You Can’t Hurry Soul: Redefining Integration Politics of Martin, Malcolm, and the Supremes
BY ERIC GONZABA
It is logical to assume that the understood national narrative of the Civil Rights
Movement would consist almost strictly of political history: Park’s defiance on the city bus,
King’s dream, and the clinched fists of black power. History is complicated, and since most
Americans’ education of history occurs during grade school, we can expect a rudimentary survey of the movement at best. However, the narrative of the twentieth-century Civil Rights
Movement, like all history, is much more complex. It affected all aspects of American life, beyond the top-down political history found in so many American history textbooks. Still, the question remains: beyond the social, legal, political, and economic themes found in so many academic studies on the era, can popular culture change our understanding of one of the most dynamic social movements in history?
It is of no surprise that the cultural history of the Civil Rights Movement (and specifically in this analysis—music) was often dismissed or ignored, at least until the expressly political sounds of Brown’s Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud or Gaye’s What’s Going On of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Historiography shows us that our past is defined not by popular trends of dance, film, or music, but rather politicians, law, and war. In terms of the Civil Rights
Movement, the era has traditionally been reduced to an analysis of the struggle through the competing ideologies of Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Though Dr. King and Malcolm
Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 1
X were two enormously influential leaders of the era, this narrow analysis can ultimately hinder
our understanding of the complexity of the movement. Contemporary scholars have begun to take down this false narrative of the movement with impressive works on music, dance, film, and other elements of black popular culture.
This modern historical revisionism would expectedly challenge King and Malcolm’s prominence as the centerpiece of the movement. That, however, is not the intention of this analysis. Rather, scholarship is lacking not just on the seemingly apolitical history of the
Freedom Struggle, but also on King and Malcolm’s respective opinions and ideologies in 1960s popular culture. Conventional portrayals of these two men produce a false, overly simplified dichotomy of the leader’s ideologies, from visions of the “apostle of nonviolence”1 in King to
the apparent “hate that hate produced”2 rhetoric of Malcolm X. If King and Malcolm were such political titans in their day, we could expect this ideological difference to be played out in other realms of America like popular music as well, and this is in fact the case. Even within seemingly
apolitical music from artists like the Supremes, who ask relatively simple questions like Where
Did Our Love Go, real political imagery of integration versus separatism emerges. This analysis begins with a brief breakdown of this dichotomy through a discussion of both men’s views of popular culture, specifically the music, of that time. Finally, in an effort to see their ideologies in practice, a case study is presented focusing on the Supremes, challenging contemporary black scholarship’s assertion of their crossover sellout status, and arguing that they serve as a model for visualizing the conflicting ideologies of integration that Dr. King and Malcolm X hold.
1 “Breaking News.” CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, CBS News. (April 4, 1968) 2 “The Hate that Hate Produced.” News Beat, WNTA-TV (New York, New York: July 13-17, 1959) Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 2
King, Malcolm: On Music
The views on popular music by the two unofficial leaders of the Civil Rights Movement expressed here were hard to come by. Admittedly, there is little discussed by either man on the subject, a fact which is in some way pertinent to our understanding of what role music played in each of their ideologies. Although scarce, King and Malcolm’s passing comments are revealing. Dr. King’s view on the role of music is probably best expressed in his 1967 book
Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community. In the book, King presents the future challenges of the movement. Beyond the legislative and judicial successes of the decade, King switched his focus to overcoming economic and social inequalities in an era in which riots and growing impatience threatened the very continuation of the nonviolent, King-led movement. King addressed music’s role by writing a story centered on his children:
Even the Negroes’ contribution to the music of America is sometimes overlooked in astonishing ways. Two years ago my oldest son and daughter entered an integrated school in Atlanta. A few months later my wife and I were invited to attend a program entitled “Music That Has Made America Great.” As the evening unfolded, we listened to the folk songs and melodies of the various immigrant groups. We were certain that the program would end with the most original of all American music, the Negro spiritual. But we were mistaken. Instead, all the students, including our children, ended the program by singing “Dixie”. As we rose to leave the hall, my wife and I looked at each other with a combination of indignation and amazement. All the students, black and white, all the parents present that night and all the faculty members had been victimized by just another expression of America’s penchant for ignoring the Negro, making him invisible and making his contributions insignificant. I wept within that night. I wept for my children and all black children who have been denied a knowledge of their heritage; I wept for all white children, who, though daily miseducation, are taught that the Negro is an irrelevant entity in American society; I wept for all the white parents and teachers who are forced to overlook
Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 3
the fact that the wealth of cultural and technological progress in America is a result of the commonwealth of inpouring contributions. 3
King’s remarks here highlight, at least to some extent, his feelings on the importance of popular culture. His position, expressed using a story centered on children, is reminiscent of his preferred tactic of placing children in the literal front lines of the movement in Birmingham and
Selma, tactics criticized by Malcolm X as undignified. As Malcolm described, “Real men don’t put their children on the firing line,” suggesting King’s tactics were cowardly and warranted for adults only.4 Most interesting in King’s passage is his expressed feeling of victimization over
gospel’s (“the Negro spiritual”) lack of representation at the school program. His sadness that
black students would not have “a knowledge of their heritage” is particularly relevant to the
historian, whose study focuses on the idea that history is about identity. King found the lack of
gospel’s inclusion as an inhibition to promoting African American self-worth and political
power. If gospel, or African American music in general, was left out of the narrative, King feared this would create a subtle but powerful barrier to fair representation and eventual racial equality. King also noted that such an absence helped to continue white cultural domination.
This remark alludes to King’s view that music can instill and perpetuate racial tensions within the white community. Moreover, at the end of the passage, King signals that the most sickening part of the concert, gospel’s exclusion, prevented white America from recognizing that African
American music and culture were part of a “commonwealth of inpouring contributions.”
This is the classic, if not stereotypical, Dr. King imagery found in early King ideology.
James H. Cone’s work Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare examines the rather
3 Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010), 43–44. 4 M.S. Handler, “Malcolm X Terms Dr. King's Tactics Futile,” New York Times, May 11, 1963, 9. Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 4
extraordinary ideological transformations both Dr. King and Malcolm X experienced in their
lives. Cone saw King’s initial position on integration “defined by an optimistic belief that justice
could be achieved with love,” that overcoming the severe racial strife between black and white
America should happen not by black separatism or violence, but by racial harmony.5 Dr. King’s view on black separatism had changed, however, by the time he wrote his passage on the school music incident in Where Do We Go From Here in 1967. Likewise, further reading after this passage shows King’s continued insistence that African Americans reclaim their identity within themselves. In fact, most of Dr. King’s writing here is his grappling with the growing Black
Power movement that he saw splitting the broader Civil Right Movement. Although he understood the growing impatience of blacks with integration ideology, King still insisted
“[t]here is no salvation for the negro through isolation.”6
Malcolm’s view of music and popular culture is less explicit. Despite this, there are a few
revealing hints in his discussion of dancing and African American style in Alex Haley’s The
Autobiography of Malcolm X. Malcolm recalls Boston’s Roseland State Ballroom’s segregated
dances. According to Malcolm X, even the bands that played at the segregated dances were
race-specific: “The fact is that very few white bands could have satisfied the Negro dancers.”7
Malcolm continues with probably one of the more memorable passages early on in his
autobiography, describing African American men styling their own hair into conks, emulating
the straight-haired look of fashionable whites and upper class blacks at the time. Malcolm
styled his hair into a conk for much of his youth but later resented the practice. To Malcolm, “it
5 James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare (New York: Orbis Books, 2009), 61. 6 Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, 49. 7 Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Ballantine Books, 1965), 49. Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 5
makes you wonder if the Negro has completely lost his sense of identity, lost touch of himself.”8
Cultural practices are clearly important to Malcolm, seeing the conk as a symbol of white superiority in terms of beauty.
