12 CHICAGO READER | MARCH 31, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Books

Black AmericaIs Blowin’ UpWith a best seller on itshands, Third World Pressgingerly embraces themainstream.

By Sarah Karp

H aki Madhubuti should bethrilled. Last month his ThirdWorld Press released The

Covenant With Black America, a col-lection of essays conceived of andedited by commentator and publicradio host Tavis Smiley. The book,which offers a detailed prescriptionfor addressing the concerns ofAfrican-Americans, has already soldmore than 100,000 copies and is inits second printing. Discussionsabout it are filling auditoriums acrossthe country, and on March 26 it hitthe New York Times paperback best-seller list at number six. According toSmiley’s Web site it’s the first time abook published by a black press hasever appeared on the list.

But if Madhubuti, who startedThird World Press 39 years ago, isexcited, he doesn’t show it. He sitsbehind a large wood desk in thepress’s south-side offices in whatwas once a dark-paneled Catholicseminary. On one side, flanked bymedieval-looking sconces, is a por-trait of Madhubuti in his 20s. Hehas an Afro and an ankh danglesfrom his neck. On the other side arephotos of progressive black figureslike fellow activist poet AmiriBaraka and writer and photogra-pher Gordon Parks. His speech ismeasured as he explains that thesuccess of the Covenant means that,for better or worse, some of thecommercial forces that its founderhas sheltered the press from mayfinally be coming to bear.

Madhubuti has always consideredhimself a revolutionary. He’s writtenmore than 20 books of poetry andprose, including the 1990 classicBlack Men: Obsolete, Single,

Dangerous?, which the press claimshas sold at least a million copies. He’spublished writers from GwendolynBrooks to Kahil El’Zabar and servesas director of the Gwendolyn BrooksCenter for Black Literature andCulture at Chicago State University.But though he’s always participatedin marches and other forms of civic action, Madhubuti’s centralmode of protest has been to createinstitutions that are totally inde-pendent of white mainstream insti-tutions—in addition to his work as awriter and publisher he and his wife,Safisha, run three Afrocentricschools on the south side.

“The black community only hasone strong institution,” he says. “Thatis the church. We need more thanjust a spiritual institution to moveforward.” Third World Press wasfounded on the principle that blackpeople would write, publish, and dis-tribute their own books—ensuringthat any money made from thethoughts of black people would staywithin the community. He evenwrote a book about his philosophy,From Plan to Planet.

Over the years, Madhubuti says, hehas resisted signing with a distribu-tor to get his titles onto the shelves ofchain bookstores, preferring todevelop direct relationships withindependents like AfrocentricBookstore and Women and ChildrenFirst. Then Tavis Smiley called.

Madhubuti was familiar with theCovenant project. He’d seen one ofSmiley’s town hall meetings, atwhich he talked about puttingtogether a book outlining a plan toempower black America, and after-ward he’d sent Smiley a letterexpressing interest in the project.But until the phone rang last July, allhe’d gotten was a form letter in reply.Smiley had discussed the book withother publishers, but all had pointedhim toward Third World. So, writesCornel West in his afterword,“Smiley went to the godfather ofblack progressive publishing, HakiMadhubuti. . . . In a grand example ofgenuine integrity and solidarity, thisdynamic communicator not onlychose Third World Press to publishthis book but also insisted—at thesheer surprise of Haki Madhubuti—that all the profits from the book go

to Third World Press.” (Smiley didnot return calls for comment.)

Obviously, the book was going tobe big. Not only were Smiley andWest attached to it, but Children’sDefense Fund president MarianWright Edelman and ten other top

black experts in a range of fieldsfrom environmental justice to publiceducation to health care had signedon as contributors. Something thishigh-profile, Madhubuti knew, hadto get into the chains, where asmany people could find it as possi-

[snip] Losing ground. From the Illinois Poverty Summit’s 2006 report:in 2000 about one in six Chicagoans was poor; in 2004, when the pover-ty level was around $19,000 for a family of four, the figure was aboutone in five. —Harold Henderson | hhenderson@chicagoreader.comOur Town

Press founder Haki Madhubuti

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ble. So he signed with theIndependent Publishers Group, aChicago-based progressive bookdistributor. Now IPG distributes not just the Covenant but also thepress’s 200 other titles, as Madhubutithought it’d be hypocritical to deny his other authors a shot atmainstream success.

Paul Coates, of the Baltimore-basedBlack Classic Press, says Madhubuti’sdecision was a big one because it’s theantithesis of what he has alwayspreached. But, notes Coates, there areno black distributors working on thescale the press required. “It is like hewas trying to bake a cake without allthe ingredients,” he says. “If you don’thave the eggs, you don’t have theeggs. You might have to go borrow

the eggs for now.”Madhubuti says it was strictly a

business decision. “If you go intoBorders on 53rd Street or the one on95th Street, you will see a whole lotof Negroes in there buying books,”he says. “It took me 39 years to gethere, and I have no misgivings orsecond thoughts.”

The reason he wanted to publishthe Covenant, says Madhubuti, is thereason he went into publishing. “Wewant to be the publisher of record forserious black literature. We don’tpublish booty-call books. Our mis-sion is to lay the information out andto figure out how we can continue towork as a people.”

