When Eartha Kitt Made Lady Bird Cry
A Rant in Appreciation by Chitown Kev
As I have been seething in a bit of anger over “a little somethin’ somethin,’” I began to think of various instances where black people spoke their truths and paid a price for it.
I immediately thought of Eartha Kitt’s encounter with President Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson at a White House luncheon in 1968 where Eartha Kitt spoke out against the Vietnam War.
I did notice a couple of stories in the DK archives about the passing of Eartha Kitt from colon cancer on Christmas Day 2008 but, as Black Kos was probably on hiatus at that time, I’m not sure that the story has been told specifically here at Black Kos so…
I prefer the defiant and “lowkey reading” version told by B. Alexandria Pania at The Visibility Project:
Everyone knows Eartha Kitt for her famous Christmas classic “Santa Baby,” her unapologetic sex appeal and her phenomenal performing skills. Yet few know that decades before she was the hilarious villain, Yzma, from The Emperor’s New Groove, she was blackballed for lowkey reading the First Lady of the United States, Lady Bird Johnson, for filth. In 1968, Kitt was asked how we [read: middle to upper class white women] can fix the problem of juvenile delinquency in the U.S. [read: how can we get the youth to act right without actually fixing any systemic issues but still feeling better about ourselves].
And Miss Kitt SAID to Lady Bird Johnson at that luncheon in The White House:
“You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street. They will take pot and they will get high. They don’t want to go to school because they’re going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam.”
Of course, no one tells the story of the White House incident and her subsequent blackballing by the Johnson (and Nixon) administrations better than Eartha Kitt herself
Ms. Kitt tells the story in more detail in this next clip posted by The Visionary Project (with uneven audio)
Seymour Hersh’s January 3, 1975 New York Times report on Eartha Kitt’s CIA dossier is here.
Some things, of course, I could not resist looking up.
I can’t help but to think how literally Ms. Eartha Kitt lived these words:
‘No matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how much coin you earn for us, we will put you in your place or put you out of the place you have somehow, albeit with our permission, achieved. You will be fired from your job, sent away in disgrace, and—who knows?—maybe sentenced and jailed to boot. In short, unless you do as we say (i.e., assimilate at once), your expletives belong to us.’"
Toni Morrison, 1998
I know that Ms. Morrison’s words apply for any black person in America whether they are an anonymous (and slightly misinformed) black protestor, an internationally famous singer and actress, or even if you are the first black president.
I can’t afford to forget that.
And I am truly appreciative of all who, like Ms. Eartha Kitt, have the courage to say their truth about their lives without much regards to the consequences, great and small.
I’m through with this.
(I know, I took some liberties that I probably should not have taken here and violated a bit of protocol in BK today. I needed to say this here. And, of course, the opinions expressed here are 100% mine and not reflective of the Black Kos community.)
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Sorry today’s round up was swallowed by the GOS (great orange Satan), I’ll try and refind the stories and post them on Friday — dopper0189
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
Brig. General Richard Neal caused an uproar when he described enemy territory as "Indian Country" during the first Gulf War. Military Historians at West Point, Annapolis and The Citidel surmised the term was first used during Viet Nam, but regular academic historians cite its use during the French/ Indian Wars. Whereas the indigenous peoples saw themselves as stewards of the land, the eurocentric fear of Landscape and the Wilderness percolates in the military and dominionist corporate mindset to this day. "Indian Country" is scary and unordered, a region to be conquered or to be killed in, far away from the ordered, verdent hedge enclosed pastures and exact garden rows of Home. "Indian Country" is hostile, dangerous and wild; and "Indian Country" must be tamed by any means necessary.
There is a heart-felt affinity, though, for those labeled as "Indian Country" by those in Indian Country. No matter who or where in the world "Indian Country" is.
Envoy to Palestine
I've come to this one grassy hill in Ramallah, off Tokyo Street, to a place a few red anemones & a sheaf of wheat on Darwish's grave.
A borrowed line transported me beneath
a Babylonian moon & I found myself
lucky to have the shadow of a coat
as warmth, listening to a poet's song
of Jerusalem, the hum of a red string
Caesar stole off Gilgamesh's lute.
I know a prison of sunlight on the skin.
The land I come from they also dreamt
before they arrived in towering ships
battered by the hard Atlantic winds.
Crows followed me from my home.
My coyote heart is an old runagate
redskin, a noble savage, still Lakota,
& I knew the bow before the arch.
I feel the wildflowers, all the grasses
& insects singing to me. My sacred dead
is the dust of restless plains I come from,
& I love when it gets into my eyes & mouth
telling me of the roads behind & ahead.
I go back to broken treaties & smallpox,
the irony of barbed wire. Your envoy
could be a reprobate whose inheritance
is no more than a swig of firewater.
The sun made a temple of the bones
of my tribe. I know a dried-up riverbed
& extinct animals live in your nightmares
sharp as shark teeth from my mountains
strung into this brave necklace around
my neck. I hear Chief Standing Bear saying to Judge Dundy, "I am a man," & now I know why I'd rather die a poet than a warrior, tattoo & tomahawk.
-- Yusef Komunyakaa "Envoy to Palestine"
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