Interestingly, Malcolm objected not specifically to white symbolic superiority, but rather that the black middle and upper classes yearned to be more like whites. While specific instances of Malcolm commenting on music are rare, some do exist. Speaking just four weeks before his death, Malcolm had choice words for upper class blacks:
And the average Black American who has been real brainwashed, he never wants to be accused of being emotional. You ever watched them? […] Do that. Watch them, watch the real bourgeois Black Americans. […] He never want to show any sign of emotion. He won’t even tap his feet. You can have some of that real soul music, and he’ll just sit there, you know, like it doesn’t move him. […] And the reason he tries to pretend like it doesn’t move him is that he knows it doesn’t move [whites]. And it doesn’t move them because they can’t feel it, they’ve got no soul. And he’s got to pretend he has none just to make it with them. This is a shame, really.”9
Classism was a clear problem for Malcolm, an issue King grappled with toward the later
1960s, especially after the Watts Riots of August 1965. Economic inequality not only produced
two Americas separated by race, but also two Americas divided by class within the races.” In
this passage, Malcolm targeted the Black class with allegations of having “no soul,” a charge that should not go unnoticed. Soul, to Malcolm, was part of black identity, though rejected by the black bourgeois to appease white sensibilities. Malcolm noted black dance (tapping feet) as something common to African Americans while experiencing or listening to soul music.
Furthermore, in a speech to Yale University in 1962, Malcolm criticized the black bourgeoisie by
8 Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 54 9 Malcolm X, Malcolm X on Afro-American History (New York: Pathfinder, 1991), 21. Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 6
saying that they “don’t want to be identified with black or as being black, are seeking to lose
this ‘identity’ by mingling, mixing, intermarrying, and integration with the white man.”10 In many ways, Malcolm’s attack on the black middle class was stereotypical Malcolm, one focused
on black liberation and pride. However, as Cone noted, Malcolm’s call is not alone. Dr. King
himself later called for black self-pride after he switched his focus away from overcoming Jim
Crow of the south and onto ending poverty for Northern blacks.11
A Soulful Supremes?
King’s and Malcolm’s brief yet enlightening statements on popular culture are meaningless unless put into the context of the actual musical narrative of the time. Both will inevitably have a profound impact on popular music after their deaths. King’s message of integration inspired a new focus in gospel music in the coming decades and Malcolm’s coronation as a hero came with the emergence of the hip-hop genre beginning in the 1980s.
With Malcolm’s assertion that certain members of the black community, along with the entire white community, lacked soul, there exists an implication that other nonblack, or not black enough, musical forms could not have been given the label of soul. While trying to define soul could be easily dismissed as an issue of semantics, language is powerful and ever-changing.
Words like power and love are iconic to the political atmosphere of the decade (gay, black, or
10 Louis E. Lomax, When the World is Given: A Report on Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and the Black Muslim World (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1963), 191. 11 Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare, 256 Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 7
Chicano power, free or self love). Furthermore, these words would be the basis of the founding of
social movements and organizations. 12
In his brief passage, Malcolm saw soul as inherent to African American identity, and consequently only an embrace of one’s African American identity could bestow that label.
Using this rather simple definition of Malcolm’s soul, we can see that soul really fits into
Malcolm’s definition. Popular culture, from television to cuisine, is full of soul. Soul food, soul music, or even Soul Train are unmistakably linked to African American representation.
However, it should be noted that the concept of soul was relatively new in the 1960s, which
makes Malcolm’s use of the word rather insightful and can aid in the understanding of the
term’s origin. Defining soul, in terms of music, has been a difficult one for scholars. Joel
Rudinow outlined a rather succinct explanation of the scholarship’s struggle of definition,
differing on factors as diverse as race and geography. Although Rudinow wandered into metaphysics and Buddhism in his discussion on the origins of soul, his impressive analysis will be invaluable in this case study.
