of playing piano. As we discussed in the episode on Otis Redding, the owners of Atlantic Records were busily negotiating its sale to Warner Brothers in mid-1967. As Wexler said later “Everything in me said, Keep rolling, keep recording, keep the hits coming. She was red hot and I had no reason to believe that the streak wouldn't continue. I knew that it would be foolish—and even irresponsible—not to strike when the iron was hot. I also had personal motivation. A Wall Street financier had agreed to see what we could get for Atlantic Records. While Ahmet and Neshui had not agreed on a selling price, they had gone along with my plan to let the financier test our worth on the open market. I was always eager to pump out hits, but at this moment I was on overdrive. In this instance, I had a good partner in Ted White, who felt the same. He wanted as much product out there as possible." In truth, you can tell from Aretha Arrives that it's a record that was being thought of as "product" rather than one being made out of any kind of artistic impulse. It's a fine album -- in her ten-album run from I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You through Amazing Grace there's not a bad album and barely a bad track -- but there's a lack of focus. There are only two originals on the album, neither of them written by Franklin herself, and the rest is an incoherent set of songs that show the tension between Franklin and her producers at Atlantic. Several songs are the kind of standards that Franklin had recorded for her old label Columbia, things like "You Are My Sunshine", or her version of "That's Life", which had been a hit for Frank Sinatra the previous year: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "That's Life"] But mixed in with that are songs that are clearly the choice of Wexler. As we've discussed previously in episodes on Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, at this point Atlantic had the idea that it was possible for soul artists to cross over into the white market by doing cover versions of white rock hits -- and indeed they'd had some success with that tactic. So while Franklin was suggesting Sinatra covers, Atlantic's hand is visible in the choices of songs like "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "96 Tears": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "96 Tears'] Of the two originals on the album, one, the hit single "Baby I Love You" was written by Ronnie Shannon, the Detroit songwriter who had previously written "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Baby I Love You"] As with the previous album, and several other songs on this one, that had backing vocals by Aretha's sisters, Erma and Carolyn. But the other original on the album, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)", didn't, even though it was written by Carolyn: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)"] To explain why, let's take a little detour and look at the co-writer of the song this episode is about, though we're not going to get to that for a little while yet. We've not talked much about Burt Bacharach in this series so far, but he's one of those figures who has come up a few times in the periphery and will come up again, so here is as good a time as any to discuss him, and bring everyone up to speed about his career up to 1967. Bacharach was one of the more privileged figures in the sixties pop music field. His father, Bert Bacharach (pronounced the same as his son, but spelled with an e rather than a u) had been a famous newspaper columnist, and his parents had bought him a Steinway grand piano to practice on -- they pushed him to learn the piano even though as a kid he wasn't interested in finger exercises and Debussy. What he was interested in, though, was jazz, and as a teenager he would often go into Manhattan and use a fake ID to see people like Dizzy Gillespie, who he idolised, and in his autobiography he talks rapturously of seeing Gillespie playing his bent trumpet -- he once saw Gillespie standing on a street corner with a pet monkey on his shoulder, and went home and tried to persuade his parents to buy him a monkey too. In particular, he talks about seeing the Count Basie band with Sonny Payne on drums as a teenager: [Excerpt: Count Basie, "Kid From Red Bank"] He saw them at Birdland, the club owned by Morris Levy where they would regularly play, and said of the performance "they were just so incredibly exciting that all of a sudden, I got into music in a way I never had before. What I heard in those clubs really turned my head around— it was like a big breath of fresh air when somebody throws open a window. That was when I knew for the first time how much I loved music and wanted to be connected to it in some way." Of course, there's a rather major problem with this story, as there is so often with narratives that musicians tell about their early career. In this case, Birdland didn't open until 1949, when Bacharach was twenty-one and stationed in Germany for his military service, while Sonny Payne didn't join Basie's band until 1954, when Bacharach had been a professional musician for many years. Also Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet bell only got bent on January 6, 1953. But presumably while Bacharach was conflating several memories, he did have some experience in some New York jazz club that led him to want to become a musician. Certainly there were enough great jazz musicians playing the clubs in those days. He went to McGill University to study music for two years, then went to study with Darius Milhaud, a hugely respected modernist composer. Milhaud was also one of the most important music teachers of the time -- among others he'd taught Stockhausen and Xenakkis, and would go on to teach Philip Glass and Steve Reich. This suited Bacharach, who by this point was a big fan of Schoenberg and Webern, and was trying to write atonal, difficult music. But Milhaud had also taught Dave Brubeck, and when Bacharach rather shamefacedly presented him with a composition which had an actual tune, he told Bacharach "Never be ashamed of writing a tune you can whistle". He dropped out of university and, like most men of his generation, had to serve in the armed forces. When he got out of the army, he continued his musical studies, still trying to learn to be an avant-garde composer, this time with Bohuslav Martinů and later with Henry Cowell, the experimental composer we've heard about quite a bit in previous episodes: [Excerpt: Henry Cowell, "Aeolian Harp and Sinister Resonance"] He was still listening to a lot of avant garde music, and would continue doing so throughout the fifties, going to see people like John Cage. But he spent much of that time working in music that was very different from the avant-garde. He got a job as the band leader for the crooner Vic Damone: [Excerpt: Vic Damone. "Ebb Tide"] He also played for the vocal group the Ames Brothers. He decided while he was working with the Ames Brothers that he could write better material than they were getting from their publishers, and that it would be better to have a job where he didn't have to travel, so he got himself a job as a staff songwriter in the Brill Building. He wrote a string of flops and nearly hits, starting with "Keep Me In Mind" for Patti Page: [Excerpt: Patti Page, "Keep Me In Mind"] From early in his career he worked with the lyricist Hal David, and the two of them together wrote two big hits, "Magic Moments" for Perry Como: [Excerpt: Perry Como, "Magic Moments"] and "The Story of My Life" for Marty Robbins: [Excerpt: "The Story of My Life"] But at that point Bacharach was still also writing with other writers, notably Hal David's brother Mack, with whom he wrote the theme tune to the film The Blob, as performed by The Five Blobs: [Excerpt: The Five Blobs, "The Blob"] But Bacharach's songwriting career wasn't taking off, and he got himself a job as musical director for Marlene Dietrich -- a job he kept even after it did start to take off.  Part of the problem was that he intuitively wrote music that didn't quite fit into standard structures -- there would be odd bars of unusual time signatures thrown in, unusual harmonies, and structural irregularities -- but then he'd take feedback from publishers and producers who would tell him the song could only be recorded if he straightened it out. He said later "The truth is that I ruined a lot of songs by not believing in myself enough to tell these guys they were wrong." He started writing songs for Scepter Records, usually with Hal David, but also with Bob Hilliard and Mack David, and started having R&B hits. One song he wrote with Mack David, "I'll Cherish You", had the lyrics rewritten by Luther Dixon to make them more harsh-sounding for a Shirelles single -- but the single was otherwise just Bacharach's demo with the vocals replaced, and you can even hear his voice briefly at the beginning: [Excerpt: The Shirelles, "Baby, It's You"] But he'd also started becoming interested in the production side of records more generally. He'd iced that some producers, when recording his songs, would change the sound for the worse -- he thought Gene McDaniels' version of "Tower of Strength", for example, was too fast. But on the other hand, other producers got a better sound than he'd heard in his head. He and Hilliard had written a song called "Please Stay", which they'd given to Leiber and Stoller to record with the Drifters, and he thought that their arrangement of the song was much better than the one he'd originally thought up: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Please Stay"] He asked Leiber and Stoller if he could attend all their New York sessions and learn about record production from them. He started doing so, and eventually they started asking him to assist them on records. He and Hilliard wrote a song called "Mexican Divorce" for the Drifters, which Leiber and Stoller were going to produce, and as he put it "they were so busy running Redbird Records that they asked me to rehearse the background singers for them in my office." [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Mexican Divorce"] The backing singers who had been brought in to augment the Drifters on that record were a group of vocalists who had started out as members of a gospel group called the Drinkard singers: [Excerpt: The Drinkard Singers, "Singing in My Soul"] The Drinkard Singers had originally been a family group, whose members included Cissy Drinkard, who joined the group aged five (and who on her marriage would become known as Cissy Houston -- her daughter Whitney would later join the family business), her aunt Lee Warrick, and Warrick's adopted daughter Judy Clay. That group were discovered by the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, and spent much of the fifties performing with gospel greats including Jackson herself, Clara Ward, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. But Houston was also the musical director of a group at her church, the Gospelaires, which featured Lee Warrick's two daughters Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick (for those who don't know, the Warwick sisters' birth name was Warrick, spelled with two rs. A printing error led to it being misspelled the same way as the British city on a record label, and from that point on Dionne at least pronounced the w in her misspelled name). And slowly, the Gospelaires rather than the Drinkard Singers became the focus, with a lineup of Houston, the Warwick sisters, the Warwick sisters' cousin Doris Troy, and Clay's sister Sylvia Shemwell. The real change in the group's fortunes came when, as we talked about a while back in the episode on "The Loco-Motion", the original lineup of the Cookies largely stopped working as session singers to become Ray Charles' Raelettes. As we discussed in that episode, a new lineup of Cookies formed in 1961, but it took a while for them to get started, and in the meantime the producers who had been relying on them for backing vocals were looking elsewhere, and they looked to the Gospelaires. "Mexican Divorce" was the first record to feature the group as backing vocalists -- though reports vary as to how many of them are on the record, with some saying it's only Troy and the Warwicks, others saying Houston was there, and yet others saying it was all five of them. Some of these discrepancies were because these singers were so good that many of them left to become solo singers in fairly short order. Troy was the first to do so, with her hit "Just One Look", on which the other Gospelaires sang backing vocals: [Excerpt: Doris Troy, "Just One Look"] But the next one to go solo was Dionne Warwick, and that was because she'd started working with Bacharach and Hal David as their principal demo singer. She started singing lead on their demos, and hoping that she'd get to release them on her own. One early one was "Make it Easy On Yourself", which was recorded by Jerry Butler, formerly of the Impressions. That record was produced by Bacharach, one of the first records he produced without outside supervision: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, "Make it Easy On Yourself"] Warwick was very jealous that a song she'd sung the demo of had become a massive hit for someone else, and blamed Bacharach and David. The way she tells the story -- Bacharach always claimed this never happened, but as we've already seen he was himself not always the most reliable of narrators of his own life -- she got so angry she complained to them, and said "Don't make me over, man!" And so Bacharach and David wrote her this: [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Don't Make Me Over"] Incidentally, in the UK, the hit version of that was a cover by the Swinging Blue Jeans: [Excerpt: The Swinging Blue Jeans, "Don't Make Me Over"] who also had a huge hit with "You're No Good": [Excerpt: The Swinging Blue Jeans, "You're No Good"] And *that* was originally recorded by *Dee Dee* Warwick: [Excerpt: Dee Dee Warwick, "You're No Good"] Dee Dee also had a successful solo career, but Dionne's was the real success, making the names of herself, and of Bacharach and David. The team had more than twenty top forty hits together, before Bacharach and David had a falling out in 1971 and stopped working together, and Warwick sued both of them for breach of contract as a result. But prior to that they had hit after hit, with classic records like "Anyone Who Had a Heart": [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Anyone Who Had a Heart"] And "Walk On By": [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Walk On By"] With Doris, Dionne, and Dee Dee all going solo, the group's membership was naturally in flux -- though the departed members would occasionally join their former bandmates for sessions, and the remaining members would sing backing vocals on their ex-members' records. By 1965 the group consisted of Cissy Houston, Sylvia Shemwell, the Warwick sisters' cousin Myrna Smith, and Estelle Brown. The group became *the* go-to singers for soul and R&B records made in New York. They were regularly hired by Leiber and Stoller to sing on their records, and they were also the particular favourites of Bert Berns. They sang backing vocals on almost every record he produced. It's them doing the gospel wails on "Cry Baby" by Garnet Mimms: [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms, "Cry Baby"] And they sang backing vocals on both versions of "If You Need Me" -- Wilson Pickett's original and Solomon Burke's more successful cover version, produced by Berns: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "If You Need Me"] They're on such Berns records as "Show Me Your Monkey", by Kenny Hamber: [Excerpt: Kenny Hamber, "Show Me Your Monkey"] And it was a Berns production that ended up getting them to be Aretha Franklin's backing group. The group were becoming such an important part of the records that Atlantic and BANG Records, in particular, were putting out, that Jerry Wexler said "it was only a matter of common decency to put them under contract as a featured group". He signed them to Atlantic and renamed them from the Gospelaires to The Sweet Inspirations.  Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham wrote a song for the group which became their only hit under their own name: [Excerpt: The Sweet Inspirations, "Sweet Inspiration"] But to start with, they released a cover of Pops Staples' civil rights song "Why (Am I treated So Bad)": [Excerpt: The Sweet Inspirations, "Why (Am I Treated So Bad?)"] That hadn't charted, and meanwhile, they'd all kept doing session work. Cissy had joined Erma and Carolyn Franklin on the backing vocals for Aretha's "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You"] Shortly after that, the whole group recorded backing vocals for Erma's single "Piece of My Heart", co-written and produced by Berns: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] That became a top ten record on the R&B charts, but that caused problems. Aretha Franklin had a few character flaws, and one of these was an extreme level of jealousy for any other female singer who had any level of success and came up in the business after her. She could be incredibly graceful towards anyone who had been successful before her -- she once gave one of her Grammies away to Esther Phillips, who had been up for the same award and had lost to her -- but she was terribly insecure, and saw any contemporary as a threat. She'd spent her time at Columbia Records fuming (with some justification) that Barbra Streisand was being given a much bigger marketing budget than her, and she saw Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, and Dionne Warwick as rivals rather than friends. And that went doubly for her sisters, who she was convinced should be supporting her because of family loyalty. She had been infuriated at John Hammond when Columbia had signed Erma, thinking he'd gone behind her back to create competition for her. And now Erma was recording with Bert Berns. Bert Berns who had for years been a colleague of Jerry Wexler and the Ertegun brothers at Atlantic. Aretha was convinced that Wexler had put Berns up to signing Erma as some kind of power play. There was only one problem with this -- it simply wasn't true. As Wexler later explained “Bert and I had suffered a bad falling-out, even though I had enormous respect for him. After all, he was the guy who brought over guitarist Jimmy Page from England to play on our sessions. Bert, Ahmet, Nesuhi, and I had started a label together—Bang!