One : The Life and Music of James Brown (9781101561102) (37 page)

Sammy Davis Jr. was next to wade in the water. While McKissick raised funds from Republicans for Soul City, the song and dance man was appearing at the 1972 Republican Convention in Miami. He had been on the stage at Marine Stadium for several hours already, emceeing a Young Voters for Nixon rally, and was about to introduce a rock band. Protocol was that the president did not appear in public at a convention until he had formally received the nomination. But in Miami, a Secret Serviceman whispered to the entertainer that Nixon was heading to the stage for a surprise appearance. And that’s how it happened, one of the most famous images of the year, and of Nixon’s entire presidency: a stone-gas Davis mugging and hugging an aghast Richard Nixon.

Wire services ate it up. The impact was instant. Robert Johnson, executive editor of
Jet
, said the picture inspired the biggest response in
Jet
’s history (and
Jet
had published pictures of the mutilated body of lynching victim Emmett Till). The feedback was
not positive. Davis got booed weeks later at the National Black Expo in Chicago, and then came the death threats from angry African Americans who could not believe Davis was supporting a president who, to their eyes, was no friend at all.

The vice president, Spiro Agnew, was out on the trail making appeals to whites with statements like, “If you’ve seen one city slum, you’ve seen them all,” and “There are people in our society who should be separated and discarded.” Nixon knew he wasn’t going to win more black votes than George McGovern, his Democratic opponent, but he knew the value of peeling off a few per-centage points.

So he launched what could be called his Soul Initiative, a courting of prominent figures who spoke to the hopes and dreams of black Americans. McKissick was part of it, and so was Davis. Football superstar Jim Brown and basketballer Wilt Chamberlain got on board. So, too, did James Brown.

Crucial to reeling Brown in to the Nixon camp was the president’s special assistant, Robert Brown, a public relations man who had worked behind the scenes in Washington for years. By one estimate, he had been responsible for channeling almost a bil-lion dollars of federal aid to black colleges, businesses, and towns in the South. Nixon’s strategy was to appease white voters by not challenging segregation, and funding separate black institutions was a savvy way of doing it—if he picked up some black votes as well, even better.

Robert Brown had been in contact with the singer since 1971, when he paid a visit to his radio station in Baltimore, WEBB. The two began a dialog, and the special assistant drew him in. He visited him down in Augusta, and when the singer was in Washington, he lunched several times with members of Nixon’s staff in the White House lunch room. “He felt some of the things Mr. Nixon was doing were good things he believed in,” the aide explained. “He was leaving the door open. I just kept talking to him and calling, had him in there to meet with the president, you know.”

Early in 1972, a
roster of black celebrities threw a tribute dinner for Robert Brown in Washington, a party that was also a recruitment event for the Soul Initiative. Davis emceed the night. In attendance were CORE’s Roy Innis, McKissick, Republican Senator Edward Brooke, Jackie Robinson, and the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. The politico went out of his way that evening to make the singer feel important.

Also making Brown feel important was that the aide set up a meeting between Brown and the president in the fall of 1972. From secret recordings Nixon made of conversations in the White House, we know what was said during their October encounter. A few hours before their appointment, Nixon is heard complaining about how many meetings he’d already had with African Americans. “I’ve
done
the blacks!” he vented. “I don’t want to continue to do them.” Questioning the value of such sessions, Nixon declared, “I don’t want any more blacks, and I don’t want any more Jews, between now and the election.” Unfortunately for Nixon, just as he was saying this, James Brown was heading for the White House. To bring him up to speed, an assistant told the president about the singer: “James Brown apparently is popular with young people, he’s
black
…”

“What am I supposed to do, sit and talk to him?” Nixon asked.

Robert Brown ushered the entertainer’s party into the Oval Office: the singer, his father, Charles Bobbit, and federal marshal James F. Palmer. “He has a fantastic string of hits,” Robert Brown tells Nixon by way of introduction, and a game president responds, “Oh, I know.” Nixon keeps the plates spinning, offering the visitors a tour of the room.