Arethra Franklin is a soul singer; that is certain. However, the definition of soul attributed to Malcolm becomes difficult to apply when applied to certain black artists. There is no better example of this difficulty than three black girls from Detroit. The music and lyrics of
“Stop in the Name of Love” and “You Can’t Hurry Love” are iconic to the American karaoke scene. Whether or not those songs have been vocally butchered beyond repair, they still represent one of the 1960s greatest triumphs— the Supremes. With a record twelve number-one hits, the Supremes dominated the American music charts for almost a decade and gave Motown
12 See James Lawson Jr.’s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Statement of Purpose (May 14, 1960), especially SNCC’s definition and use of love Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 8
founder Berry Gordy the prestige of running the most successful African American-owned
business of the time.
The question posed in this study is simple on the surface, but can have profound effects
on our understanding of black identity: are the Supremes soulful? Contemporary scholarship,
particularly within the African American community, minimizes Motown’s accomplishments, particularly the Supremes’. If the Supremes are indeed sellouts to the white community, is it possible to consider them soulful? Are the Supremes an example of an integrationist strategy reminiscent of King? Former music editor of Billboard Magazine, Nelson George, notes that by the late 1960s “critics […] now saw [Motown’s] aggressive upward mobility as an unnecessary attempt to escape blackness and sell out to the Establishment. So soul, with the uncompromising Aretha as its star, was enjoyed and purchased by whites and blacks.”13
Rudinow interpreted George’s analysis of soul similarly. Motown was a black reclamation after
rock-n-roll, with largely black origins as well, used as a tool for “cultural integration.”14 Soul
was different. To George, soul represented a return to a sound and culture dominated by
African Americans. Music critic Peter Guralnick also dismisses Motown as not soul, for it
“appeal[s] far to a pop, white, and industry-slanted kind of audience.”15 To Guralnick, soul is
not about inclusivity and integration, but of a new kind of sound, rooted in African American
traditions and free from business control.
For these critics, there is a clear concern with authenticity in soul music and for the racial
dynamics of the performers themselves and especially the intended audience. Recently,
13 Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm & Blues (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1989), 161. 14 Joel Rudinow, Soul Music: Tracking the Spiritual Roots of Pop from Plato to Motown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 15 15 Rudinow, Soul Music: Tracking the Spiritual Roots of Pop from Plato to Motown, 11 Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 9
Contemporary cultural critics upset the Supremes’ place as the most successful black soul artists
of the Sixties, something not altogether surprising. In many ways, by Motown’s own account,
the Supremes were not Malcolm’s idea of soul. Shelly Berger, the Supremes’ artistic manager, saw clear differences between the three glamorous girls and her next managing act, the
Temptations. “There Supremes were a white act. […] Then, if a black promoter was on the line, it had to be for the Temptations. And not one black promoter even called and said, ‘I want the
Supremes, too.’ Never. It was understood that the Supremes’ audience was white.”16 Berger’s firsthand account is compelling, but is somewhat incomplete. Pre-fame Supremes, as part of
Gordy’s Motortown Revue, took stage at the Apollo Theater with a predominantly black audience in December 1963, in white, above knee length flowery dresses (stylistic of white
America).17
Even prominent modern African Americans have cited the Supremes as their inspiration
for future success. Before a 2011 interview with Diana Ross, Oprah Winfrey instructed her
studio audience to “imagine me [Oprah] being ten years old watching the Ed Sullivan Show, on
welfare, no possibility I could ever sing. And watching for the first time in a culture that had no
black people on television […] there was no body who ever looked like you […] when you first
see someone on television like Diana Ross who was glamorous and beautiful and represented
literally possibility and hope, it was life changing for me… life changing for me.”18 Again, identity is a huge part of popular culture here. If Oprah Winfrey could be moved and inspired
16 Mark Ribowsky, The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal (Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2009), 256. 17 See “Supremes” Apollo Theater Foundation Inc.; Photo by Kwame Braithwaite 18 “What Diana Ross Means to Oprah,” Oprah.com, accessed November 3, 2011, http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/What-Diana-Ross-Means-to-Oprah-Video. Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 10
enough just by the image of black female singers on the television, popular culture becomes
undoubtedly political. Similar to King’s annoyance by the lack of black depictions in his
children’s school musical program, the Supremes, entering a realm of white America via the Ed
Sullivan show in 1964, in a way complimented King’s yearning to show African Americans as
important, not “irrelevant entit[ies]” in American life.