Part of the book’s success is

[snip] The L word. Prolific writer and blogger Andrew Sullivan supports Bush’s tax cuts andprivatizing social security and opposes affirmative action and hate-crime laws. But becausehe opposes torture and incompetent war making, he’s being called a liberal by Bush backers.So are John McCain, Chuck Hagel, Bob Barr, and other card-carrying Republicans. Writing atglenngreenwald.blogspot.com, Glenn Greenwald reflects that these days the only criterionfor labeling someone a liberal is “a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush.” —HH

continued on page 14 Tavis Smiley

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14 CHICAGO READER | MARCH 31, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Our Town

undoubtedly due to Smiley’s celebri-ty, but Madhubuti thinks it’s also atestament to the public’s desire forinformation and direction. “Peopleare not buying this book to put it onthe shelf,” he says. “It is the righttime for this kind of book.”

Coates goes a step further. Helikens the response to the outpour-ing of support for the Million ManMarch a decade ago. “There arethese tremendous bursts of blackenergy, and eventually they willbecome something,” he says. “Wemay not be there yet, but this is aclear opportunity.” v

Music

God’s Got theLast WordBut the blues scene rallied toput in a good one for singer,minister, activist, and one-time pimp Little Scotty.

By David Whiteis

T he Godfather arrived in style.Emerging from a white stretchlimo in front of East of the

Ryan on Sunday, March 19, thesouth-side scenester and aspiring R& B vocalist sauntered into the clubdraped in a luxurious car coat andclutching a bejeweled drinking cup.Inside, a group of matronly womensitting near the stage, sipping fruitjuice and still dressed for church,barely glanced at him. But they tooknote of the many other musical fig-ures who arrived for the show, abenefit for Clarence “Little Scotty”Scott: Otis Clay, Artie “Blues Boy”White, Bobby Jonz, Lee “Shot”Williams, and Little Smokey

Smothers, among others.As the musicians clustered toward

the back of the club, WHPK DJArkansas Red, clad in a white suitand red bow tie, handed out flyersfor his radio show while CarolynAlexander—a sprightly womanknown as the Blues Lady and theQueen of Maxwell Street—satbehind a video camera that wasperched on a rickety tripod. Scotthimself couldn’t make the party,though. Last October, after sufferingfrom headaches and dizzy spells, hecollapsed in his south-side apart-ment. He was soon diagnosed with abrain tumor and spent a month atMichael Reese Hospital recuperat-ing after surgery. He eventuallyreturned home, but in late Januaryrespiratory problems landed himback in the hospital. He’s now atKindred Hospital—Chicago, wherehe’s on a ventilator. He has no healthinsurance, his home phone has beendisconnected, and his landlord istrying to evict him.

“We all seem to come togetherwhen these kinds of things happen,”Clay said from the stage during thefirst set. “If you think you got prob-lems, I got the report on Scotty—that’s a problem. So this will be ourtheme song tonight.” He thenlaunched into his inspirational sig-nature tune, “If I Could Reach Out(and Help Somebody),” and theaudience responded with affirma-tions and applause.

Most events at East of the Ryan, on79th Street, attract at least a handfulof people from outside the neighbor-hood. But though Little Scotty’s beenubiquitous on the south-side bluesscene since the early 80s, he’s virtual-ly unknown among white blues fansin the city. If they know him at all, it’sas the squat, frog-faced black guywith the sleepy eyes and thick south-ern drawl who shows up at demon-strations and other public eventsdecked out with an array of buttons:plugs for Harold Washington’s may-oral campaigns, portraits of Jesse

Jackson and Louis Farrakhan, anti-war and antidrug slogans, and manymore. But on his home turf he’snotorious for the audacity of his performances. There aren’t manysingers, even in blues, who’ll seguefrom an X-rated celebration of cunnilingus to a sermon on commu-nity uplift. But navigating the earthlyand the divine has been Scott’s

lifelong survival strategy.In the early 60s, when he was

about 15, the KKK firebombed hisfamily’s home in Florence, SouthCarolina. Scott suffered third-degreeburns on most of his body. “I proba-bly had over 90 operations,” he toldme in 2003. “Blood ’fusions, graftingskin. People used to die, and whenthey died they cut the skin off ’em,

continued from page 13

Little Scotty in 1998 at Junior Wells’s funeral

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[snip] So who’s the pope of academia? Writing in the ultracon-servative Catholic periodical First Things, theologian EdwardOakes of the University of Saint Mary of the Lake critiques WhatJesus Meant and purports to teach its author, Garry Wills, a lessonin logic: “The two great institutional legacies of the Middle Ages tomodern civilization are the Catholic Church and the contemporary

university, of which the latter is surely the more rigidly hierarchi-cal: With its politically correct orthodoxies, its hegemonicallyimposed anti-hegemonic discourse, its salary-mongering, its free-dom from taxation (how Constantinian!), its speech codes, itsteacher evaluations . . . the contemporary university makes theCatholic Church look like a Quaker meeting house.” —HH

and I got the skin. They had a wormout of Africa—maggots. They’d put iton you and [it would] eat the deadskin and drop on the floor, and Iwould look at it and just holler,scream like bloody murder.”

