May 24 would have been my father’s 120th birthday.
I don’t know what would resonate with him today, but back in the 1930s, when he was in his mid-to-late 30s, he was given to quoting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on his birthday.
For three consecutive years, in columns that ran near May 24, Ebenezer would quote the same lines from Longfellow’s “The Spanish Student,” a play in three acts.
“Approaching one of those inevitable milestones imposed by Father Time, this paragrapher pauses in reflection and does a little audible thinking. Methinks Longfellow was correct when he wrote of persons born on May 24. ‘The strength of thine own arm is thy salvation.’ But I think he stretched his optimism a bit far when he said, ‘Behind those riftless [sic] clouds there is a silver lining [sic]; be patient,’” my father wrote in the New York Age, May 28, 1934.
Longfellow actually wrote “rifted clouds,” and in at least one edition, that one line was not about a silver lining. It was, “there shines a glorious star!” Also, I could not find any verification that the 19th-century poet and essayist was specifically referring to those who were born on May 24.
But, ok, Dad.
More often than not, my father used his weekly column for a little of this and a little of that. In one paragraph, he would rail against racially discriminatory hiring practices in Harlem and in the next, he would chide an acquaintance for falling under the spell of Father Devine. Then he’d wax about a social event or musical performance that moved him. Often, he used his column to express his outrage about lynchings and the trumped-up charges against the Scottsboro Boys. During the years when my father was quoting Longfellow in his birthday columns, the United States was in the throes of the Great Depression; Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party had begun their reign. You couldn’t fault him for seeing no rift in the clouds.
These days, the press is literally being punched and kicked simply for the “crime” of asking questions.
A Republican Congress is poised to denude health care, the environment, public education and women’s agency over our bodies.
Our president and his family are raiding our treasury.
Law enforcement officers who kill unarmed black and brown civilians, including children, do so with impunity.
Immigrants are being harassed, deported and maligned.
White supremacists in this country have been given license to spew hate and kill.
Has anyone seen a glorious star lately?
Actually, yes.
When a Supreme Court majority (that includes Justice Clarence Thomas!) rejects North Carolina’s voter suppression efforts.
When reporters fight back with fierce investigative journalism.
When constituents yell “you lie” at those to try to sell us alternative facts.
When we forge authentic alliances strong enough to demolish and deconstruct silly walls.
When we vote like our lives depend on it, because apparently, they do.
So, in honor of Ebenezer’s 120th birthday, I will take a few liberties of my own with Longfellow:
Only the strength of [OUR] own [COLLECTIVE] arm[S] will be [OUR] salvation.
Let’s get to work.
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