Clearly, the Supremes had some impact on black youth in the 1960s, but this does not
necessarily mean their music can be defined as soul. Some scholars, like Mark Anthony Neal, do indeed see the Motown sound as soul, and see the emergence of “subgenres of soul,” with a
“grittier and more unrefined sound that reflected a more ‘authentic’ distillation of black musical
expression” as a main factor in Motown’s loss of a power hold on black representation and of
soul’s identification with blackness. 19 Perhaps what is most revealing of Malcolm’s use of the
word soul in regard to music is the mere fact that Malcolm’s affiliated group, the Nation of
Islam, did not consider soul appropriate. As a member of the Nation of Islam recalls, “the juke
box in the temple restaurant played only African or Middle Eastern music, and some jazz, but
no blues and no rock-and-roll with its uninspiring music and often downright dirty lyrics.”20
If soul was to denote black identity, its rejection by Malcolm and the Nation of Islam is hypocritical. However, perhaps the problem with determining the Supremes’ soul status lies in the link to black identity itself. It would be a great disservice to our understanding if this analysis of the group’s own definition of soul was not represented. After all, Billboard
Magazine would name Diana Ross the Female Entertainer of the Century in 1976, and by 1993,
19 Mark Anthony Neal, What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture (New York: Routledge, 1999), 256. 20 Robin D.G. Kelley, “House Negroes on the Loose: Malcolm X and the black Bourgeoisie,” Callaloo 21.2 (1998): 424 Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 11
the Guinness Book of World Records would name her the most successful female musical artist
of the 20th century, with 70 hit singles.”21 With such strong links to the black community by
contemporary cultural critics, we can expect Diana’s definition of soul to be similar. We get the
chance to hear how Diana Ross feels about soul during the last television appearance of the
Diana-led Supremes on the Ed Sullivan Show. On December 21, 1969, before a medley of
Supremes hits, Ed Sullivan asked Diana what she thought of popular music of the 1960s. Ross
would note the diversity of American music in the decade, listing genres from country and
western to rhythm and blues. “It’s been an exciting era in the history of American popular
music […] Soul is a little hard to describe, I think it’s everybody doing their own thing.”22
Ross’s explanation is remarkable; soul could be the country styling of Dolly Parton or
the acid rocker Grace Slick, or even the operatic Grace Bumbry. Ross, like King, sees soul not as
representative of just black culture. Rather, like King’s “commonwealth of inpouring
contributions,” Ross sees soul music as a collection of entities and genres, with shared identities.