—where Bert produced Van Morrison's first album. But Bert also had a penchant for trouble. He courted the wise guys. He wanted total control over every last aspect of our business dealings. Finally it was too much, and the Erteguns and I let him go. He sued us for breach of contract and suddenly we were enemies. I felt that he signed Erma, an excellent singer, not merely for her talent but as a way to get back at me. If I could make a hit with Aretha, he'd show me up by making an even bigger hit on Erma. Because there was always an undercurrent of rivalry between the sisters, this only added to the tension.” There were two things that resulted from this paranoia on Aretha's part. The first was that she and Wexler, who had been on first-name terms up to that point, temporarily went back to being "Mr. Wexler" and "Miss Franklin" to each other. And the second was that Aretha no longer wanted Carolyn and Erma to be her main backing vocalists, though they would continue to appear on her future records on occasion. From this point on, the Sweet Inspirations would be the main backing vocalists for Aretha in the studio throughout her golden era [xxcut line (and when the Sweet Inspirations themselves weren't on the record, often it would be former members of the group taking their place)]: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)"] The last day of sessions for Aretha Arrives was July the twenty-third, 1967. And as we heard in the episode on "I Was Made to Love Her", that was the day that the Detroit riots started. To recap briefly, that was four days of rioting started because of a history of racist policing, made worse by those same racist police overreacting to the initial protests. By the end of those four days, the National Guard, 82nd Airborne Division, and the 101st Airborne from Clarksville were all called in to deal with the violence, which left forty-three dead (of whom thirty-three were Black and only one was a police officer), 1,189 people were injured, and over 7,200 arrested, almost all of them Black. Those days in July would be a turning point for almost every musician based in Detroit. In particular, the police had murdered three members of the soul group the Dramatics, in a massacre of which the author John Hersey, who had been asked by President Johnson to be part of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders but had decided that would compromise his impartiality and did an independent journalistic investigation, said "The episode contained all the mythic themes of racial strife in the United States: the arm of the law taking the law into its own hands; interracial sex; the subtle poison of racist thinking by “decent” men who deny they are racists; the societal limbo into which, ever since slavery, so many young black men have been driven by our country; ambiguous justice in the courts; and the devastation in both black and white human lives that follows in the wake of violence as surely as ruinous and indiscriminate flood after torrents" But these were also the events that radicalised the MC5 -- the group had been playing a gig as Tim Buckley's support act when the rioting started, and guitarist Wayne Kramer decided afterwards to get stoned and watch the fires burning down the city through a telescope -- which police mistook for a rifle, leading to the National Guard knocking down Kramer's door. The MC5 would later cover "The Motor City is Burning", John Lee Hooker's song about the events: [Excerpt: The MC5, "The Motor City is Burning"] It would also be a turning point for Motown, too, in ways we'll talk about in a few future episodes.  And it was a political turning point too -- Michigan Governor George Romney, a liberal Republican (at a time when such people existed) had been the favourite for the Republican Presidential candidacy when he'd entered the race in December 1966, but as racial tensions ramped up in Detroit during the early months of 1967 he'd started trailing Richard Nixon, a man who was consciously stoking racists' fears. President Johnson, the incumbent Democrat, who was at that point still considering standing for re-election, made sure to make it clear to everyone during the riots that the decision to call in the National Guard had been made at the State level, by Romney, rather than at the Federal level.  That wasn't the only thing that removed the possibility of a Romney presidency, but it was a big part of the collapse of his campaign, and the, as it turned out, irrevocable turn towards right-authoritarianism that the party took with Nixon's Southern Strategy. Of course, Aretha Franklin had little way of knowing what was to come and how the riots would change the city and the country over the following decades. What she was primarily concerned about was the safety of her father, and to a lesser extent that of her sister-in-law Earline who was staying with him. Aretha, Carolyn, and Erma all tried to keep in constant touch with their father while they were out of town, and Aretha even talked about hiring private detectives to travel to Detroit, find her father, and get him out of the city to safety. But as her brother Cecil pointed out, he was probably the single most loved man among Black people in Detroit, and was unlikely to be harmed by the rioters, while he was too famous for the police to kill with impunity. Reverend Franklin had been having a stressful time anyway -- he had recently been fined for tax evasion, an action he was convinced the IRS had taken because of his friendship with Dr King and his role in the civil rights movement -- and according to Cecil "Aretha begged Daddy to move out of the city entirely. She wanted him to find another congregation in California, where he was especially popular—or at least move out to the suburbs. But he wouldn't budge. He said that, more than ever, he was needed to point out the root causes of the riots—the economic inequality, the pervasive racism in civic institutions, the woefully inadequate schools in inner-city Detroit, and the wholesale destruction of our neighborhoods by urban renewal. Some ministers fled the city, but not our father. The horror of what happened only recommitted him. He would not abandon his political agenda." To make things worse, Aretha was worried about her father in other ways -- as her marriage to Ted White was starting to disintegrate, she was looking to her father for guidance, and actually wanted him to take over her management. Eventually, Ruth Bowen, her booking agent, persuaded her brother Cecil that this was a job he could do, and that she would teach him everything he needed to know about the music business. She started training him up while Aretha was still married to White, in the expectation that that marriage couldn't last. Jerry Wexler, who only a few months earlier had been seeing Ted White as an ally in getting "product" from Franklin, had now changed his tune -- partly because the sale of Atlantic had gone through in the meantime. He later said “Sometimes she'd call me at night, and, in that barely audible little-girl voice of hers, she'd tell me that she wasn't sure she could go on. She always spoke in generalities. She never mentioned her husband, never gave me specifics of who was doing what to whom. And of course I knew better than to ask. She just said that she was tired of dealing with so much. My heart went out to her. She was a woman who suffered silently. She held so much in. I'd tell her to take as much time off as she needed. We had a lot of songs in the can that we could release without new material. ‘Oh, no, Jerry,' she'd say. ‘I can't stop recording. I've written some new songs, Carolyn's written some new songs. We gotta get in there and cut 'em.' ‘Are you sure?' I'd ask. ‘Positive,' she'd say. I'd set up the dates and typically she wouldn't show up for the first or second sessions. Carolyn or Erma would call me to say, ‘Ree's under the weather.' That was tough because we'd have asked people like Joe South and Bobby Womack to play on the sessions. Then I'd reschedule in the hopes she'd show." That third album she recorded in 1967, Lady Soul, was possibly her greatest achievement. The opening track, and second single, "Chain of Fools", released in November, was written by Don Covay -- or at least it's credited as having been written by Covay. There's a gospel record that came out around the same time on a very small label based in Houston -- "Pains of Life" by Rev. E. Fair And The Sensational Gladys Davis Trio: [Excerpt: Rev. E. Fair And The Sensational Gladys Davis Trio, "Pains of Life"] I've seen various claims online that that record came out shortly *before* "Chain of Fools", but I can't find any definitive evidence one way or the other -- it was on such a small label that release dates aren't available anywhere. Given that the B-side, which I haven't been able to track down online, is called "Wait Until the Midnight Hour", my guess is that rather than this being a case of Don Covay stealing the melody from an obscure gospel record he'd have had little chance to hear, it's the gospel record rewriting a then-current hit to be about religion, but I thought it worth mentioning. The song was actually written by Covay after Jerry Wexler asked him to come up with some songs for Otis Redding, but Wexler, after hearing it, decided it was better suited to Franklin, who gave an astonishing performance: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Chain of Fools"] Arif Mardin, the arranger of the album, said of that track “I was listed as the arranger of ‘Chain of Fools,' but I can't take credit. Aretha walked into the studio with the chart fully formed inside her head. The arrangement is based around the harmony vocals provided by Carolyn and Erma. To add heft, the Sweet Inspirations joined in. The vision of the song is entirely Aretha's.” According to Wexler, that's not *quite* true -- according to him, Joe South came up with the guitar part that makes up the intro, and he also said that when he played what he thought was the finished track to Ellie Greenwich, she came up with another vocal line for the backing vocals, which she overdubbed. But the core of the record's sound is definitely pure Aretha -- and Carolyn Franklin said that there was a reason for that. As she said later “Aretha didn't write ‘Chain,' but she might as well have. It was her story. When we were in the studio putting on the backgrounds with Ree doing lead, I knew she was singing about Ted. Listen to the lyrics talking about how for five long years she thought he was her man. Then she found out she was nothing but a link in the chain. Then she sings that her father told her to come on home. Well, he did. She sings about how her doctor said to take it easy. Well, he did too. She was drinking so much we thought she was on the verge of a breakdown. The line that slew me, though, was the one that said how one of these mornings the chain is gonna break but until then she'll take all she can take. That summed it up. Ree knew damn well that this man had been doggin' her since Jump Street. But somehow she held on and pushed it to the breaking point." [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Chain of Fools"] That made number one on the R&B charts, and number two on the hot one hundred, kept from the top by "Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)" by John Fred and his Playboy Band -- a record that very few people would say has stood the test of time as well. The other most memorable track on the album was the one chosen as the first single, released in September. As Carole King told the story, she and Gerry Goffin were feeling like their career was in a slump. While they had had a huge run of hits in the early sixties through 1965, they had only had two new hits in 1966 -- "Goin' Back" for Dusty Springfield and "Don't Bring Me Down" for the Animals, and neither of those were anything like as massive as their previous hits. And up to that point in 1967, they'd only had one -- "Pleasant Valley Sunday" for the Monkees. They had managed to place several songs on Monkees albums and the TV show as well, so they weren't going to starve, but the rise of self-contained bands that were starting to dominate the charts, and Phil Spector's temporary retirement, meant there simply wasn't the opportunity for them to place material that there had been. They were also getting sick of travelling to the West Coast all the time, because as their children were growing slightly older they didn't want to disrupt their lives in New York, and were thinking of approaching some of the New York based labels and seeing if they needed songs. They were particularly considering Atlantic, because soul was more open to outside songwriters than other genres. As it happened, though, they didn't have to approach Atlantic, because Atlantic approached them. They were walking down Broadway when a limousine pulled up, and Jerry Wexler stuck his head out of the window. He'd come up with a good title that he wanted to use for a song for Aretha, would they be interested in writing a song called "Natural Woman"? They said of course they would, and Wexler drove off. They wrote the song that night, and King recorded a demo the next morning: [Excerpt: Carole King, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (demo)"] They gave Wexler a co-writing credit because he had suggested the title.  King later wrote in her autobiography "Hearing Aretha's performance of “Natural Woman” for the first time, I experienced a rare speechless moment. To this day I can't convey how I felt in mere words. Anyone who had written a song in 1967 hoping it would be performed by a singer who could take it to the highest level of excellence, emotional connection, and public exposure would surely have wanted that singer to be Aretha Franklin." She went on to say "But a recording that moves people is never just about the artist and the songwriters. It's about people like Jerry and Ahmet, who matched the songwriters with a great title and a gifted artist; Arif Mardin, whose magnificent orchestral arrangement deserves the place it will forever occupy in popular music history; Tom Dowd, whose engineering skills captured the magic of this memorable musical moment for posterity; and the musicians in the rhythm section, the orchestral players, and the vocal contributions of the background singers—among them the unforgettable “Ah-oo!” after the first line of the verse. And the promotion and marketing people helped this song reach more people than it might have without them." And that's correct -- unlike "Chain of Fools", this time Franklin did let Arif Mardin do most of the arrangement work -- though she came up with the piano part that Spooner Oldham plays on the record. Mardin said that because of the song's hymn-like feel they wanted to go for a more traditional written arrangement. He said "She loved the song to the point where she said she wanted to concentrate on the vocal and vocal alone. I had written a string chart and horn chart to augment the chorus and hired Ralph Burns to conduct. After just a couple of takes, we had it. That's when Ralph turned to me with wonder in his eyes. Ralph was one of the most celebrated arrangers of the modern era. He had done ‘Early Autumn' for Woody Herman and Stan Getz, and ‘Georgia on My Mind' for Ray Charles. He'd worked with everyone. ‘This woman comes from another planet' was all Ralph said. ‘She's just here visiting.'” [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman"] By this point there was a well-functioning team making Franklin's records -- while the production credits would vary over the years, they were all essentially co-productions by the team of Franklin, Wexler, Mardin and Dowd, all collaborating and working together with a more-or-less unified purpose, and the backing was always by the same handful of session musicians and some combination of the Sweet Inspirations and Aretha's sisters. That didn't mean that occasional guests couldn't get involved -- as we discussed in the Cream episode, Eric Clapton played guitar on "Good to Me as I am to You": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Good to Me as I am to You"] Though that was one of the rare occasions on one of these records where something was overdubbed. Clapton apparently messed up the guitar part when playing behind Franklin, because he was too intimidated by playing with her, and came back the next day to redo his part without her in the studio. At this point, Aretha was at the height of her fame. Just before the final batch of album sessions began she appeared in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, and she was making regular TV appearances, like one on the Mike Douglas Show where she duetted with Frankie Valli on "That's Life": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin and Frankie Valli, "That's Life"] But also, as Wexler said “Her career was kicking into high gear. Contending and resolving both the professional and personal challenges were too much. She didn't think she could do both, and I didn't blame her. Few people could. So she let the personal slide and concentrated on the professional. " Her concert promoter Ruth Bowen said of this time "Her father and Dr. King were putting pressure on her to sing everywhere, and she felt obligated. The record company was also screaming for more product. And I had a mountain of offers on my desk that kept getting higher with every passing hour. They wanted her in Europe. They wanted her in Latin America. They wanted her in every major venue in the U.S. TV was calling. She was being asked to do guest appearances on every show from Carol Burnett to Andy Williams to the Hollywood Palace. She wanted to do them all and she wanted to do none of them. She wanted to do them all because she's an entertainer who burns with ambition. She wanted to do none of them because she was emotionally drained. She needed to go away and renew her strength. I told her that at least a dozen times. She said she would, but she didn't listen to me." The pressures from her father and Dr King are a recurring motif in interviews with people about this period. Franklin was always a very political person, and would throughout her life volunteer time and money to liberal political causes and to the Democratic Party, but this was the height of her activism -- the Civil Rights movement was trying to capitalise on the gains it had made in the previous couple of years, and celebrity fundraisers and performances at rallies were an important way to do that. And at this point there were few bigger celebrities in America than Aretha Franklin. At a concert in her home town of Detroit on February the sixteenth, 1968, the Mayor declared the day Aretha Franklin Day. At the same show, Billboard, Record World *and* Cash Box magazines all presented her with plaques for being Female Vocalist of the Year. And Dr. King travelled up to be at the show and congratulate her publicly for all her work with his organisation, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Backstage at that show, Dr. King talked to Aretha's father, Reverend Franklin, about what he believed would be the next big battle -- a strike in Memphis: [Excerpt, Martin Luther King, "Mountaintop Speech" -- "And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy—what is the other bread?—Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven't been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying, they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right."] The strike in question was the Memphis Sanitation Workers' strike which had started a few days before.  The struggle for Black labour rights was an integral part of the civil rights movement, and while it's not told that way in the sanitised version of the story that's made it into popular culture, the movement led by King was as much about economic justice as social justice -- King was a democratic socialist, and believed that economic oppression was both an effect of and cause of other forms of racial oppression, and that the rights of Black workers needed to be fought for. In 1967 he had set up a new organisation, the Poor People's Campaign, which was set to march on Washington to demand a program that included full employment, a guaranteed income -- King was strongly influenced in his later years by the ideas of Henry George, the proponent of a universal basic income based on land value tax -- the annual building of half a million affordable homes, and an end to the war in Vietnam. This was King's main focus in early 1968, and he saw the sanitation workers' strike as a major part of this campaign. Memphis was one of the most oppressive cities in the country, and its largely Black workforce of sanitation workers had been trying for most of the 1960s to unionise, and strike-breakers had been called in to stop them, and many of them had been fired by their white supervisors with no notice. They were working in unsafe conditions, for utterly inadequate wages, and the city government were ardent segregationists. After two workers had died on the first of February from using unsafe equipment, the union demanded changes -- safer working conditions, better wages, and recognition of the union. The city council refused, and almost all the sanitation workers stayed home and stopped work. After a few days, the council relented and agreed to their terms, but the Mayor, Henry Loeb, an ardent white supremacist who had stood on a platform of opposing desegregation, and who had previously been the Public Works Commissioner who had put these unsafe conditions in place, refused to listen. As far as he was concerned, he was the only one who could recognise the union, and he wouldn't. The workers continued their strike, marching holding signs that simply read "I am a Man": [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Blowing in the Wind"] The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the NAACP had been involved in organising support for the strikes from an early stage, and King visited Memphis many times. Much of the time he spent visiting there was spent negotiating with a group of more militant activists, who called themselves The Invaders and weren't completely convinced by King's nonviolent approach -- they believed that violence and rioting got more attention than non-violent protests. King explained to them that while he had been persuaded by Gandhi's writings of the moral case for nonviolent protest, he was also persuaded that it was pragmatically necessary -- asking the young men "how many guns do we have and how many guns do they have?", and pointing out as he often did that when it comes to violence a minority can't win against an armed majority. Rev Franklin went down to Memphis on the twenty-eighth of March to speak at a rally Dr. King was holding, but as it turned out the rally was cancelled -- the pre-rally march had got out of hand, with some people smashing windows, and Memphis police had, like the police in Detroit the previous year, violently overreacted, clubbing and gassing protestors and shooting and killing one unarmed teenage boy, Larry Payne. The day after Payne's funeral, Dr King was back in Memphis, though this time Rev Franklin was not with him. On April the third, he gave a speech which became known as the "Mountaintop Speech", in which he talked about the threats that had been made to his life: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Mountaintop Speech": “And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."] The next day, Martin Luther King was shot dead. James Earl Ray, a white supremacist, pled guilty to the murder, and the evidence against him seems overwhelming from what I've read, but the King family have always claimed that the murder was part of a larger conspiracy and that Ray was not the gunman. Aretha was obviously distraught, and she attended the funeral, as did almost every other prominent Black public figure. James Baldwin wrote of the funeral: "In the pew directly before me sat Marlon Brando, Sammy Davis, Eartha Kitt—covered in black, looking like a lost, ten-year-old girl—and Sidney Poitier, in the same pew, or nearby. Marlon saw me, and nodded. The atmosphere was black, with a tension indescribable—as though something, perhaps the heavens, perhaps the earth, might crack. Everyone sat very still. The actual service sort of washed over me, in waves. It wasn't that it seemed unreal; it was the most real church service I've ever sat through in my life, or ever hope to sit through; but I have a childhood hangover thing about not weeping in public, and I was concentrating on holding myself together. I did not want to weep for Martin, tears seemed futile. But I may also have been afraid, and I could not have been the only one, that if I began to weep I would not be able to stop. There was more than enough to weep for, if one was to weep—so many of us, cut down, so soon. Medgar, Malcolm, Martin: and their widows, and their children. Reverend Ralph David Abernathy asked a certain sister to sing a song which Martin had loved—“Once more,” said Ralph David, “for Martin and for me,” and he sat down." Many articles and books on Aretha Franklin say that she sang at King's funeral. In fact she didn't, but there's a simple reason for the confusion. King's favourite song was the Thomas Dorsey gospel song "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", and indeed almost his last words were to ask a trumpet player, Ben Branch, if he would play the song at the rally he was going to be speaking at on the day of his death. At his request, Mahalia Jackson, his old friend, sang the song at his private funeral, which was not filmed, unlike the public part of the funeral that Baldwin described. Four months later, though, there was another public memorial for King, and Franklin did sing "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" at that service, in front of King's weeping widow and children, and that performance *was* filmed, and gets conflated in people's memories with Jackson's unfilmed earlier performance: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord (at Martin Luther King Memorial)"] Four years later, she would sing that at Mahalia Jackson's funeral. Through all this, Franklin had been working on her next album, Aretha Now, the sessions for which started more or less as soon as the sessions for Lady Soul had finished. The album was, in fact, bookended by deaths that affected Aretha. Just as King died at the end of the sessions, the beginning came around the time of the death of Otis Redding -- the sessions were cancelled for a day while Wexler travelled to Georgia for Redding's funeral, which Franklin was too devastated to attend, and Wexler would later say that the extra emotion in her performances on the album came from her emotional pain at Redding's death. The lead single on the album, "Think", was written by Franklin and -- according to the credits anyway -- her husband Ted White, and is very much in the same style as "Respect", and became another of her most-loved hits: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Think"] But probably the song on Aretha Now that now resonates the most is one that Jerry Wexler tried to persuade her not to record, and was only released as a B-side. Indeed, "I Say a Little Prayer" was a song that had already once been a hit after being a reject.  Hal David, unlike Burt Bacharach, was a fairly political person and inspired by the protest song movement, and had been starting to incorporate his concerns about the political situation and the Vietnam War into his lyrics -- though as with many such writers, he did it in much less specific ways than a Phil Ochs or a Bob Dylan. This had started with "What the World Needs Now is Love", a song Bacharach and David had written for Jackie DeShannon in 1965: [Excerpt: Jackie DeShannon, "What the "World Needs Now is Love"] But he'd become much more overtly political for "The Windows of the World", a song they wrote for Dionne Warwick. Warwick has often said it's her favourite of her singles, but it wasn't a big hit -- Bacharach blamed himself for that, saying "Dionne recorded it as a single and I really blew it. I wrote a bad arrangement and the tempo was too fast, and I really regret making it the way I did because it's a good song." [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "The Windows of the World"] For that album, Bacharach and David had written another track, "I Say a Little Prayer", which was not as explicitly political, but was intended by David to have an implicit anti-war message, much like other songs of the period like "Last Train to Clarksville". David had sons who were the right age to be drafted, and while it's never stated, "I Say a Little Prayer" was written from the perspective of a woman whose partner is away fighting in the war, but is still in her thoughts: [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "I Say a Little Prayer"] The recording of Dionne Warwick's version was marked by stress. Bacharach had a particular way of writing music to tell the musicians the kind of feel he wanted for the part -- he'd write nonsense words above the stave, and tell the musicians to play the parts as if they were singing those words. The trumpet player hired for the session, Ernie Royal, got into a row with Bacharach about this unorthodox way of communicating musical feeling, and the track ended up taking ten takes (as opposed to the normal three for a Bacharach session), with Royal being replaced half-way through the session. Bacharach was never happy with the track even after all the work it had taken, and he fought to keep it from being released at all, saying the track was taken at too fast a tempo. It eventually came out as an album track nearly eighteen months after it was recorded -- an eternity in 1960s musical timescales -- and DJs started playing it almost as soon as it came out. Scepter records rushed out a single, over Bacharach's objections, but as he later said "One thing I love about the record business is how wrong I was. Disc jockeys all across the country started playing the track, and the song went to number four on the charts and then became the biggest hit Hal and I had ever written for Dionne." [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "I Say a Little Prayer"] Oddly, the B-side for Warwick's single, "Theme From the Valley of the Dolls" did even better, reaching number two. Almost as soon as the song was released as a single, Franklin started playing around with the song backstage, and in April 1968, right around the time of Dr. King's death, she recorded a version. Much as Burt Bacharach had been against releasing Dionne Warwick's version, Jerry Wexler was against Aretha even recording the song, saying later “I advised Aretha not to record it. I opposed it for two reasons. First, to cover a song only twelve weeks after the original reached the top of the charts was not smart business. You revisit such a hit eight months to a year later. That's standard practice. But more than that, Bacharach's melody, though lovely, was peculiarly suited to a lithe instrument like Dionne Warwick's—a light voice without the dark corners or emotional depths that define Aretha. Also, Hal David's lyric was also somewhat girlish and lacked the gravitas that Aretha required. “Aretha usually listened to me in the studio, but not this time. She had written a vocal arrangement for the Sweet Inspirations that was undoubtedly strong. Cissy Houston, Dionne's cousin, told me that Aretha was on the right track—she was seeing this song in a new way and had come up with a new groove. Cissy was on Aretha's side. Tommy Dowd and Arif were on Aretha's side. So I had no choice but to cave." It's quite possible that Wexler's objections made Franklin more, rather than less, determined to record the song. She regarded Warwick as a hated rival, as she did almost every prominent female singer of her generation and younger ones, and would undoubtedly have taken the implication that there was something that Warwick was simply better at than her to heart. [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer"] Wexler realised as soon as he heard it in the studio that Franklin's version was great, and Bacharach agreed, telling Franklin's biographer David Ritz “As much as I like the original recording by Dionne, there's no doubt that Aretha's is a better record. She imbued the song with heavy soul and took it to a far deeper place. Hers is the definitive version.” -- which is surprising because Franklin's version simplifies some of Bacharach's more unusual chord voicings, something he often found extremely upsetting. Wexler still though thought there was no way the song would be a hit, and it's understandable that he thought that way. Not only had it only just been on the charts a few months earlier, but it was the kind of song that wouldn't normally be a hit at all, and certainly not in the kind of rhythmic soul music for which Franklin was known. Almost everything she ever recorded is in simple time signatures -- 4/4, waltz time, or 6/8 -- but this is a Bacharach song so it's staggeringly metrically irregular. Normally even with semi-complex things I'm usually good at figuring out how to break it down into bars, but here I actually had to purchase a copy of the sheet music in order to be sure I was right about what's going on. I'm going to count beats along with the record here so you can see what I mean. The verse has three bars of 4/4, one bar of 2/4, and three more bars of 4/4, all repeated: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer" with me counting bars over verse] While the chorus has a bar of 4/4, a bar of 3/4 but with a chord change half way through so it sounds like it's in two if you're paying attention to the harmonic changes, two bars of 4/4, another waltz-time bar sounding like it's in two, two bars of four, another bar of three sounding in two, a bar of four, then three more bars of four but the first of those is *written* as four but played as if it's in six-eight time (but you can keep the four/four pulse going if you're counting): [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer" with me counting bars over verse] I don't expect you to have necessarily followed that in great detail, but the point should be clear -- this was not some straightforward dance song. Incidentally, that bar played as if it's six/eight was something Aretha introduced to make the song even more irregular than how Bacharach wrote it. And on top of *that* of course the lyrics mixed the secular and the sacred, something that was still taboo in popular music at that time -- this is only a couple of years after Capitol records had been genuinely unsure about putting out the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows", and Franklin's gospel-inflected vocals made the religious connection even more obvious. But Franklin was insistent that the record go out as a single, and eventually it was released as the B-side to the far less impressive "The House That Jack Built". It became a double-sided hit, with the A-side making number two on the R&B chart and number seven on the Hot One Hundred, while "I Say a Little Prayer" made number three on the R&B chart and number ten overall. In the UK, "I Say a Little Prayer" made number four and became her biggest ever solo UK hit. It's now one of her most-remembered songs, while the A-side is largely forgotten: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer"] For much of the

