During the Sixties, young black men and women clenched their fists and, responding to the question “What time is it?” energetically, boisterously and in unison, answered: “It’s nation time!”  So it went back then …continuous queries and exhortations - and always the answer was the same: “It’s Nation time!”

Perhaps, without consciously being aware of the inherent historical modality of our behavior, the passionate and emotion-laden response was in keeping with the Black tradition of “call and response.” Yes, ours was not only a “political moment” in those days but a “spiritual and ancestral” one as well; one that swelled us all with pride. Few, I believe can argue, even retrospectively, against the notion that during those hectic days there was a commitment by the young to the liberation of our people from the tyranny and oppression heaped upon African people by those who ruled the nation. Indeed History tells us that those who governed feared what they believed was an inevitable revolution and, surreptitiously, embarked on a strategy to destroy those who would make revolution.

So,” What time was it?” … It was nation time.

Today that question is rarely, if ever, asked.  And, I suspect, that were it to be posed to an aging activist of yesteryear who, nostalgically remembering those days of sacrifice, pain and yes, death, would dare to raise his frail arms and answer “It’s Nation time!?” Sadly, more than likely, after the question was posed, the only other answer he would hear would be the emptiness of silence.

My concern is that the concept of a Black Nation within the Nation has all but disappeared – vanished, as if white America had successfully exorcised a demon that ate at its entrails. The vision of a chocolate-colored necklace of cities strewn across America, controlled and governed by Black folks, a concrete expression of Black Nationalism, is now no more. It has, seemingly, been seduced by the monsters of materialism, the programmed pursuit of individual aggrandizement, and the facile acceptance of the socio-cultural hegemony of white America. It may not be too farfetched to suggest that we, as a nation of Black people, may well have, collectively, become a newer, slightly different edition, not of Ellison’s “The Invisible Man” but of something entirely new: an invisible people - a self-imposed non-political presence in America.

Sadly, one no longer hears the call or the response of yesteryear. Instead, ringing from the rafters of athletic fields, as Black men and women win medals for the nation in which they were once held in physical and now psychological bondage, one hears the cry “U.S.A.” …. “U.S.A.,” as if the athletes on the field - and their families and friends in the stands - were indeed equal members of the white nation.

In truth, many of the Black voices of yesterday were silenced by J. Edgar Hoover’s counter intelligence program, a program of “dirty tricks” designed to cause havoc among Black and progressive groups. It did not matter to Hoover that his fabricated lies and misinformation caused the death of a number of young Blacks who were deemed “sell outs” enemies, and traitors by those who believed the fabrications placed by Hoover’s agents in their midst.  For a time, it was almost impossible to say who worked for the government and who did not because there was a shadow hovering over the movement, an ominous portent of the present and the future - the shadow of Hoover’s program of death, deceit, and destruction.

Were we wrong then? Are we wrong now for still believing that black people comprise a nation whose History and culture must be kept and nurtured?  Is it possible for Black people to be subsumed within the fabric of the American cultural motif and not lose a sense of self, of functional presence, of identity?  If so, is it desirable? Conversely, is it possible or desirable for Black people to have a center of independent power within the paradigm of the American power structure and might?  Were the young of yesterday simply naive, apolitical dreamers, yearning for something that could never be - namely mastery and control over their lives - economically, politically, and culturally?  After all, Frederick Douglass had taught us, and so, too, did Malcolm, that the struggle is about power! But is power possible without a separate economic, political and social base?

Dr. King, during those tempestuous times, spoke about “love” and about “Agape” and the imperative of a “Beloved Community.” But the question, then and now, remains: without power over self, without economic, political and social justice, can love or agape or the Beloved Community be possible?

I suspect that for those who wonder if those who once enslaved us and who presently are still in control of the citadels of power can be persuaded that it is in their self-interest to realign and redistribute the existing vectors of power, the answer would be a resounding yes! But this aging warrior of yesterday would respectfully differ with that perspective. Because History has taught me that power is never given. It has to be taken, essentially, as Malcolm preached, “It is the ballot or the bullet.”

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will” so said Frederick Douglass. Thus, to expect those who once physically enslaved us - and who have historically held and know the meaning and use of power - to suddenly give up their power because of a demand that was made by former slaves and progressive elements of their own ethnic and social stock, for me, without some force behind it, is a naive and foolhardy delusion.

Is Agape - unconditional love - desirable? Is the “Beloved Community” desirable? The answer is a resounding affirmative! This is especially true if one believes in a Creator and the existence of a commonality of goodness in the nature of humankind. But is it possible? On that, the jury, some of us think, is still out.

On the surface, the answer to our other propositions, the chocolate-covered cities strewn across the nation, a group of states in the South as an independent nation within a nation, given the historical reality of that day and the  subsequent victory of those who ruled the country, is that we may have been  naive … Land would not be won by rhetoric alone. The powerful would never partition their base of power simply because it was morally right and proper, as some had argued: “If you cannot live with us, then give us some land here in America… Let us separate ourselves…” Those of us who, at that time, so believed, did not fully understand the nature of the beast.

The challenges were too great to overcome. David could not Goliath slay. 

