GodFather of Math: Civil Rights Heroes

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Civil Rights Heroes

Matt Maddox was a colleague of mine at Jefferson High School. He taught Social Studies and every year, he required his students to write an essay about "Civil Rights Heroes."

Even though it did not receive the highest grade, this was the only essay he proudly shared with his colleagues. Due to "creative naming," Ms. Hill's grade was an A-.

TWO BERRIES AND A KING
by Nikki Hill
My personal civil rights heroes are two Berrys and a King but the King is not Marti Luther King who was a beloved hero of underprivileged people everywhere, like me. Enough students are smarter than me in Mr. Maddox's class and they will write about Dr. King and Myhatman Gandhi from India. But the King who is my civil rights hero is The King of Rock&Roll, Elvis Presley, and the first Berry is Chuck.
Elvis did not invent Rock&Roll. He just put it on every television in America, thanks to the Eddie Sullivan Show and a crazy hound dog with a pair of blue suede shoes. That was in the Nineteen Fifties.
Before there was Elvis there was a lot of great Rock&Roll but it was called “race music,” said my Uncle Leon and it had nothing to do with the 100-yard dash. It was funky music by black singing groups like the Moonglows and the Clovers but it was considered devilish for white kids because it would make them shake and shimmy and get their parents really pissed off. Leon Hughes, my uncle, was a founding member of the Coasters who sang a song called Along Came Jones.
Then along came Chuck Berry who is black because Elvis is white and Chuck wrote songs about school days and sweet little sixteen parties. Chuck Berry did not sound crazy black and Elvis did not sound lazy white but they both sounded pretty cool and were great to dance to. Uncle Leon used to be on the same shows with Elvis and Chuck Berry singing "Yakkety-Yak Don't Talk Back" and "Charlie Brown He's a Clown."
There was a lot of hostility and hatred from older white people because they could not understand the fun of jumping around to a juke box and doing demon dances. But then it happened that Mr. Moneybags from Madison Avenue learned something valuable. Whenever Chuck Berry sang "Maybelline" on the radio or television, it helped sell Maybelline Perfume. Then Chuck Berry told Johnny to be good on the Dick Clerk Show and suddenly, you had white kids and black kids dancing to the same music on the same dance floor and having the same kind of fun together.
Elvis got very philosophical and sang Wombapashobop a womp-bam boom. He was really a very polite person and made white mommies and daddies stop being afraid. But Elvis was black on the inside and white people began thinking maybe it's all right to be black on the outside.

It is now 1999 and I am a student at Jefferson High School and almost all students here are brown or Latino like my boyfriend Luis and he is not black or white but is a really fun guy. But I am not writing to talk about Luis or Carlos who can steal my heart any time he wants it. I am talking about bringing the races of the world together which is what Civil Rights is all about and Rock&Roll was a big helper to heal racial dividers.
Rock&Roll can take fear & prejudice and throw them both out the window. This has worked for white & black kids but, like I said, almost all of the students at Jefferson High School in South-Central Los Angeles are brown. And they got Rock& Roll in their blood whether they know it or not. Latinos answered the question Why Do Fools Fall In Love because Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers included two boys named Herman Santiago and Joe Negroni. Frankie Lymon asked the question and the Teenagers answered.
Fools fall in love because de doom-wop a doom-wop a doom-wop a doedoe which is a good a reason as any, I guess.
Also, brown people inspired the most recorded song in the history of music and that is why Richard Berry is my third personal Civil Rights hero and the second Berry. And also, Richard Berry was a student here at Tommy Jefferson High School just like me but only much older like his classmate, my Uncle Leon, who helped me a lot to write this essay.
In 1955, Richard Berry became a singer and songwriter who was performing with a Mexican band in Anaheim, which is where Disneyland is. The band was playing a song called “El Loco Cha-Cha” and it inspired him to write Louie Louie on a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom. This is what Richard Berry told students when Mr. Maddox got him to perform at Jefferson in 1988. Mr. Berry also said the same thing on television to Larry King who is no relation to Marti Luther King or Elvis the King.
But Louie Louie did not become famous until some white boys called the Kingsmen sang it Rock&Roll style in a really cheap studio with a microphone hanging three inches from the ceiling. The lyrics sounded fuzzy and twisted and they bent the ears of millions of teenagers who swore they heard dirty words in the song. But Jefferson students know better because the original lyrics are on a poster in Mr. Maddox's classroom and the Kingsmen didn't change them except for the line “We gotta go” which Richard wrote as “Me gotta go.”
Louie Louie was recorded over four hundred times. Plus all the times rock bands played the song in someone's garage early in their careers. I think that means that just about everybody in music did Louie Louie except Beethoven, who had rolled over, according to the other Berry (Chuck Berry, no relation). Richard Berry wrote the song when he was a black kid and it was white boys who made it famous but it was brown musicians who inspired the second Berry to write it. That's Multi-culturism!

It was Mr. Browne, the first black music teacher in Los Angeles, who brought famous people to Jefferson High School where I go and made famous musicians and singers out of students like Dexter Gordon and Charlie Mingus (who played hookie to come to our school) then the Coasters & the Platters & the Penguins who sang Earth Angel which was written by Jessie Belvin, a student Mr. Maddox showed us in a 1950 Jefferson yearbook.
When we hear Earth Angel, Luis and I want to kiss. Or maybe I will kiss Carlos. I would tell you more about Mr. Browne but someone else is going to do that if Mr. Maddox invites my Uncle Leon to come to school. He will talk about his favorite teacher and the Coasters and other stuff.
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