Activist and musician Baba Bilal Sunni-Ali, of the Jamil Al-Amin Action Network, joins Groundings to discuss the life, legacy, and impact of current political prisoner Imam Jamil Al-Amin.Formerly known as H. Rap Brown, Imam Jamil Al-Amin was once one of the Amerika's most well-known Black revolutionary activists. A former member of SNCC, Jamil Al-Amin was framed for a crime in 2000, and despite a mountain of evidence showing his innocence, he's sat as a political prisoner ever since. Baba Bilal Sunni-Ali discusses the legal matters related to Al-Amin's case, the current movement to free him, and the impact he had on several communities, including Atlanta's West End neighborhood. To get involved and support the campaign to free Imam Jamil Al-Amin, check out: www.imamjamilactionnetwork.orgAlso, consider supporting the podcast at Patreon.com/HalfatlantaYou can access the clip you hear of Jamil Al-Amin speaking here. 

How the controversial slogan “black power,” used by activists like Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, relates to ideas of militancy, separatism, and the power of language.

Time Magazine: The Many Lives of H. Rap Brown https://time.com/6111614/h-rap-brown-jamil-al-amin/ JAMIL AL-AMIN, IMAM (1943– ) A gifted rhetorician and civil rights activist, the American Muslim leader Jamil al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown, born in 1943) came to national prominence in the 1960s as an outspoken advocate of black power. In 1967, Brown succeeded Stokely Carmichael as leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a prominent African-American civil rights organization. Brown also became known for his advocacy of black self-defense and his saying that "violence is as American as cherry pie." In 1969, he published his most famous work, Die Nigger Die, a blistering critique of American racism. Because of Brown's radical rhetoric, he became a target of the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), which harassed many black leaders during this period. In 1972, Brown was apprehended on federal weapons charges, tried, convicted, and sentenced to four years in prison. During his prison term, he converted to Islam under the auspices of Darul Islam, a predominately African-American Islamic group organized in the 1960s. He also adopted a new name, Jamil Abdullah al-Amin. Paroled in 1976, al-Amin moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he became the owner of a community store and an imam (leader) at a local mosque. Over the next two decades, he emerged as a Sunni Muslim leader with followers throughout the United States. Over thirty mosques recognized Imam Jamil as leader of a group called the National Islamic Community. Focusing on economic and social, as well as religious, empowerment, he also became known for his role in attempting to revitalize the West End of Atlanta. In March 2000, Imam al-Jamil was accused of murder in connection with the death of a police officer. But many American Muslims of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds defended Imam al-Jamil's innocence and offered him financial and moral support as he prepared for his trial. In March, 2002, he was convicted of murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole despite the fact that another individual has admitted to committing the crime. The trial ultimately lasts for just three weeks, and despite contradictory factual and circumstantial evidence, the jury took less than 10 hours to reach a guilty verdict on all 13 counts. District Attorney Paul Howard calls for the death penalty. In Depth Biography:https://www.imamjamilactionnetwork.org/biography/chronology_of_life_and_work

