This month, Margaret Walker Alexander's For My People baritone Willie Jones, MaKonde Sculpture Officer Alex McNeil.

A review of Black Pride and music by The Great Escape are all part of Mississippi Black Life For my people everywhere, singing their slave songs repeatedly, their dirges and their ditties and their blues and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown God, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power for my people.

Lending their strength to the years, to the gone years, and the now years and the maybe years washing, ironing, cooking, scrubbing, sewing, mening, hoeing, plowing, digging, planting, pruning, patching, dragging along, never gaining, never reaping, never knowing, and never understanding.

For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama backyards playing, baptizing and preaching and doctor, and jail, and soldier and school and mama, and cooking, and playhouse and concert and store and hair and Miss Choomby and company for the cramp, bewildered years we went to school to learn to know the reasons why and the answers to, and the people who, and the places where, and the days when in memory of the bitter hours when we discovered that we were black and poor and small and different.

And nobody cared.

Nobody wondered, and nobody understood.

For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things, to be man and woman, to laugh and sing and dance and drink their songs and religion and success to marry their playmates and bad children, and then die of consumption and anemia and lynching For my people.

Thronging 40, the seventh Street in Chicago, Lennox Avenue, new in New York, and Rampart Street in New Orleans.

Lost, disinherited, happy people filling the cabarets and taverns in other people's pockets, needing bread and shoes and milk and land and money and something, something all our own.

For my people.

Walking blindly, spreading joy, losing time, being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when burdened, drinking when hopeless.

Tied and shackle and tangle among the unseen creatures who tower over us.

Oly and laugh for my people.

Blundering and grouping and floundering in the dark of churches and schools and clubs and societies, committees and conventions, councils and conventions.

Distressed and disturbed and deceived and devoured by the money hungry glory craving, leeches prayed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty by false prophet and holy believer.

For my people standing, staring, trying to fashion a better way from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding.

Trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people, all the faces, all the adams and eves, and their countless generations.

Let a new earth rise.

Let another world be born.

Let a bloody peace be written in the sky.

Let a second generation full of courage is your forth.

Let a people loving freedom come to growth.

Let a beauty full of healing and the strength of final clenching.

Be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood.

Let the martial songs be written.

Let the dirges disappear.

Let a race of men now rise and take control.

During the time when I was coming up, uh, I used to look at the policemans as it used to come down the streets.

Um, solo motor.

After the year went, you know how the years passed, uh, I just got more industry in it and, and I tried fuzz.

And by the help of the Lord, uh, I was blessed to get the job.

If it wasn't for the police department, by me being on it, I don't think I would be far as I am now, today I have a hobby, and my hobby is weight lifting, which is bodybuilding.

One night my partner and I, we was driving down Lynch Street and all of a sudden we saw some boys running from the service station.

And so we decided to check it out.

We found one, he was, uh, going through the window, and, uh, we caught him by his leg and pulled him out.

And so we, uh, arrested him and they found him, uh, guilty and sent him to the, uh, Oakland Training School.

And he stayed there for a while.

And after he gotten out, got in touch with me, he heard that I was lifting weights or weight lifting, you know, and he wanted to also build his body up.

And, and I said, well, uh, you know, you've been in some trouble before.

And I said, um, if you stay out of trouble, well, I, I, I take up time with him.

And he said, oh yeah, I'll do that.

I'll be glad to.

And so I started picking him up and he started lifting I and showing him what to do and the exercise.

And he liked it.

And, and, uh, and so when I decided to build a help club, he's the one that runs it for me when I'm, you know, when I'm at work.

So one day he came to me and said, you know what?

He said, I never thought that anyone would trust me to, to, to operate a business like this with the money and your health food and stuff like that.

And, and he really proud of it.

And right now he helps me out a whole lot.

And he also staying in school.

Then he started stroking down here to his neck.

Then he started shaving at all.

Now just get the outside line lines, even start shaving it.

Uh, during the time when, uh, they had a art contest at Jackson College, about, it was 1951 or 54, I entered the contest and I won first prize.

Uh, that was, that was my ambition to become a commercial artist.

But I just lost all interest in it.

Right now, uh, I find myself sometimes be sitting down reading.

I find myself sketching because I have a daughter and seem like she's taking up the hobby and she love to draw.

And I get with her and we sketch pictures out.

We gotta get the shape and everything.

You take your time.

Okay, now put a line down by cheek bone.

I make it look like a cheek bone, it, it just a, a god given talent, but I just hadn't developed it like I should.

But, but as far as just getting serious back out, I don't think I will.

My ambition with the police department.

Maybe one day, uh, I would like to be an instructor of the gym someday.

Uh, teach people how to exercise, lose weight, and how to gain and build their bodies up and stuff like that.

That's my ambition with the police department.

(music) ♪♪ ♪♪ Your comments and suggestions for future programs are invited.

Please write to Black Life Post Office.

Draw 1101 Jackson, Mississippi 3 9 2 0 5.

