James Brown's Estate Is Being Hijacked in the American South, Says James McBride | Big Think

James Brown's Estate Is Being Hijacked in the American South, Says James McBride

New videos DAILY

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive video lessons from top thinkers and doers

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To truly know the American South, you must come from the American South, says journalist and author James McBride. There is a particular code of values in the south, however blinded by history, that "in one way makes it great, and in one way makes it tragic." Indeed nobody can understand the south, and the people of the south, quite like black individuals who have spent their lives there. One such person of epic proportions was the godfather of American soul music, James Brown.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

JAMES MCBRIDE:

James McBride is an author, musician and screenwriter. His landmark memoir, 'The Color of Water,' rested on the New York Times bestseller list for two years. It is considered an American classic and is read in schools and universities across the United States. His debut novel, 'Miracle at St. Anna' was translated into a major motion picture directed by American film icon Spike Lee. James wrote the script for 'Miracle At St. Anna and co-wrote Spike Lee's 2012 'Red Hook Summer.' His latest novel 'The Good Lord Bird,' about American revolutionary John Brown, is the winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction.

James toured as a saxophonist sideman with jazz legend Jimmy Scott, among others. He has also written songs (music and lyrics) for Anita Baker, Grover Washington Jr., Purafe, Gary Burton, and even for the PBS television character 'Barney.' He received the Stephen Sondheim Award and the Richard Rodgers Foundation Horizon Award for his musical 'Bo-Bos' co-written with playwright Ed Shockley.

James is a native New Yorker and a graduate of  New York City public schools. He studied composition at The Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio and received his Masters in Journalism from Columbia University in New York at age 22. He holds several honorary doctorates and is currently a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

James McBride:  I think America’s South is a very difficult place to comprehend if you don’t come from the South. I think there’s a familiarity that exists in the South between white and black people that northerners don’t really understand. And in that regard James Brown was much more a southerner than he was a black man. Because there’s a kind of – everyone stays in their lane kind of mentality between whites and blacks in the South, especially during James Brown’s era. That we in the North just don’t understand. I think part of it is they accept each other’s sins, they accept each other’s dirty laundry, they don’t make any comment about it. Everybody has problems. They all worship the same god. But there are certain lines you don’t cross. Everybody knows their place. It’s a very ordered society and you should try to maintain the kind of dignity and honor and trust that is part of the American South which in one way makes it great and in one way makes it tragic, you know. And I don’t think you can understand James Brown without understanding at least having a cursory understanding of America’s South.

Because it’s a place where people are extremely kind, extremely dignified, will give you their last quarter and trust you on a handshake. But if you betray that trust their journey with you is pretty much over. And then if you, you know, you come at them wrong after that then you’re liable to spend the rest of your life babbling into therapy or sipping your food through a straw because southerners have a great deal of power. You have to remember the South beat the – the confederate army beat the union army three years straight and they were out gunned and out, I mean it’s true. They were out gunned and they were out manned and they had their backs up about people telling them what to do. And I don’t think anyone knows southerners as well as the blacks who walk among them. And one of those was James Brown. That’s why I say you can’t understand him without understanding the land that produced him which is a good place full of good people with some pretty, you know, pretty bad lawyers. With pretty good lawyers depending on whose side you’re on.

James Brown left everything he had, his entire estate, his likeness, his music, his performance, his publishing – everything – his entire wealth to a fund to educate poor black and white children in South Carolina and Georgia. He was very specific about that. Poor children of all types. And this guy was a victim of racism his entire life bu...

For the full transcript, check out