Scott was teased relentlessly by theneighborhood kids, but he foundrefuge both in church and at localjuke joints, where he sat alone steel-ing his courage before finally takingthe stage, astonishing listeners withhis commanding, gospel-honedvoice. Inspired by the acceptance hereceived as a singer—not to mentionthe money—he soon hit the chitlin’circuit. Though he insists he neverlost his faith in God, he stillimmersed himself in the fast timeshis new life offered. By the end of the60s he was living in New York City,where he was an ordained ministerand worked as a pimp. “I had four orfive girls working for me,” he said.“Had a beautiful apartment, 17th and8th Avenue in Chelsea.”

But he had a more sober side aswell: he studied Islam and took inlectures and speeches by black histo-ry scholars like John Henrik Clarkeand Leonard Jeffries. When hearrived in Chicago in the early 80s(“to pursue music and ministry”) hegot involved with Operation PUSH,Harold Washington’s mayoral cam-paigns, anti-death-penalty initia-tives, and other causes. He kept hismusic career going too: he cutrecords in soul, contemporary blues,and gospel styles for a variety oflabels, including his own Top of theWorld imprint; performed in localclubs; and occasionally embarked ona brief tour through the south oralong his old stomping grounds on

the east coast.Scott never became so righteous

that he wouldn’t do whatever hethought it took to get his musicplayed. [A prominent Boston DJ]“was my man,” he once told me.“Take him some cocaine, and he’llplay your records from now on!”And his friend Gene “Daddy G”Barge recalls that Scott would showup at PUSH headquarters preparedto receive as well as give. “He was avendor out there, selling hisrecords, pop, water, peanuts, andall of that stuff,” Barge says.“Everybody, Jesse Jackson andeverybody, went out there to buypeanuts from him.”

Scott’s most recent album, God’sGot the Last Word, came out onStyle Records in 2004. Its center-piece is a 20-minute-plus sermonwhere he recounts the ordeal of hisburning in harrowing detail; by theend he’s audibly weeping as anorgan billows and swells aroundhim. That same year, on March 6,his wife, Ada Allen, was strangled inan alley a few blocks from theirhome. The funeral was held at HolyRock Missionary Baptist Church on59th and Morgan, and the receptionwas at Lee’s Unleaded Blues, whereScott greeted well-wishers frombehind hooded eyes, showing littleoutward sign of grief or even emo-tion. When I encountered him a fewweeks later on Canal Street, though,he seemed exhausted. “I beenthrough a lot, man,” he told me. “Ibeen through a lot.”

“His appearance either was ablessing or a bummer, because a lotof the people regarded him as a cari-cature rather than a serious act,”

Barge says. “The comment wasabout size and his looks and theburning. He’s a good singer, man. Hecouldn’t catch a break.”

Jonz, White, and Clay, whoorganized the benefit, interspersedtheir performances with requestscontinued on page 16

Boutique of the Week

When Stefani Greenfield and Uzi Ben-Abraham openedthe first Scoop in New York ten years ago, the idea

was to create the “ultimate closet—the best of the best ofthe best.” That meant, in their view, a mix of high and lowwest-coast-influenced styles. Now they’ve brought their

terrifically successful retail formu-la to Chicago. The key word hereis formula—the only difference inwhat they order from store tostore has to do with seasonal

merchandise. The chain is at least partly responsible forthose swarms of Trixies teetering around urban America inheels with jeans, but when you’re talking 10,000 carefullyedited square feet of the latest trends there’s somethingfor every kind of consumer. At the March 24 opening of the

Scoop

Scoop1702 N. Milwaukee773-227-9930

The Jimmy Choos

Wicker Park store, I eyeballed a geeky-hot navy Marc Jacobsshift with a cowl back and a breast pocket for $1,440, green Theory short shorts for $120, and velvety rust-coloredflip-flops for $28. One sleek shelving unit is devoted to adenim selection priced from $100 to over $300, anothermostly to dangerous-looking Jimmy Choos. This is the firstScoop to carry men’s, women’s, and children’s clothingunder one roof; men’s offerings tend toward the understat-ed, like black knit shirts by John Varvatos and smooth cot-ton chinos by Michael Kors, and kid stuff ranges from sweetcotton sundresses to sweatshirts silk-screened with JimMorrison’s visage. For sustenance after a long day exercis-ing the Visa, there’s also a cafe offering sandwiches, salads,biscotti, and of course those trendiest of baked goods: cup-cakes. —Heather Kenny

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[snip] Loyalty ain’t cheap. United Airlines, justout of bankruptcy but hardly out of the woods,has given its CEO, Glenn Tilton, stock worthabout $30 million and each of its mechanicsstock worth about $20,000, reports Crain’sChicago Business. The company says this pro-

gram “is designed to directly align the interestsof the new shareholders of United and the man-agement team.” Evidently United’s board thinksTilton needs 29,980,000 more reasons to put thecompany ahead of his own personal intereststhan does the average airline mechanic. —HH

CHICAGO READER | MARCH 31, 2006 | SECTION ONE 15