Soul, even within the African American community, could be a diverse genre surpassing class
and geographic parameters, both factors of note in the King-Malcolm ideological split. In fact,
less than a year before the Supremes’ final appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, Ross’s image
was on the cover of the Chicago Tribune under the headline “The ‘Soul’ Fever is
Soaring.”Article author Robb Baker noted that soul was bringing both blacks and white
Chicagoans together, even in adverse weather. “What’s the secret? Unlike its predecessor,
‘rhythm and blues,’ soul crosses all sorts of racial and class barriers, so the fact that it’s black
21 “Diana Ross,” The Kenendy Center, accessed November 3, 2011, http://www.kennedy- center.org/explorer/artists/?entity_id=18315&source_type=a. 22 The Best of the Supremes on the Ed Sullivan Show, Medley of Hits, DVD, (2011: Sofa Entertainment). Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 12
doesn’t seem to have that much to do with it.”23 To Baker, soul’s success lies in the very fact of
its integrationist quality, not Malcolm’s view of being an attribute of solely black working class
identity. Soul is diverse, encompassing the “rough-edged ‘wickedness’ of Wilson Pickett and the polished delivery of the Supremes.”24
The Supremes brought something to music that the world had never experienced before in a music industry dominated by white artists. With five number-one hits in a row from 1964-
1965, their rise to fame as African American musicians was rather unique, but something that critics would easily like to dismiss as caused by indulging whites’ version of music. However, this is not the case. Women’s historian Gillian G. Gaar discussed how the Supremes’ hits with
Motown were “clearly black” but differed from the “dangerous” rock of the 1950s in that they
were “not threatening, and very danceable.”25 He defined the sound of Motown as something safe for white America. Further, Garr contended that even in their sphere of at-home comfort and familiarity, where whites could enjoy whatever music they liked in tranquility, they feared the power that music granted to blacks. Garr wrote about how an original Supreme, Mary
Wilson, once recited the story of a middle class mother in Miami telling Wilson that she
“usually don’t let [her] children watch negroes on television, but the Supremes are different.”26
This notion, that the Supremes exemplified a manner tolerable enough for white America to accept, showed that the Supremes were able to easily cross over yet still maintain a black identity.
23 Robb Baker, “The ‘Soul’ Fever is Soaring,” Chicago Tribune, January 29, 1969, A1. 24 Baker, “The ‘Soul’ Fever is Soaring,” A1 25 Gillian G. Gaar, She's a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll (Jackson: Seal Press, 2002), 63. 26 Gaar, She's a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll, 64 Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 13
The Supremes sparked a new perception and outlook in white Americans that garnered them acceptance, all a result of an image makeover provided by Motown. For the Supremes, image was just as important to their success. It would be easy to call the Supremes puppets of white America’s desires. However, Nelson George’s Where Did Our Love Go examines the inside story of the Motown music label and suggests that the Supremes’ image was revamped to avoid
“unsophisticated, gum-cracking manners” and “attitudes.”27 The notion that the Supremes abandoned their black roots to become more sophisticated is misplaced. African Americans had no more or less sophistication than their white counterparts. Rather, the Supremes were being groomed to fight a stereotype of Black America, and Berry Gordy was willing to present any image necessary to combat this false one. Advice to the Supremes included tips like not
“protruding their buttocks” or “standing with their legs wide open.” 28Motown’s image departments tried to combat the view that African Americans were demanding dominance or were tacky sexual deviants.
Replication and accommodation, at least as it was seen to some African American leaders like Malcolm X, of white ideals was a seemingly unacceptable track for success.
Malcolm, just a week before his assassination in 1965 and the night after his house was bombed, remarked that blacks should “practice brotherhood among” themselves and, until whites want to join them, African Americans should not go “run[ing] around trying to love somebody who doesn’t love us.”29 However, just as Malcolm would critique King’s view as a movement
27 Nelson George, Where Did Our Love Go: The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 87 28 George, Where Did Our Love Go: The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound ,88 29 George Breitman, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements (New York: Grove Press, 1994), 78.
Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 14
centered singly around Southern Jim Crow, African Americans do not fall into a monolithic response to popular culture. Just as critics contend that the Supremes should be undervalued because of their apparent appeasement to white America or white values, there needs to be an emphasis that the African American community, like most ethnic or separately defined communities, is not a single voice; while some see the Supremes as traitors, there existed at least a significant following that believed they offered empowerment to their community and indeed were soulful. Scholar Brian Ward notes that while some critics might want “black artists” to appear “poor and marginalized, Motown made the earnest bid for mainstream success and respect a matter of black pride.”This idea, an almost indoctrinated view that African Americans should be contained to a mindset of only poverty, in a way creates a barrier for African
Americans created by their very own leaders, like Malcolm. The Supremes were successful
African Americans rising from the Detroit projects. To deny these women because of their success out of a world that subjected them to poverty seems to unjustly discredit them for their accomplishments.