In about ten minutes Nixon signals it’s time for the party to go, but right then James Brown steps forward with something he wants to express. His voice lost the laughter it was full of a moment before, and the room goes silent. Brown speaks slowly and measures his words precisely, and there is a visceral anguish in his voice. He tells the president how important it is to a great many people that the nation make Martin Luther King’s birthday a national holiday.

A movement to honor King’s birthday had begun days after his murder, and it would be many years before it was finally signed into law by Ronald Reagan. Commemorating the day mattered to Brown; he’d taken out a two-page ad in
Jet
calling for legislators to put it on the calendar.

Nixon nervously agrees that he wants to do something “appropriate.”

“I knew him, of course not well,” the president adds, before looking at Robert Brown for a hand. The aide steps in to say that the current time was not right for the president to declare a new national holiday, that it would look like pandering right now. Perhaps after the election.

Now it really was time to go. “Good luck and much success…” Nixon says. Brown, though, doesn’t budge, and brings up King again. Nixon acts like he doesn’t hear him, continuing to the door “—and keep working those kids!”

From the White House the singer went directly to the headquarters of the Committee to Reelect the President, where he told a group of assembled reporters that Nixon was his guy. “You know, in Georgia we look folks in the eye, and I kept my eyes on the eyes of the president and he’s saying something.” Acknowledging Robert Brown’s influence, he said, “Seeing blacks in high places and realizing that they’re taking care of business, I began to change my mind about the course of this administration.”

Nixon, Brown explained, had “done a lot of things [for blacks],” and then named federal funding for the study of sickle cell anemia.

He talked a bit more, finishing with, “I’m not a sellout artist. I never got no government grant, I never asked for one, don’t want one. I’m not selling out I’m selling in, dig it?”

Events followed quickly. He was playing Baltimore October 15, and Troy Brailey, a black state delegate, called for a boycott of the show. “Soul Brother Number One has sold out,” Brailey said, predicting the Nixon endorsement “will bring his image to a very low ebb, especially among the young people who look up to him.” The
concert was picketed, and only 2,500 tickets were sold for the 13,000-seat venue. Howard University’s student radio station broadcast a scathing attack. The Congressional Black Caucus released a statement criticizing all the black celebrities who were backing Nixon, singling out Brown by name.

“The emotionalism and division are so intense that some blacks fear that the disunity may leave damaging scars that would take years to heal,” said
The New York Times
. The
Times
also reported on a strong suspicion “that the President is buying black support through the Administration’s black capitalism programs.”

No way would he change his mind, especially once the protests started in. At least one adviser had urged him not to make the endorsement, worried about his fans’ response. But Brown was a man of his word, and he was set to ride the endorsement all down the line. Days after his press conference, he released a telegram in which he again publicly declared his support. In Augusta he continued campaigning for Nixon, taking officials from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and a rep from the Small Business Administration on a tour of local drug and alcohol treatment facilities.

With singer Hank Ballard by his side, Brown held a press conference to explain himself and yet again bestow his blessing on the president. He dismissed the Baltimore boycott, which he declared, “didn’t hurt us.” A letter from Nixon was passed out to reporters, in which the president said, “The mark of a man” was standing firm in the face of “recent unjust pressure.” Brown repeated that he had lobbied Nixon to make King’s birthday a national holiday; when he did that, special assistant Robert Brown hastily seized the microphone to make sure everybody understood the president hadn’t taken any position on the subject.

From then until the election in November, Brown was responding to attacks. In the Newark
Afro-American
, a columnist said he had an application to buy a Newark radio station pending before the Federal Communications Commission, and suggested he supported Nixon
in order to obtain the station. In Cleveland, activist Angela Davis told an audience, “There is no way Sammy Davis Jr., or James Brown, or any of the others could have been thinking of the needs of their people. They were simply interested in getting into that game for themselves.”