Born in Texas and raised in  Wyoming. In this in-depth interview Elder Babu talks about his grandfather who was a slave and a sharecropper his entire life and how his mother and father wanted to carve out a different path for their kids.  Babu was a  high school basketball star in Cheyenne and his 1961 team won the Wyoming State Championship, he was an All-State player that year.  We talk in detail about his move to LA, his time at UCLA, the importance of  black history and consciousness,  his relationships with legendary figures like Angela Davis, Huey P. Newton, Bunchy Carter, H. Rap Brown, Kwame Toure, Harry Belafonte and many others.  Lastly we discuss the value and necessity of the Pan African Film Festival, co-founded with Danny Glover and Ja'Net Dubois.Ayuko Babu is the Executive Director of the Pan African Film Festival and an international cultural, political and legal consultant specializing in Pan African affairs. He has been the Executive Director of the Pan African Film & Arts Festival (PAFF) since its establishment in 1992. From 2016-2018, Mr. Babu served on the California Film Commission. In addition to PAFF, Mr. Babu currently serves as a permanent member of the jury of the annual Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA), headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria. AMAA is the world's largest Pan African film awards event, covering the continent of Africa and its worldwide Diaspora.In 1999, Mr. Babu was selected as one of the “103 Most Influential” people in the African American community in Los Angeles by the Our Times section of the Los Angeles Times. He has sat on the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Peer Grant Review Panel and the Los Angeles County Arts Commission Grant Review Panel. He has been a member of the Los Angeles Arts Loan Fund review panel. He is currently a member of the Mayor's African American Heritage Month Committee for the City of Los Angeles. In February, 2019, Mr. Babu and PAFF were honored on the floor of the Los Angeles City Council for their past and present work during the Black History Month celebration.Currently he is developing formal ties with the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) of South Africa, a government agency whose mission is to develop and promote the South African film industry. In December 2010, he was an official delegate to the World Festival of Black Arts and Cultures in Dakar, Senegal. In 2013, he was a presenter and delegate at the Travelling Caribbean Film Showcase in Havana, Cuba. Under his leadership, the Pan African Film Festival has established institutional ties with the Pan African Festival of Cinema and Television (FESPACO) in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, the world's largest Pan African film festival held bi-annually. He also works with the Africano Film Festival in Milan, Italy, the Zanzibar International Film Festival in Tanzania, where he has served as a member of the jury, and the Rwanda Film Festival in Kigali, Rwanda, where he served as a member of the jury. He was a presenter at the UNESCO Conference on Images of the South and was a guest of Fund South at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival in France. Mr. Babu has participated in numerous panels and forums discussing the production, distribution and marketing of African American and African films.In 1984, he brought the famed Les Ballets Africains de la République de Guinée to the Olympics in Los Angeles. He was Co-Chair of the Program Committee for The Nelson Mandela Reception Committee at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1990, appointed by Congresswoman Maxine Waters.Mr. Babu holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from California State University, Los Angeles and attended the UCLA School of Law.https://www.paff.org