Granted, Motown loved King, with many Motown artists, including the Supremes, present at King’s funeral. Motown employees were even given the day off on the first anniversary of King’s assassination and were told to “reflect and rededicate themselves to the philosophy of true brotherhood for which Dr. King lived and died.”30 More proof of Motown’s loyalty to King lies in the very fact that Motown will distribute and sell recordings of King’s popular speeches, with the profits going to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Even the Supremes, typically apolitical during concert performances, would exude King
30 “Motown Artists to Pay Homage to Dr. King,” Chicago Defender, April 3, 1969, 17. Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 15
integrationist ideology by 1970. On January 14, 1970, at their final live performance together with Diana as lead singer in Las Vegas, the Supremes ended the performance by singing their current number one hit, appropriately titled Someday We’ll Be Together. Before ending the number, Ross addressed the audience saying, “This song means a lot of different things for a lot of different people, in other words, different strokes for different folks. […] And I’d like to see, today, tomorrow, or in the coming year let’s bring our all our boys home from Vietnam. And by all means let’s do try to put black and white together… tomorrow.”31 While the venue of the
performance, appealing to the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas rather than the girls’ home of
Detroit, could help Malcolm’s idea of a loss of blackness, Ross’s political rhetoric displayed fully
that the Supremes saw integration as useful tool for racial equality. Her mention of Vietnam, to
some respect, is also important. Although popular historical accounts attribute black resistance
to Vietnam to Dr. King, Malcolm in fact called for an end to the war as early as 1963.32 Ethel
Payne, “the sole Negro woman war correspondent,”remarked in her column in the New
Pittsburg Courier that black soldiers demanded seeing some “‘soul sisters.’ Incidentally do you
think if we made enough noise, we could get some action going on request of the brothers who
are fighting over there for some soul entertainers? […] It could do so much for morale,” and
later listed her recommendations of these soul entertainers, a list including the Supremes.33
Soul is seen here as a reflection of power, having the ability to comfort soldiers, specifically
black soldiers, in a time of heavy fighting and disproportionate combat deaths. This again
31 See the Supremes at the Frontier Hotel, Las Vegas January 14, 1970 32 “Manning Marable on ‘Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention’,” Democracy Now! , accessed November 3, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2007/5/21/manning_marable_on_malcolm_x_a. 33 “G.I.’s Sigh For ‘Soul Sisters’ In Vietnam.” New Pittsburgh Courier, April 29, 1967, 15. Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 16 challenges George’s and Guralnick’s assertion that the Supremes and Motown were aimed solely at cultural integration, and thus an abandonment of blackness.
Conclusion
King and Malcolm offer somewhat differing responses to the black popular culture. On one hand, King feels black contributions to American popular cultures are not recognized and should be included with white contributions as well. Malcolm sees a defined black identity, with soul as a polarizing marker to define black culture and upbringing. This analysis argues contemporary musical scholars would agree with Malcolm. Modern critics are free to label music as they see fit, but from a historical background, if soul remains a test of blackness for previous generations, it is important for a fuller understanding of a greatly overreaching definition during its infancy.
Time after time, we see a lack of debate on the “soulness” of the Supremes in their prime and, while contemporary scholarship allows academics to see and challenge old truths, the dismissal of the top American recording group of the 1960s on the basis of a still hotly debated definition of soul is dumbfounding. Perhaps this dismissal is predicated on a truth grounded not in racial or class politics, but gender. The most extraordinary premise of America’s most fortified response against the British invasion lies not just in the fact that the artists were three
African Americans, rather that they were three African American women, arising not from the black bourgeois but from the Detroit housing projects. If the Supremes really were the vanguard
Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 17 of a racial crossover acceptance group, perhaps their very race, gender, class, and Northern hometown complicated distinct divisions in popular music even within the black community, much the way King and Malcolm exemplify a great diversity of ideology. Maybe the Supremes began an era of simply American music—allowing both blacks and whites to botch the lyrics of
Motown for decades to come.
Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 18