Author Condenses 400 Years of Black Plight and Triumphs into 950-page Book

John Burl Smith's "The 400th: From Slavery to Hip Hop"

John Burl Smith hasn’t given up the fight. He’s just using a different tactic, a different course of action. Now he speaks and writes about the plight and triumphs of Black people rather than organize protest marches. 

A founding member of The Invaders, a ‘60s-era militant group boasting Black power in Memphis, Smith has cobbled together his experiences and perspective on the Black man’s journey in his new book, “The 400th: From Slavery to Hip Hop.” 

Published by Nelson & Nelson Press, LLC in July (2021), the 950-page book is perhaps Smith’s crowning achievement since joining the Black Power Movement decades ago. 

If not his crowning achievement, the book is certainly a literary feat for Smith. As with any book that traces the history of a people – as in the “400th” (1619-2019) – or major events throughout history, thorough research is required.

But first comes the idea before the story is written, which, for Smith, had been simmering ever since he was old enough to discern the way Black people are treated in this country.

“I’ve always been baffled by the fact that we as a people never had a story that seemed to explain who we were, why we were here, and why it seemed we could never change our status as a people.” 

As a child, Smith said stories that were relayed to him about his great great-grandfather were bandied around by his great grandfather, whom he’d known and talked with and, “unlike most people,” forged a relationship. 

“And the stories they told, and the way they told them [just] didn't match with the history that I was always exposed to in history books and movies and things,” said Smith, calling this a “duality” that just didn’t jibe.

While the Black Power Movement was Smith’s foray into activism, writing has become his forte, his mode of expression, and a passion that keeps him working at the grindstone. 

A blurb from “The 400th” summarizes the Black man’s plight on his meandering journey throughout history: “The unending love story of a people who fell in love with being themselves.”

Or is it the love story of a people trying to mitigate the harsh reality of pain and suffering at the hands of the white man, the book’s nemesis or antagonist? There is a villain in books of this nature.

There are pitstops in the book – from one era to the next – that leads to a modern-day art form (hip hop), which encompasses the collective experiences and sighs of being Black in America. 

Smith conveys in the book the power that Black people possess collectively, as a bloc per se, even after undergoing the torrent of slavery and grappling with age-old racism, discrimination and disparity. 

He didn’t start out with the idea of writing a book, he said, but 400 years in this country morphed into one. Why? “We needed to celebrate, commemorate all our ancestors that had given their lives and efforts to get us here,” he said. 

There is much more within the pages of this book: eight categories, Smith said, “that’s responsible for our survival.” 

• Family and Building Communities: Slaves had to build families and communities in order to survive, he said.

• Education and Communication: “We needed to be able to understand the written language,” he said, “and be able to communicate the written language.”

• Entrepreneurship and Entertainment: “Entertainment has produced more wealth for descendants of American slavery than any other enterprise,” he said.

• Political and Cultural Development: Smith said, “Politics is really the last thing we have been able to get into…because it is power in the U.S.”

“The 400th: From Slavery to Hip Hop” is a history book of sorts written with candor from a Black man’s perspective. Smith said he wrote the book for high schoolers and college students.

“My concern is to get young people to understand the level of power that they actually have,” he said.

John Burl Smith can be reached by email at jbsmith908@gmail.com.

Another Perspective on Dr. King and the Invaders

John Burl Smith has been fighting for the rights of African Americans
in the United States since the 1960s. He has written a book about 400
years of African-American resistance and met with Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. hours before his assassination. (Courtesy photo)

Editor’s Note: The Invaders, a militant group from Memphis, dared to make a difference during the tumultuous Civil Rights Movement. They’re now an integral part of history. This is the first installment of a two-part series.

 

By Wiley Henry

 

There have been countless stories written about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from various perspectives that differ in scope from one author to another. But could the truth about the iconic civil rights leader be mired down in inaccuracies?

John Burl Smith has a rare perspective on Dr. King’s final hours that he believes, unequivocally, to be the truth. He was there in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968, when he and Charles Cabbage met for two hours with the civil rights leader. 

Both Smith and Cabbage – co-founders of the Invaders, a 1960s militant group in Memphis drawn to the Black Power movement – worked out an agreement with Dr. King after he asked the Invaders to serve as marshals at the next march since the one on March 28, 1968 ended in a riot. 