It's a confrontational episode, from all fronts!  We're talking about fighting and bars and cages and RIPPING OUT THROATS! All for the good of your local bar. Featuring: Joe MoubhijRegular co-host of Not Film School Other Resources:Whos is H. Rap Brown?https://snccdigital.org/people/h-rap-brown/ Testimonials of Voter Suppression and how the SNCC helped fight backhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxeeZU3qAdQ What was the SNCC?https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/sncc CHECK OUT HOW THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT IS PORTRAYING H. RAP BROWNhttps://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/individuals/h-rap-brown Musical Suggestion:Peach Pit Special Thanks!-Ryan Maguire - Intro Music- Joe Moubhij - Absolutely nothing at all, I guess...- Brieana Woodward - Show Art And I guess I owe an apology to Patrick Swayze? Your movies always inspire the relentless leftist in me, sorry bud.Also, Nice Butt Kelly Lynch! This podcast is edited and produced by Kyle Seeley

Pictured: H. Rap Brown, Human Rights Activist Bonus read from Dennis Kimbro's Book, "Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice" Get your copy Dr. Kimbro's book: https://amzn.to/3t5HEAB More of Dr. Kimbro's Work: https://amzn.to/36oGpm6 If you need some help getting your self together or putting this message into practice here are some practical resources. Make a Plan for yourself: https://www.selfauthoring.com/ Write it Out: https://amzn.to/3eiLocF GET THE FULL PODCAST EPISODE ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST PLAYER OR AT itsmytimepodcast.com Follow Asher Tchoua Online: IG: @itsmytimepodcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asher-tchoua-eit-45514b24/ Web: solo.to/imtp --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asher-tchoua0/message

Maha Elkollali, Esq. Member of the Legal Team of Jamil Al-Amin, Formerly H. Rap Brown. Marcus. From the mid 1960s Imam Jamil Al-Amin, formerly H. Rap Brown held a leadership position in organizations rooted in challenging the racist oppression of Black Americans from SNCC to the Black Panther Party. Today's Imam Jamil's legal team is challenging his incarceration as a Black political prisoner demanding his release. We will discuss the merits of his case and the legacy of Imam Jamil Al Amin, formerly H.Rap Brown.   For information on how you can help in the freeing of Imam Jamil Al-Amin: https://www.imamjamilactionnetwork.org/   Thank you, guys, again for taking the time to check this out. We appreciate each and every one of you. If you have the means, and you feel so inclined, BECOME A PATRON! We're creating patron only programing, you'll get bonus content from many of the episodes, and you get MERCH!   Become a patron now https://www.patreon.com/join/BitterLakePresents?   Please also like, subscribe, and follow us on these platforms as well, (specially YouTube!)   THANKS Y'ALL   YouTube: www.youtube.com/thisisrevolutionpodcast   Twitch: www.twitch.tv/thisisrevolutionpodcast www.twitch.tv/leftflankvets   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Thisisrevolutionpodcast/   Twitter: @TIRShowOakland Instagram: @thisisrevolutionoakland   The Dispatch on Zero Books (video essay series): https://youtu.be/nSTpCvIoRgw   Medium: https://jasonmyles.medium.com/i-was-a-teenage-anarchist-e918b00bb13   Pascal Robert's Black Agenda Report: https://www.blackagendareport.com/author/PascalRobert   Get TIR>p Merch here: www.thisisrevolutionpodcast.com   Get the music from the show here: https://bitterlakeoakland.bandcamp.com/album/coronavirus-sessions

Peniel Joseph is the foremost scholar of the Black Power movement, and the founding Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of the award-winning Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour/A Narrative History of Black Power in America, along with the titles Dark Days, Bright Nights, Stokely: A Life, and his most recent work, The Sword and The Shield/The Revolutionary Lives of Malcom X and Martin Luther King, Jr. In this conversation, Joseph shares the roots of his interest in Black Power, his thoughts on critical race theory, and his abiding admiration for his beloved Haiti, the first Black republic in the history of the world. To purchase books by Peniel Joseph, please visit Bookshop.org Test your knowledge! Who are the speakers heard in the opening of this episode? (Answers below) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. To learn more about HAITIAN HISTORY AND THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION, consider these resources: The Black Republic/African Americans and the Fate of Haiti by Donald R. Byrd https://site.pennpress.org/aha-2021/9780812251708/the-black-republic/ “African Americans, Black Internationalism, and the Fate of Haiti” - A Black Perspectives Roundtable https://www.aaihs.org/african-americans-black-internationalism-and-the-fate-of-haiti/ “We Owe Haiti a Debt We Can't Repay” by Annette Gordon-Reed https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/opinion/haiti-us-history.html To learn more about a few individuals mentioned in this episode, consider these resources: LORRAINE HANSBERRY Looking for Lorraine by Imani Perry http://www.beacon.org/Looking-for-Lorraine-P1532.aspx “In Her Own Voice” by Imani Perry https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/07/01/lorraine-hansberry-in-her-own-voice/ https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/lorraine-hansberry-sighted-eyesfeeling-heart-documentary/9846/ AMIRI BARAKA “Amiri Baraka, Polarizing Poet and Playwright” - New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/arts/amiri-baraka-polarizing-poet-and-playwright-dies-at-79.html Amiri Baraka, at the Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/amiri-baraka#tab-poems LARRY NEAL http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/community/text8/blackartsmovement.pdf JAMES CONE https://www.aaihs.org/remembering-james-cone-kind-and-fierce-iconoclast/ ANSWERS TO THE QUIZ: Who are the speakers heard in the opening of the podcast? In order: Bobby Seale, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Huey Newton, Kathleen Cleaver, Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis, H. Rap Brown, Eldridge Cleaver, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Peniel Joseph. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/recollect/message

In this segment of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Kairi Al-Amin, the son and lawyer of Imam Jamil Al-Amin (formerly known as H. Rap Brown), to discuss the latest in the struggle to free his father from imprisonment, how the state's mistreatment of his father is exacerbating chronic health issues, and the relationship between the long-term persecution of Al-Amin and the US government's COINTELPRO program.

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Albert Saint Jean, grassroots organizer, freelance writer, contributor to HL, to discuss US President Joe Biden's backtrack on his 100-day deportation moratorium promise, why many organizers view anything short of the complete abolition of ICE as a step backwards, and why anti-Blackness and anti-immigrant sentiment leave Haitian migrants particularly vulnerable.In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Kairi Al-Amin, the son and lawyer of Imam Jamil Al-Amin (formerly known as H. Rap Brown), to discuss the latest in the struggle to free his father from imprisonment, how the state's mistreatment of his father is exacerbating chronic health issues, and the relationship between the long-term persecution of Al-Amin and the US government's COINTELPRO program.In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Chris Garaffa, editor of TechForThePeople.org, to discuss the dragnet-style information collection operation conducted by the FBI in the aftermath of the would-be coup at the Capitol, the software bug that whistleblowers insist is keeping hundreds of people in Arizona imprisoned well after their release date, and the latest high-profile Google employee to allege they were fired for speaking out about the company's unethical practices.Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Chuck Modiano, justice journalist and sportswriter for Deadspin, to discuss why he sees claims by Capitol police that they didn't know Donald Trump's supporters would assault the Capitol as “absurd,” why the previous invasions of DC by pro-Trump forces seem like “dress rehearsals” for the January 6th insurrection, and the role of supposedly-progressive figures like DC Mayor Muriel Bowser in suppressing resistance to the status quo.

The topics are on the move with TFRPodcastLive Observation Show: From H. Rap Brown to Kwame Ture to Martin Luther King to Sister Souljah to Kimberly Latrice Jones to Tamika Mallory Our Voices scream-out for Just Us... from generations in decades of wins and loses, because the masses won't mobilize to organize; leaving the move for FREE to continually be co-opted by those who look only to be anarchist accelerationists arsonists rioters and looters of American Blacks' American Birth Right. Let's discuss, the phones are open-- 213.943.3358.

THERE ARE TRYING TO TAKE AWAY OUR VOICES {WAKE UP} --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jerry-hardy/support

Imam Jamil Al-Amin and Leonard Peltier, both political prisoners in the U.S. On this show: 0:08 – Jamil Al-Amin, a political prisoner, imam, former SNCC leader and formerly known as H. Rap Brown, is still serving a life sentence. We hear the latest on his case and his defense from Amir Abdel Malik Ali of the Oakland Islamic Community Center in East Oakland. 0:33 – We re-air our interview from Black August 2019 on the case of indigenous political prisoner Leonard Peltier. Larry Hildes is a civil rights lawyer with the National Lawyers Guild and lead counsel for Leonard Peltier. The post Honoring political prisoners Jamil Al-Amin and Leonard Peltier and continuing to fight for their freedom appeared first on KPFA.