Black people are constantly demonstrating their pride in being black and struggling to be seen for what they are and what they can do.

Julius Hobson and Janet Harris have written a book, Black Pride, that tells of the struggles that black people have had and the movements that have helped them to reach an identity and also to find a role in America.

Janet Harris is a black writer and a civil rights worker in New York City.

Julius Hobson is an economist with the Social Security Administration in Washington District of Columbia.

He has the honor of being a first black, who was an elected official in Washington District of Columbia.

The book tells of the many struggles that the blacks have had to prove that they are human.

The search for freedom involved many people and many movements.

The references used in this book are many.

If you should read this book, you will want to find out more about Black Americans.

The book begins with the scene of a can-do group who are meeting in the headquarters of a civic administration of organization where they're having a development of their neighborhood.

This young group dressed in dashikis.

Some are wearing the new Afro hair dress.

These youngsters are interested in the posters they are making to advertise some of the works of black writers, the plays of which will be shown in some of the black theaters.

The author states that these young people are searching for what all Americans should enjoy full citizenship and a recognition as human beings.

The author covers in a limited way, much history of the black people.

He covers the depressions, the protests, discriminations, and many of the contributions that have helped them to secure freedom.

The struggles of the blacks have gone on for many years.

These struggles began before the slaves were even delivered to the African poets.

Many slaves jumped from the waters and were drowned.

Some of them were able to take over the ships and sail back to freedom.

The search for freedom continued through slavery, through the Civil war years, through the reconstruction period, and even continues until today.

The writer discusses the Dred Scott Case.

In this case, the government was very partial told the Dred told the decision of the people.

The courts passed laws to support the government's decision.

The belief in black, in black inferiority goes back for many years in history.

Many blacks came to this new land as explorers.

They came voluntarily.

Many years afterwards, the English settled in Virginia.

They brought blacks over to be their servants.

White debtors were brought over as indentured servants also.

After working a number of years, they were given land and some goods to start a new life in this new land.

This did not work out favorable for the blacks.

They were reduced to servants and slavery.

They were not able to get away.

They did not last long.

The economic conditions commanded much help and many slaves to do the work.

Slaves from a great business, the laws were passed to support this.

There were many people who opposed slavery.

Benjamin Banneker, a mathematician and astronomer was against slavery.

Abigail Adams and Tom Paine spoke out against slavery.

Nat Turner and Harriet Tubman were slaves who protested.

Frederick Douglass A slave was a great leader of the abolition.

Not only was there resistant to the slavery, there were free men who opposed discriminations.

Richard Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church because he was denied rights in the white Episcopal church.

Booker T. Washington was born just before slaves was ended.

He struggled hard and received an education.

He founded a school in Tuskegee, Alabama where he taught the blacks to be skillful laborers.

His philosophy of separate schools and other compromising ideas clashed with those of W.E.B.

Dubois.

Dubois was born just after slavery.

Because of his excellent ability, he received a good education.

He spoke out against the troubles of the black people through his writings, his lectures, and through organizations.

There are many civil rights activists who lived in Mississippi.

The movements that they executed did much toward helping the blacks to have better self-respect for better economic conditions and better housing.

Many other characters are not mentioned in this report.

It does not minimize the work that they did.

Today's movement is a period of a new image for the blacks in gaining recognition in America.

Langston Hughes said, color is to be worn like a banner for the proud.

Music Sweet little Jesus boy.

Sweet little Jesus boy.

They made you be born in a manger sweet little holy child we didn't know who you was.

Didn't know you come to save us, Lord, to take our sins away.

Our eyes was blind, We could not see We didn't know who you was Long time ago You was born Born in a manger, Lord Sweet little Jesus boy The world treats you mean, Lord Treats me mean.

too But that's how things are down here We don't know who you is You done told us how We is a-trying Master, you done showed us how Even when you were dying Just seems like you can't do right Look how we treated you But please, Sir, forgive us, Lord We don't know it was you Sweet little Jesus boy Born a long time ago Sweet little holy child Sweet little holy child And we don't know who you were Like the intertwining shapes of this tree, A snake-like dance of rhythmic lines against the bright blue sky of Africa.

So too the lines and patterns of this African sculpture by a tribe they call Makonde, who carved out rounded cylinders from a black wooded ebony tree smoothed the lines into interlacing interlocking patterns with arms and legs and tails and long, smooth bodies twined together.

A part of one becoming an arm or leg of the next, Making a never ending cycle marked only by the occasional abruptness of the monkey mask like faces.

The Makonde A tribe that roams both Kenya and Tanzania, where miles of tangled thorn bush make a jungle barrier along the African coast.

Where inland grasses lie in dusty white by noonday Suns marked here and there by scrubby trees eroded into tangled shapes and topped short by lack of rain.

And a visitor must look again.

Or they might miss the great beasts that may suddenly appear beasts, which natives sometimes carved from sawed off limbs of wood like crocodiles, entwined with other forms, joined an A rhythmic spirit dance.

And only strangely real.