Sometimes, you need a Black story that inspires you to struggle, but doesn't do so simply by accurately showing how fucked up things are but actually makes you feel like we can win, too -- and win not just in terms of small symbolic victories, which are important, but in actual asymmetric military conflict. That's why today, in honor of Malcolm X and Sam Greenlee, G & O talk about one of their favorite films of all time, The Spook Who Sat By the Door (1973), directed by Ivan Dixon and based on the novel of the same name by Sam Greenlee. This film is a classic of Black underground cinema that is in some ways the benchmark of how film can inspire radical, ethical actions.
And we just learned that Paul Mooney, the writer-actor-comedian and important Black thinker, passed away in Oakland, Cal. As FRELIMO used to say, "a luta continua... the struggle continues..."
Click HERE to listen to this episode
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BLACK THOUGHT: An Entry and an Exit: Continuing the Collective Black Freedom Struggle
According to his NY Times obituary, Sam Greenlee, author of The Spook Who Sat by the Door, was defiant about his success: "If I never made another film, look at the film I made.”
On certain days, we have multiple reasons to think about our elders and ancestors in struggle, and we remember the examples and tools our ancestors left behind for how we, the living, can continue our struggle.
Today, May 19, was the date in 1925 when Malcolm X was born in Omaha, Neb. And of course, one way to honor the legacy of struggle of brother Malcolm is by discussing a film that is also part of that legacy of struggle: The Spook Who Sat by the Door. The 1973 film, directed by Ivan Dixon, was based on the novel of the same name written by Sam Greenlee. As it happens, May 19, 2014, is also the day that Sam Greenlee passed away in the city of his birth, Chicago.
Today we commemorate an entry and an exit. But in doing so, i think we should also remember to honor our ancestors in struggle while they are alive.
In an interview he gave late in his life, Greenlee said he was basically broke and living on food stamps and assistance. He said that even Black studies departments wouldn't hire him after Jesse Jackson, the civil rights activist and politician, basically whitelisted him. Greenlee gave respect to Jackson for the risks he had taken in the long Black freedom struggle, while also critiquing the lasting negative impact Jackson had on his life, his family's life, and on the film Greenlee and Dixon made. As with many others who risked it all for our struggle while young, only to later sell out our freedom struggle, what Greenlee tells us about Jackson can serve as an invitation for us to consider the ethics of Black leadership and how and why so many Black leaders, especially bourgeois ones, readily succumb to forces that turn them against the more radical elements of our movements, especially those coming from Black working class and poor communities.
I also can't help but think about the fact that his novel is now being made into a mini-series by Lee Daniels, director of films like Precious and The Butler and of the TV shows Empire and Star -- one who has stood on the shoulders of previous Black filmmakers and had no shortage of financial success, and one who has made a career of risking little or nothing in telling stories of Black life. I hope all good things for Daniels' remounting of this film. But i already know that he has not paid a cost for making shows and films that help inspire radical Black struggle in anything like the way Greenlee and Dixon did with Spook.
Indeed, Daniels' films have generally been negative toward Black traditions of radicalism. I doubt Daniels will be poor at the end of his life -- and there is no shame in that. But Greenlee was poor at the end of his life because he was being punished for the risks he took in making books and films like Spook. We should always believe in the possibility for people to change from what they have done previously, and so we should pay attention to see how Daniels handles this film and how he deals with the family of Sam Greenlee, who surely paid a significant cost to create what Daniels will now reap the rewards from.
But this is not to pick on Daniels and Jackson. There is also a larger point that the risks our elders and ancestors have taken required great daring. We do not take the same risks in simply recreating what they did. This does not mean that we are free of the constraints that bound previous generations. It means those constraints have shifted in how they are being applied. Spook was and is powerful because of its capacity to inspire struggle -- and its history of doing so -- in very concrete ways. This is not easy to do. It requires an intimate understanding of the shape of our oppression and the tools we can use for resisting that oppression right now. In doing justice to Spook and Greenlee's legacy, we have to find new ways to threaten the racist structure that are at least as effective today as Spook was in 1973. Since our movement is different today than it was in 1973 -- and so is our oppression -- we must keep learning and keep trying.
Finally, when we're considering the meaning of May 19 we can think about ancestors and elders in general and how they're constantly coming into and going out of the world -- sometimes known, sometimes unknown, sometimes on different days, sometimes on the very same day. We know only a fraction of those who have left the world, and we hope to learn of even more ancestors' stories because stories can inspire. But we also need to be attentive that new ancestors for our struggle are constantly being made. Who are they? We don't yet know. And so maybe the real lesson of May 19 is to live as though all Black youths, adults, and elders -- like a young man born today in 1925 or an old man who passed away today in 2014 -- might help lead and inspire our struggles.
Please check out The Spook Who Sat by the Door HERE.
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