Charles Bobbit, Brown’s lieutenant, threw himself into damage control. He could see how badly it was all playing out. “Brown is not supporting President Nixon in order to give or receive money to or from the reelection campaign committee,” he said. “He is not supporting Nixon, the man, but his program and what it has done for blacks.” Brown took out a four-page advertisement in
Jet
to further explain, saying he was a black businessman with dozens of employees, and that Nixon’s policies were good for entrepreneurs around the country.

At the election night party in Washington’s Shoreham Hotel, Sammy Davis Jr. sang “The Candy Man” to Republican supporters. Later, he was interviewed by CBS’s Daniel Schorr and Michele Clark, who grilled him about the black community’s criticism and the hug that went around the world. Tenuously, Davis offered that he “hoped this would make the President more responsive to blacks.”

Just beyond the camera’s view, Brown was studying the interview. A reporter asked how he felt about Davis’s ambition to shape Nixon’s civil rights policies. No way, Brown said. “He doesn’t have enough clout. I wish Jesse Jackson had come on over. He could deal with the man. It all falls on me. I’m the one he’s gonna be talking to. If I didn’t believe that he was going to be coming through, I wouldn’t be coming down straight. I don’t shuck and jive when it comes to what’s best for my people.” After that, Brown, Floyd Mc-Kissick, and other black supporters of the president moved to Robert Brown’s hotel suite and watched election results come in.

Brown could have predicted a harsh reaction to his support of Nixon
before
the election, but the growing intensity of criticism
after
Nixon was reelected had to be a surprise. In December, a columnist for the
Pittsburgh Courier
wrote, “It will take more than someone yelping ‘I’m black and I’m Proud’
five minutes before he gives it up to the oppressor to fool Black folks.” That was only the beginning.

Near year’s end, Brown played a show in Knoxville, Tennessee. The scene afterward was utterly familiar: handshakes with local celebs, smiles and autographs for fans. An off-duty police officer working security brusquely told Brown to get out. It was time to close the hall.

The conversation with fans continued and the officer returned with more guards, again demanding that Brown leave. The singer responded, “That’s no way to tell a man to get out,” but, soon, everybody did leave. Brown and two aides were standing in a parking lot when they were attacked by Knoxville police responding to a call from the guards. Two Brown employees were arrested for assaulting officers, and the singer was booked for disorderly conduct. When they returned to Augusta the next morning, they were bloodied and their clothing was ripped.

The next day, Brown told reporters his men were jumped from behind while he was counseling a group of young blacks to keep off drugs and stay in school. He announced he was filing a $1 million civil rights suit against the Knoxville police. The radio station he owned in Knoxville, WJBE, stopped playing music and went open mic on the event, airing calls from listeners who shared stories of their own interactions with local law enforcement. The pressure led to a march on city hall and then reforms in Knoxville police policies. The city dropped its charges against him; two years later, his suit was dismissed in U.S. District Court.

A letter to the editor of
Jet
raised a telling point. “I saw where James Brown made a statement that he supported President Nixon because this is a free country. But I guess after the incident of Sunday night, Dec. 19, he found out this country is not as free as he thought. And I would like to know how he feels about this country now and how free he thinks it is.”

The subsequent inaugural festivities for Nixon promised to be the most integrated yet, by Washington’s standards. Word went out
that Sammy Davis Jr. would be singing at one ball, and Brown, along with The Mike Curb Congregation and Tommy Roe, at another.

In the end, both were no-shows. Davis begged off, saying he had the flu. As for Brown’s absence,
Jet
said that he was tired.

At least in spirit, though, the star was present. “Let us remember that America was built not by government, but by people—not by welfare, but by work,” the president said in his second inaugu-ral address. “Government must learn to take less from people so that people can do more for themselves.” It was gospel to the man who had sung, “I don’t want nobody to give me nothing, open up the door, I’ll get it myself.”

He knew firsthand how white patrons expected great shows of gratitude for every black they let in the door, as if fair access was a privilege. He didn’t want to be on the
Ed Sullivan Show
because he was black; he knew he deserved his slot.