Garvey's Ghost: Black Talk

Two Stories..One Moral

Today while perusing www.blackelectorate.com I found two articles. One entitled State marker to honor 'Black Wall Street' contained the following reference:

Quote;
Two years later W.E.B. DuBois came to town. He was Washington's ideological rival, but his reaction to Durham was similarly effusive. In the journal World's Work of January 1912, DuBois wrote:

"There is in this small city a group of five thousand or more colored people, whose social and economic development is perhaps more striking than that of any similar group in the nation. ...

"A singular group in Durham where a black man may get up in the morning from a mattress made by black men, in a house which a black man built out of lumber which black men cut and planed; he may put on a suit which he bought at a colored haberdashery and socks knit at a colored mill; he may cook victuals from a colored grocery on a stove which black men fashioned; he may earn his living working for colored men, be sick in a colored hospital, and buried from a colored church; and the Negro insurance society will pay his widow enough to keep his children in a colored school. This is surely progress."

Now check the date. According to the late WEB Dubois, head negro for the NAACP clearly stated where black, social and economic ( And therefore political) independence was a sign of progress in 1912. Later there would be a great push by the NAACP to "integrate" America. As a result of the integration push and a rejection of so called 'black power" politics, The scene described above does not exist. And let's be clear Phat Farm, and Sean John, have their clothing manufactured in Asia and shipped here, the only thing 'black: about most black clothing companies is the audience that gives it cred ( on a side note, according to Black Enterprise, Sean John, is not, by BE's standards a black owned company. Neither is HARPO).

Anyways, let's look at story number 2. The Art Newspaper has an article about the financial straights that the Wright Museum of African-American History. It appears that the museum has fallen far short of it's projected visitation goals and has no endowment How come this museum has no endowment?

Quote:
The museum, named after the founder of Detroit%92s first African-American museum, was set up in the late 1980s as the world%92s largest museum of its kind. Those who had campaigned for its establishment had argued that although Detroit%92s population is predominantly black, the city was largely spending its money on projects that, they said, catered to the tastes of white suburbanites. The scheme to establish the African-American museum sailed through government, voters rubber-stamped a bond for its construction, and the museum was built.

When the huge 120,000-square-foot $38.4-million structure opened in 1997, it had no endowment and an annual budget of $6.8 million. It was expected to draw 500,000 visitors annually, but had a poorly installed collection of mediocre quality and failed to gain the stability necessary to attract gifts. Visitors have fallen dramatically from 200,000 in the inaugural year to 38,000 last year.

There is still no endowment and the museum reported a deficit of more than $2 million in 2001. Despite trimming staff, programmes, and opening hours, the museum has more than once failed to pay its employees.


With a record number of black millionairs, and a relatively large black middle class and those "Black CEO's." Why has there not been an endowment set up? Is this Museum not important to Winfrey, Parsons, Aaron or Johnson? So while we here at GG agree with Cosby's commentary, we'll send equal scorn on these rich blacks who are not doing what they are supposed to be doing as people that high on the totem pole.

But lets be real here, why are the two stories connected? Simply put, there is no longer a real concern about black economic or social development in the independent sphere. Integration has sucked out no only the talent of black communities, but it has also instilled a "could care less" attitude in the population where such things as AA museums are not only unimportant, but when done, done poorly. So we move from the excellence of Black Wall Street of 1912 to a half-assed black museum of 2004. Where's the progress in that?

links:
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=11688
http://www.herald-sun.com/durham/4-490583.html