Fifteen Invaders, Smith said, occupied rooms 315 and 316 at the motel in advance of their 1 p.m. meeting with Dr. King, who met with the group before meeting privately with Smith and Cabbage.

Smith said Dr. King shared his innermost thoughts with them about the Civil Rights Movement and his plan for the Poor People’s Campaign. Much of their conversation has been stored in his memory bank and now included in his upcoming book, “The 400th: From Slavery to Hip Hop.”  

He said the Invaders left the motel at 5:30 p.m. Dr. King was fatally shot by an assassin at 6:01 p.m. Smith has since told his story about the Invaders, their role in the Memphis sanitation strike, and the agreement with Dr. King that never came to past. 

But how did the Invaders become infamous and find themselves at a pivotal moment in the nation’s history when the Civil Rights Movement was teetering on the edge of uncertainty? 

“The Invaders, as a group, didn’t start that way,” said Smith, who credits Cabbage, a Morehouse College political science graduate, for introducing him to the concept of Black Power.

During that turbulent era, Dr. King was promoting nonviolence and civil disobedience, while Stokely Carmichael was espousing Black Power. “Nobody knew what that meant,” Smith said. “So, when Charles came home in 1967, he really brought Black Power to Memphis.”

Smith, an Air Force veteran, had gone to Vietnam. He was discharged in 1966. But Memphis had not changed while he was away. In fact, racist attitudes still prevailed, and anger welled up in him.

At the corner of Parkway and Third sat a full-service gas station. Smith pulled up in a 1962 Volkswagen. The station owner, a white male, “comes out, fills the tank, and tells me I didn’t have a gas cap. I knew I had one.” 

Smith said the man threatened to shoot him. “I’m a disabled veteran who just came from Vietnam,” he explained. When the police arrived, “they talked to the white guy. So, I ended up going to jail.”

Meanwhile, Cabbage and Coby Smith, who was one of two Black students to enroll at Rhodes College, developed a friendship in Atlanta. John Smith was given an introduction. Soon, the young radical scholars/intellectuals started talking about the political climate and the plight of African Americans.

“We realized we really needed to do some organizing,” said Smith, now a willing student of the Black Power movement. 

That year, in 1967, Archie Walter “A.W.” Willis Jr. – the first African American elected to the Tennessee General Assembly since the 1880s – was on the ballot in the crowded race for Memphis mayor.

Russell B. Sugarmon, an attorney, civil rights activist, political strategist, and a General Sessions judge later in his career, was Willis’ campaign manager. “So he recruits us to become a part of his (Willis) campaign,” Smith said.

Smith was learning the political system. A brainstorming session with the group soon followed, and the Black Organizing Project was born. At that time, Smith was working at the Memphis Defense Depot.

He lost that job and another one at Map South, he said, thanks to U.S. Rep. Dan Kuykendall, who represented the 8th and 9th congressional districts. “He got us fired from Map South,” Smith said, “because Russell Sugarmon got us working at Map South as community aides.”

Smith matriculated at Owen College before the merger with LeMoyne. Higher education was a worthy pursuit, but activism had become his way of life. To strengthen the movement, he turned to the youth. 

“We wanted to go out,” he said, “and get the youth involved in Black Power.”

They recruited the youth from high schools in Memphis and outside the district. “My apartment was sitting right in the back door of Carver (High School),” he said. “My back door faced Carver.”

Richard B. Thompson Sr. was Carver’s principal. Since the Board of Education had banned the wearing of afros and Afrocentric paraphernalia, “he was kicking kids out of school for that,” Smith said.

He said the students ended up at his apartment instead. One of them was a talented artist. “He had decorated a jacket and had written ‘Invaders’ on the back. I liked that. So I put the word Invaders on my old Army jacket.”

Meanwhile, the Memphis sanitation strike was simmering and caught Smith’s attention. He gave it his undivided attention from this point forward and drew the ire of local leaders and those from the strike committee who were running the show.

NEXT: The Invaders: Caught up in the Throes of the Sanitation Strike 

Black Panther Party co-founder Elbert ‘Big Man’ Howard spent a lifetime fighting for people

Elbert "Big Man" Howard in 2012. (Photo by Wikipedia)

Those who knew Elbert Howard from the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, or befriended him when he lived briefly in Memphis, referred to him as “Big Man” – not so much because of his six-foot, 250-pound frame, but largely because he stood tall on principle and commanded attention when he spoke out vehemently against injustices.