The young who raised their fists, clamoring for a land to call their own, some would say were, perhaps, another version of young David. However, these latter day “Davids” did not have a “sling-shot” and perhaps, more importantly, did not have a people behind them to continue the fight when, or if, they were felled. Neither, it is argued, did they hear the voice of “the Lord.”  Instead, some would suggest that they heard the voice of “De Lawd” in Martin Luther King, who spoke of the negativity of violence.

Some suggested then that Martin too was mesmerized and blinded by the might of the material and physical strength of the empire. But History would prove that those who so believed were wrong because it is virtually unchallengeable that while “De Lawd," as he was sometimes pejoratively called, preached non-violence, he stood tall against the violence perpetrated by those who desired an American Empire and who viciously unleashed an array of deadly and toxic weapons against Vietnam, only to be forced by the changing times, the loss of American lives, the will of the Vietnamese people, and the immorality of their actions, to abandon, if only temporarily, their quest for a New American Century.

Dr. King believed in the moral imperative of non-violence and paid with his life for challenging the empire builders. He had offered a special of kind of strength that was honed in a belief system of moral authority transcending the here and the now. Yet the people for whom he fought cowered and hid like frightened sheep, fearing their slaughter at the hands of the contemporary Goliath. They succumbed by disowning their young, their many Davids and permitted those whom Goliath defended to poison the minds and the bodies of their offspring and themselves with toxins that served to quench their thirst for freedom and mastery over selves while making them crave for the poison and the material pacifier placed in their mouths by the masters of the new plantations.

Soon all that was heard, and has continued to be heard, was the whimpering compliant voices of a new brand of leadership, more like the noisome braying of sheep en route to the slaughter. At times, there is not even a sound of defiance, only the shuffling of feet and a smile of compliance as they drink the masters’ wine and eat his poisoned meat. This “leadership” is deadly reminiscent of what Dr. King, in another context, i.e., in his “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” called “a spirit of do-nothingness.” 

Now, can/should the aging warriors of yesterday accept that behavior?” Definitely not! And, are they, because of the absence of strong and clear voices, being forced to re-enter the field of combat - that is, if they ever did abandon the struggle? Who knows?

As one looks at the diminishing sense of nationhood among Black folks, one hopes that it still exists in the psyche of the contemporary young, at least as a call for cohesiveness, for solidarity, for a planned and disciplined offensive strategy against the ongoing actions of our collective oppressors. On the other hand, one feels blinded by the darkness and emptiness of the present condition of contemporary Black leadership among the young.

Today one is bombarded by an unbridled and unparalleled ostentatious attempt to promote individual worth by using one’s hue to amass and flaunt new- found wealth. Many, in so doing, attempt to escape the same Blackness that got them there. Some lash out at those who view their present behavior as negativistic, atavistic and anti the historical struggle waged by so many Blacks to transform America. They say that today is a new day, that those Blacks who challenge them do not have an understanding of the culture of today’s youth. Those older Blacks, these new “voices” suggest, “have become nay sayers and irrelevant to the times.”

Some contemporary Black academicians of this generation, cut from the same cloth as these "new" so-called "voices" have even used their standing to extol the virtues of those who today - contrary to the youth of yesterday who defied dogs, water hoses, went to jail and even died, who raised their fists, cried “Black Power,” and asked, “What time is it?” - sing praisesongs to themselves and to a system of entrenched power that still eats away at “the soul of black folks.”

Those these new Academicians attempt to have us accept, as they seek a buyer for their book or an appearance on National Television as contemporary newsmakers of the Academy, are young men and women who defame our women and our people in search of the “bling bling” bought by the almighty dollar. What makes it so difficult to comprehend is the fact that the “truth” is there for all to see, naked before our very eyes, were we to look. Simply put, those who really profit from the profanity, misogyny and the misuse of the term “Black culture” are those who control the music industry. So little is there to embrace that what they hype as “Black culture” is nothing more than “Black decadence.”

We, the aging warriors of yesterday, may have become irrelevant, but a great number of those who now disdain the struggles of the past and seemingly feverishly hold on to the ring of the cash register as the sound of freedom will soon find that their sense of freedom is a new form of captivity that, in the long run, is fleeting and empty, without the connection to the larger sense of social transformation, justice and peace.

No longer do we cry “Black Power” … No longer do we ask, “What time is it?” So if we are not careful, says this aging activist, we are in danger of rapidly becoming, if we are not there already, a growing nation of pseudo-white people….“Wannabees” who are partners in the back pocket of a vacuous and empty American Empire.

History tells us that, in the end, all empires fall.

Carlos E. Russell, PhD is Professor Emeritus C.U.N.Y. - Brooklyn College.  In the sixties, he served as an Associate Editor of the Liberator magazine. As such, he was one of the first to interview Malcolm X after he left the Nation. He is best remembered as the founder of Black Solidarity Day in New York in 1969 and as the Chair of the Black Caucus of the Conference on New Politics in 1967. In addition, he was a consultant to Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. during the planning for the Poor Peoples March. Excerpts of his participation can be seen in Citizen King and Eyes on the Prize (PBS Mini Series Boxed Set). Born in the Republic of Panama he has served as that country's representative to the U.N and the O.A.S. with the rank of Ambassador. He has also served as the nightly host of "Thinking it Through" a talk show that was aired on WLIB in New York.  He is a playwright and poet as well. Click here to contact Dr. Russell.