This week, your hosts Steve Lowry and Yvonne Godfrey interview Anna Green Cross and Darren Summerville of The Summerville Firm, LLC (http://www.summervillefirm.com/) and Brian D. "Buck" Rogers of Rogers & Fite, LLC (https://www.rogersfite.com/)   Remember to rate and review GTP in iTunes: Click Here To Rate and Review   Case Details: Anna Green Cross and Darren Summerville of The Summerville Firm, LLC, and Brian D. "Buck" Rogers of Rogers & Fite, LLC share how they secured justice for the Johnson family after an intoxicated 16-year-old driver recklessly slammed his Dodge Ram 1500 into the back of their minivan at 78 mph. Inside the minivan were David and Susannah Johnson and their four children -- Brooke, 10, Kathryn, 8, Hannah, 6 and Owen, 3 -- who were enjoying a family vacation in Blue Ridge, Georgia. Tragically, Hannah was pronounced dead at the scene, and Owen sustained massive injuries that caused him to be a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic. Kathryn's pelvis was shattered on impact, causing her to have to learn to walk again. Brooke had several broken bones and her mother Susannah sustained multiple broken ribs. After two hours of deliberation, a Fannin County, Georgia jury returned a verdict of $128,813,522, including $40 million for Hannah's wrongful death, $30 million for Owen's intangible damages and another $40 million for his future medical expenses. This was the fifth-largest wrongful death jury verdict in the United States in 2018. Click Here to Read/Download the Complete Trial Documents   Guest Bio: Anna Cross Anna has been on the winning side in complex litigation in the trial and appellate courts of Georgia for decades.  In her 20 years as a prosecutor in Metro Atlanta, Anna represented the State in high-profile homicide prosecutions such as State v. Hemy Neuman (2010 Dunwoody Daycare murder), State v. James Vincent Sullivan (1987 contract killing of Lita McClinton Sullivan), and State v. Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, Aka H. Rap Brown (2000 murder of Fulton County Sheriff's Deputy) as part of the trial team and as the lead appellate attorney.   Since making the switch to civil law in 2018 and joining The Summerville Firm, Anna has used her skills to help secure a $128 million jury verdict in the wrongful death and personal injury case Johnson v. Lee (Fannin County, GA).  She has successfully briefed complex pretrial evidentiary issues, allowing her clients to secure several multi-million dollar settlements.   Anna has tried over 80 cases to verdict, briefed hundreds of cases in the Georgia Appellate Courts, and argued in the Georgia Supreme Court more than 60 times.   After completing her undergraduate degree in Philosophy with a minor in Japanese at the University of Notre Dame, Anna spent a year as a foster parent running a household for HIV positive infants and children in Houston, TX. She then graduated from Emory University School of Law and lives in Decatur with her husband and children. Read Full Bio Darren Summerville Darren Summerville isn't afraid to go where there is no path. He excelled in debate in high school and college, and graduated at the top of his law school class while winning every major writing award available in law school. He started his career in a top-notch litigation boutique—cutting his teeth on cases of racketeering, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, and punitive damages—in trial courts and on appeal. Then he took a different path—to a plaintiffs' trial firm, often working with other attorneys on their appeals and sophisticated tort cases, using his commercial litigation skills to expose fraud and other abuses.  Now he has charted his own distinct way of practice. Darren litigates cases on behalf of plaintiffs and defendants, in the appellate courts and at trial—anywhere there's a dispute that needs a cutting-edge approach, with the high degree of professionalism and skill necessary to pull it off. Read Full Bio Buck Rogers A native of Atlanta, Buck earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Georgia in 1990 and a J.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Law in 1994. Buck is a P.O.S.T. (Peace Officer's Safety Training) Certified Guest Lecturer, Commercial Motor Vehicle Collisions and Law and holds his own CDL License.   Buck is the 55th president of the State Bar of Georgia and has been on the Board of Governors for the State Bar of Georgia since 2008. He works primarily as a civil attorney representing victims of catastrophic claims.   Buck was selected as one of the “14 Under 40” in the Fulton County Daily Report in 2006 and as one of the “Top 100 lawyers” in Georgia by Atlanta Magazine.  He was president of the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association from 2013 to 2014 and served on the Atlanta Bar Association's Continuing Education Committee.   Buck is a graduate of the National College of Advocacy, the Ultimate Trial College in Washington, D.C., and the Trial Lawyers College. He is a Master in the Lamar Inn of Court.   Buck has devoted himself to community service. His philanthropic work includes serving on the Board of Directors for Roadsafe America (trucking safety advocacy group), Chair of the Board of Directors of the Civil Justice PAC Inc., State Council of Mothers against Drunk Driving (MADD) for which he is the Chair of Leadership, and the Shepherd Spinal and Brain Injury Center, where he is a Trustee and serves on the Auxiliary Board and the Advisory Board. Read Full Bio   Show Sponsors: Legal Technology Services - LTSatlanta.com   Digital Law Marketing - DigitalLawMarketing.com   Case Pacer - CasePacer.com   Harris, Lowry, and Manton - hlmlawfirm.com   Free Resources: Stages Of A Jury Trial - Part 1 Stages Of A Jury Trial - Part 2

AsSalaam Alkuim,Haqq Dawah Media Presents: Izza Deen Imam Jamil Abduallah Al Amin (H. Rap Brown).Please stay tuned to us through our social media: @TheHaqqDawahGrp for Twitter and Instagram/thehaqqdawahgrp for Facebook. For more content like this look for Haqq Dawah Media wherever you listen or download your favorite show. Also look out for our newest project The Caliphate Vol. 1 on our Sound Cloud page.https://soundcloud.com/haqq-dawah-media/haqq-dawah-media-presents-the-caliphate-vol-1Until the next time,Fe Aman Allah

We take a look back at 2019, a contentious and challenging year, where we brought a mix of local, national and international news plus discussions from the thinkers and leaders at the frontlines of social movements. From climate change, to impeachment, to white nationalist violence, we took risks with big, ambitious broadcasts and reporting projects with the goal to inform our listeners, ignite deeper discussions, and elevate those most impacted. This is a list compiled from the most shared on social media, emails to us, and favorite amongst our team. Let us know what your favorite segments or shows have been in 2019, leave a comment or email upfront@kpfa.org. Over 300 inmates protesting conditions at Alameda County's Santa Rita Jail end hunger strike due to health concerns November 4, 2019 Santa Rita Jail strike update: An estimated 300 inmates protesting inhumane treatment have ended the strike on Friday due to health concerns. We speak with Sergeant Ray Kelly is a spokesman with the Alameda County Sheriff's Department. Yolanda Huang is a long time civil rights attorney and has represented many clients in fighting for justice for abuses committed by the Alameda County Sheriff's Department, and joins us with an update. This coverage was part of special coverage of the jail, Santa Rita Stories, hosted by Cat Brooks. Listen here. Billie Winner, Mother: Whistleblower Reality Winner is still jailed, while Mueller report verifies Russians hacked the election April 24, 2019 Billie Winner Davis (@bjwinnerdavis) is the mother of Reality Winner, a 28 year old former intelligence specialist who was charged and convicted for leaking intelligence reports showing Russian interference in the 2016 elections. She's currently serving 5 years and 3 months in Lincoln County Jail in Lincolnton, Georgia. Hosted by Cat Brooks. Listen here. Live from the Climate Strike and UN General Assembly with Brian Edwards-Tiekert September 23, 2019 Our host, Brian Edwards-Tiekert spent a week this summer in New York City reporting on the UN Climate Action Summit and climate action events, in what many saw as a sea change for climate action in 2019. Here Brian gives a live update from the United Nations in NY, where the UN Climate Summit is set to begin, starting with climate leader Greta Thunberg. He also covered Global Climate Strike, Friday Sep 20 and we hear voices from around the world at the strike in NYC.   Celebrating the life and legacy of Toni Morrison August 7, 2019 On August 6, 2019 we lost an international treasure, Tony Morrison, the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature and author of more than eleven books. We host a roundtable to discuss her life and legacy, featuring Nikki Giovanni one of America's foremost poets, Ayodele Nzinga (@wordslanger) a playwright, poet, and founding director of Lower Bottom Playaz in Oakland, Tyson Amir (@tysonamir) educator and author of Black Boy Poems, and the Black Boy Poems Curriculum, and Tongo Eisen-Martin (@tongoblackfire) a movement worker, educator and poet. His latest book is Heaven Is All Goodbyes. The Community of Grace: Day to day life in a curbside community in Oakland May 3, 2019 Homelessness is rising dramatically in the Bay Area, but usually communities are covered by the news only when there's a crisis – only when there's a fire, or an eviction – some kind of crisis that throws the people who live there into conflict with city officials. But there are a lot of people living their day to day lives in those tents and RVs. There are a lot of people trying to figure out how to get their needs met, under very trying circumstances. Our long-form reporter, Lucy Kang, spent more than two months visiting, recording interviews, and learning the rhythms of daily life at one place called the Community of Grace: the rules they live by, how it enforces them, how people wound up there, and where they hope to get to in the future. In November 2019, Kang won 2019 Excellence in Journalism Award for Explanatory Journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists Northern CA Chapter. Listen or read her report here.  Labor Day Special: Updates from Oakland city workers, Kaiser healthcare workers, Kentucky coal miners and women on birth strike; plus Cesar Chavez from the Pacifica Radio Archives September 2, 2019 This Labor Day, we feature several ongoing labor struggles across the Bay Area and the United States, including Oakland City workers, Kaiser healthcare workers, Kentucky coal miners, birth strikers, speeches from Cesar Chavez from the Pacifica Radio Archives, plus music on labor struggles from throughout the decades. Hosted by Cat Brooks. Listen here.   Kincade Fire: Voices from CA's largest evacuation in history October 30, 2019 The Kincade Fire displaced roughly 200,000 people from across Sonoma County since evacuation orders began last Thursday. There are over a dozen shelter locations, serving a total of over 2,000 people, and more in cars and RVs in parking lots. KPFA producers Corinne Smith (@Cocoluces) and Ariel Boone (@arielboone) went to the shelter at the Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial to bring you their stories. These are some of their voices. Listen and read here.   Impeachment Watch: Mitch Jeserich reports live from Congress as Democrats launch historic impeachment of President Trump October 2019 Our own Mitch Jeserich, host of Letters & Politics and contributer to UpFront with Monday's with Mitch, traveled to Washington DC to report on the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Listen here.   Special UpFront Series: Political Prisoners You Should Know August 2019 For the month of August we'll be highlighting specific political prisoners, featuring Leonard Peltier, one of the most infamous Native American civil rights leaders;  Dr. Mutulu Shakur, organizer, activist, acupuncturist and stepfather of the late HipHop icon Tupac Shakur; Imam Jamil Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, a worship leader, public speaker, activist and author; and a look at several women political prisoners from Rev. Joy Powell to honorable mention of freedom fighter Assata Shakur. We speak with Larry Hildes, Civil Rights Lawyer with the National Guild and Lead Counsel for Leonard Peltier. We speak with Watani Tyhemba, Criminal Investigator and member of Mutulu Shakur's Legal Team; Imam Jamil Al-Amin's attorney and son, Kairi Al-Amin; and Efyia Nwangaza (won Gaza), human rights and prisoners advocate, founder and director of the Malcolm X Center for self determination on women political prisoners. Hosted by Jeannine Etter.   Second jury rules against Monsanto, liable for Roundup causing cancer March 21, 2019 The second jury has come down in another landmark case against Monsanto, finding Roundup liable for a second man's cancer. Now, there are thousands of cases to follow. We speak with Carey Gillam (@careygillam), investigative journalist and research Director for the non-profit, US Right to Know. She's written extensively on chemical pollution, corruption, and Monsanto. Her latest book is Whitewash: The Story of Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science. Hosted by Brian Edwards-Tiekert. Listen here. ‘We've Been Too Patient:' Empowering alternative mental health solutions and challenging the biomedical model September 3, 2019 Kelechi Ubozoh is a Nigerian-American writer and mental health advocate; and L.D. Green (@lizdemigreen) is an artivist: a genderqueer writer, performer, college educator, and mental health advocate. Together they are editors of a new book, We've Been Too Patient: Voices of Radical Mental Health – Stories and Research Challenging the Biomedical Model. Hosted by Cat Brooks. Listen here.    Our work is made possible by our listeners. We only take listener donations – no advertising or corporate underwriting – in order to maintain truly independent coverage and live up to our mission of being a community powered radio. If you'd like what we do, and want to support our work in 2020, please donate to KPFA today at https://secure.kpfa.org/support/  The post Best of UpFront 2019 appeared first on KPFA.

