Muhiyidin d’Baha’s murder in New Orleans leaves the Charleston’s activist community, which he worked in, conflicted with and challenged, in shock. Among the duties of those who knew and cared for him, the preservation of his writing and other records should be one of our first concerns. He was a thinker and a writer. He cannot be remembered without preserving the substance of his thought. This work needs to begin immediately.
Barrye Brown of the Avery Research Center informs me that they’ve established a vertical file folder on Mu and are now welcoming material on his activities and his writing. They’re collecting press clippings, examples of his work, images and other records. You can reach her at. (843) 953-7613
The struggle for human rights in the South is marked by young people who headed home in the dark and never got where they were going. Southern society is cruel, violent and forces disassociation on anyone challenging its structure of authority. As a transit advocate, I understand making gathering, community and the creation of subversive social structures impossible for most people is one of the core mechanisms by which power is maintained. The slave patrols and KKK riders of centuries ago existed to be sure people couldn’t meet at night to plan their journey to liberation. Reading and writing were also restricted. Even today, our Transit systems shut down at night making attending a political community meeting impossible for most working class people. Transit is about taking people to work and about shipping them safely back to isolation when they’re no longer useful.
The process or marginalization continues in the historic record, where the thought and words of those who dare to differ in Charleston are often erased. Recovering even fragments can often be nearly impossible years later.
Muhiyidin d’Baha worked with us on a few occasions on the transit issue, but I don’t think he considered it sufficiently trans formative for the time and effort it consumes. He demanded big, revolutionary change. I work with Best Friends of Lowcountry transit to try to get bus stop shelters installed. The people who wait in those shelters don’t get wet when it rains, but I recognize that benefits their oppressors. I want the oppressed to be warm and dry. Mu wanted them to push back at the people who refuse to pay them a living wage, exile them to housing miles from where they work and consign them to a commute which takes an hour and a half to travel 10 miles.
Like many younger adults who can’t or won’t wait on our inadequate transit systems, Muhiyidin d’Baha was using a bicycle to get around town. If he was acting according to his character in New Orleans, he was going to meetings, talking to people and participating in events. He was far too impatient to wait for 45 minutes on a bus or transfer while the work of liberation was standing still. You simply can’t be a revolutionary at the speed of Southern public transit. That left him exposed to violence. The video shows him walking down the street, pushing his bike just before he was shot.
Muhiyidin d’Baha could have gone to work and bought a car, but he recognized that trap. Half of his life would have been spent paying for it, sitting in traffic in it and trying to find a place to park it. He was busy and mobile and young. His thought, records and writing are scattered across the homes of friends, the insubstantial internet and some hard drives. It is being lost as we speak.
Now, he needs neither car, not bus nor bicycle. He will not attend another meeting or rally in the Holy City. However, his story is far from over.
Denmark Vessey is largely a mystery because the record of his planned slave rebellion was destroyed. Many of the people in Charleston who have struggled for social justice have likewise been forgotten because their historic record has either been destroyed or marginalized. Our shared history exists to serve the needs our tourism and real estate marketing. As George Orwell observed in 1984, those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past can control the future. Muhiyidin d’Baha’s life an activity here is varied, complex and too place at a time or exceptional import. It should not slip down the memory hole.
It is time for Muhiyidin d’Baha’s friends to collect the written materials, images and information connected with his work. It will not persist long on its own. As permanent at Google, the internet and Facebook posts may appear to his peers, this material, the substance of his thought, will slip away. He, and those who struggled with him, may be defined as a bump on the road to a larger and more lucrative tourism industry in a city that’s history can be defined as three centuries of parties separated by occasional, insignificant historic drama. In this Charleston History houses and furniture are more important that people and the value of people are largely measured by their houses and furniture.
We need to immediately begin to collect this material into the hands of a motivated archive and assist in it’s organization. Even though he has not yet been buried, this work will not wait. Memory dims. Things get lost. The next eruption of murderous violence may destroy our focus. The content of hard drives and websites can evaporate or disappear into a dumpster. If we lose this material, we lose the most enduring part of his legacy. We continue weaker and allow his opponents to define him and us.
The result will not be the thick folders of mature materials Muhiyidin d’Baha would have left us in thirty or forty years. He did not live to complete his record. However there is meaning here too precious to lose.
If you have materials, please print them out on heavy paper and bring them to the memorial drum circle planned in Hampton Park on Saturday. That will allow us to begin the work. Please preserve any electronic materials you have access to.
Thursday, Feb 8, 2018 · 7:29:27 PM +00:00 · PeninsulaProgCHS
Barrye Brown of the Avery Research Center informs me that they’ve established a vertical file folder on Mu and are now welcoming material on his activities and his writing. They’re collecting press clippings, examples of his work, images and other records. You can reach her at. (843) 953-7613