Kairi Al-Amin, the son of H. Rap Brown, now Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, talks about his father's case and his appeal because of a prosecutor violating his right not to testify him by questioning during closing arguments. Al-Amin is 75 and with a sentence of life imprisonment

Tune in for an hour of news, information and commentary on the state of political prisoners held within the United States.Tonight one of our family members needs help. Ameejill Whitlock is the co-host and co-producer of Political Prisoner Radio which has been on air for the past three years on the Black Talk Radio Network. She started her activism on behalf of political prisoners as a teenager and the work has continued to this date. She has also been involved in Baltimore rebellion helping to organize behind the scenes as protest rocked the city over the killing of Freddy Grey.Ameejill's mother whom was in poor health and Ameejill has been providing care for, recently passed away. Like many families with long-term illnesses in the family, Ameejill and her young son may be homeless in 30 days if the bank forecloses on her mother's home. One of Ameejill's comrades, Kevin James has set up a fundraiser which hopes of raising at least $3,000 for Ameejill and her son. Those who want to contribute can do so via the PayPal email address Kajames2@gmail.com.Information has come to my attention that authorities knew or know that Imam Jamil Al-Amin who is widely know by his former name H Rap Brown when he was with SNCC and the Black Panther Party, is in fact ,innocent of the murder and assault on two Fulton County Georgia sheriff deputies. In fact, another man has confessed for the crime so why is it that those involved would rather frame our elder brother instead of seeking justice for the officers? Is it because of his name and past work and fear that he could become relevant in the current movement against police violence and terrorism?We also get an update on the case and his health via an interview his wife Mrs. Karima Al-Amin recently did with BlockReportRadio.Com.Today is the birthday of former Black Panther Ed Poindexter. Ed Poindexter and Mondo We Langa together are known as the Omaha Two, victims of a COINTELPRO plot to frame them for a bombing that killed a police officer.If you want truth and facts vs lies and fiction, support independent media.http://tinyurl.com/fundblackmedia

Our guest tonight is El-Hajj Mauri' Saalakhan of The Peace and Justice Foundation who is a Metropolitan Washington, DC-based human rights advocate; author, lecturer and poet. He will update us the case of Imam Jamil Al-Amin formerly known as H. Rap Brown of the Black Panther Party and SNCC. On Sept 9, 2015, Medical Justice posted a medical emergency concerning Imam Jamil.On September 3rd Jericho Amnesty Movement received a call from a Political Prisoner at USP Canaan concerning Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. Imam Jamil is in serious need of medical attention. His jaw is swollen to at least twice its normal size, and he is experiencing a lot of pain. Read more...While the corporate media and politicians posture on the issue of political prisoners in Cuba in efforts to prevent the economic blockade unjustly imposed by the United States, of course they are being hypocritical considering all the political prisoners held by the USA. This week an article was published showing that the corrupt former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover paid out bonuses after the Omaha Two were convicted on doctored evidence. Mondo We Langa and Ed Poindexter remain imprisoned in Nebraska.The Justice Is Not For Sale Act 2015 has been presented by Sen. Bernie Sanders, regardless of his spotty history on issues concerning justice, the bill would among other things, would abolish private prisons and jails in the United States and would restore the federal parole system to what it was before Ronald Reagan signed a bill into law requiring federal prisoners to do 85% of their time before being considered for parole. It also takes on the telecommunications and banking services that overcharges prisoners and their families with high fees. You can express your support for passage of the bill by signing the petition to Abolish Private Prisons & Jails.If you want truth and facts vs lies and fiction, support independent media.http://tinyurl.com/fundblackmedia

Download PodcastJoin us for an hour of news, information and commentary on issues related to political prisoners and prisoners of war. Our guest speaker tonight is El-Hajj Mauri' Saalakhan of The Peace and Justice Foundation who is a Metropolitan Washington, DC-based human rights advocate; author, lecturer and poet.He will update us the cases of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and Imam Jamil Al-Amin formerly known as H. Rap Brown of the Black Panther Party and SNCC.Support Independent Black Media, Make A Donation Today!

Tonight we willl hear from Maya Angelou, Joy DeGruy, Jeremiah Wright, Mumia Abu Jamal, H. Rap Brown and Sister Souljah. We Wear the Mask We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,-- This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be overwise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask. We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask! We were the mask is a poem by Paul Lawence Dunbar and it speaks pf the external hiding the internal conflict. 661-467-2407

A documentary that shows how George A. Romero gathered an unlikely team of Pittsburghers to shoot his seminal film: Night of the Living Dead (1968). DirectorRob Kuhns StarsGeorge A. Romero Fred Rogers(archive footage) H. Rap Brown(archive footage) --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gruesome-hertzogg/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gruesome-hertzogg/support

Join, The Gist of Freedom host, Preston Washington as he welcomes Civil Rights Hero Florence Tate! Mrs. Tate is still going strong, but back in the day, she was a member of Civil Rights group CORE, 1963-66, then became a SNCC fundraiser and Southern Ohio campus liaison 1966-68. In addition, she served on Dayton All iance for Racial Equality (DARE) from 1966-69.  In an article in hopeforwomen.org she said: “The country has gone backwards from the time of Dr. Martin Luther King's ‘I Have a Dream' speech; we have regressed. There's been an attempt to take things back to the pre-Civil Rights days,” says Tate. The article continued:  In her memoir, Tate draws upon her extensive experience integrating major companies like Bell Telephone, and Globe Industries, working with seminal civil rights groups including SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and CORE (Congress for Racial Equality). As the first African American female journalist at the Dayton Daily News, The work that brought her into close confidence with key activist figures — such as Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown — also eventually brought Tate, under the surveillance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation –  Tate wasn't all that surprised by her voluminous FBI file. “ Photo two women, Angela Davis and Toni Morrison

Pacifica Radio Archives and The Polemic Consortium presents "Say It LOUD: New Songs For Peace."The Polemic Consortium is Mark Torres, Gomez, BulldogMusic composed by Gomez and BulldogMixed and produced by Mark Torres  .Normal {margin:0.0pt; margin-top:0.0pt; margin-bottom:0.0pt; margin-left:0.0pt; margin-right:0.0pt; text-indent:0.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; font-size:10.0pt; color:Black; font-weight:normal; } H1 {margin:0.0pt; margin-top:12.0pt; margin-bottom:3.0pt; margin-left:0.0pt; margin-right:0.0pt; text-indent:0.0pt; font-family:"Arial"; font-size:18.0pt; color:Black; font-weight:bold; } H2 {margin:0.0pt; margin-top:12.0pt; margin-bottom:3.0pt; margin-left:0.0pt; margin-right:0.0pt; text-indent:0.0pt; font-family:"Arial"; font-size:16.0pt; color:Black; font-weight:bold; } H3 {margin:0.0pt; margin-top:12.0pt; margin-bottom:3.0pt; margin-left:0.0pt; margin-right:0.0pt; text-indent:0.0pt; font-family:"Arial"; font-size:14.0pt; color:Black; font-weight:bold; } 13. Huey Newton14. Dr. Helen Caldicott15. Che Guevara, John Coltrane, Wounded Knee, George Jackson, Mumia Abu-Jamal16. Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Adriene Rich, Langston Hughes, Alice Walker, Angela Davis17. H. Rap Brown, Fannie Lou Hamer, Elijah Muhammad, Bayard Rustin, Rosa Parks, Paul Robeson, Jean-Bertrand Aristide18. Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, United Farm Workers, Voice from the Chicano Moratorium19. Lily Tomlin