“He wasn’t just a large and imposing figure, it was the heart that he had for service,” said the Rev. Willie L. Henry Jr., a former member of both the Black Panther Party and The Invaders, a local Black Power youth movement somewhat akin to the Black Panther Party’s mission.

 Henry said he met the affable Mr. Howard in Memphis when Mr. Howard worked as a furniture salesman.

On July 23, Mr. Howard died in Santa Rosa, Calif., at the age of 80 and left behind an enduring legacy and indomitable spirit that encapsulate the man and the Party that he helped to shape into a formidable organization.

Santa Rosa is an hour’s drive from Oakland, Calif., where it all began in 1966 for Mr. Howard, Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Reggie Forte, Sherman Forte and Bobby Hutton, the charter members of the Black Panther Party.

Mr. Howard fought until the end for human rights for all people, Carole Hyams-Howard wrote under her byline in the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper about her husband and his legacy.

“Thanks to all of you who helped him, encouraged him, were patient with both of us, and loved him,” she wrote.

On Saturday, Aug. 25, Mr. Howard’s family, friends and comrades from the Party, both former and current members, will celebrate his life and legacy in the Bobby Hutton Grove in deFremery Park at 18th and Adeline St. in West Oakland, Calif.

The grove of trees was named for Bobby Hutton, who joined the Black Panther Party at the age of 17. He was killed in April of 1968 by Oakland police officers near deFremery Park.

Oakland had become a bastion of deep-seated angst that black residents were feeling about the police during that era of hostilities and civil unrest. Sporting tams to one side and taking up arms in a militaristic show of force, Mr. Howard and his comrades were prepared to defend the black community.

Although history has recorded much of the tumult and deadly confrontations between the Panthers and law enforcement, Mr. Howard and his comrades nevertheless continued to focus on the mission.

He alone was responsible for setting up a free medical clinic for sickle-cell anemia and a work-study program for parolees, his wife said. The Panthers also created a free breakfast program for poor school children.

“No where in history did a few people with determination and a few resources have such an impact on a lot of people across the country,” Mr. Howard reflected in a story in Memphis’ Tri-State Defender in 2006.

The first editor of the Party’s newspaper, The Black Panther, Mr. Howard was a prolific writer. He wrote about the inequities and economic depravation that often relegated black people to sub-standard living conditions.

He also spoke “truth to power” – to use a familiar cliché – and carried the Party’s message of “Power to the People” across the world. In fact, he would say, “Power belongs to the people.”

As the Party’s international spokesperson, he penned articles, wrote books and lectured extensively on some of the horrid conditions affecting African Americans and improving black America’s self-worth on treks to Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean.

“When Bobby Seal needed a defense during the trial of the ‘Chicago Eight,’ it was Big Man who kept things going,” Henry pointed out. Seal was charged with conspiracy and inciting a riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Mr. Howard was an active member of the Party from 1966 to 1974. After the police raids, jailings and killings, the Party was reduced to tatters. But the big man’s activism and penchant for social and economic justice never waned.

Condolences and tributes were published in the San Francisco Bay View for Mr. Howard, including those from his daughter and cousin.

“He spent his life fighting for the people…all over the world,” said Tammi Moore Miller, Mr. Howard’s cousin.

Mr. Howard meant so much to Tynisa Wilson. “Today, I lost someone so special, so great – my daddy,” she said.

The Invaders hope to set the record straight in new documentary

The Invaders: Dolores Jordan Briggs (left), Jabril Jabez, Minister Shukhara Yahweh,
Charles B. Smith, Dr. David Acey, Dr. Coby Smith and Juanita Thornton. (Photo by Wiley Henry) 

For nearly 50 years, several members of a 60s-era radical group from South Memphis have tried to debunk the tall tell that they’d instigated the riot that broke out during the first march that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led in March of 1968 in support of the striking sanitation workers.

“I’m happy that Memphis to some extent has decided to embraced us,” said John B. Smith, a founding member of The Invaders, a militant group of college students, Vietnam-era veterans, musicians and intellectuals espousing Black Power.

Smith, who lives in Atlanta, was in Memphis on Sept. 7 for the private viewing of a feature-length documentary about The Invaders as told by some of the members along with never-before-seen film footage and photographs from various archives.

“The general opinion is that we started the riot. Now we’re able to show people the documentary and what actually happened,” said Smith, who reconnected with some of the Invaders at Collins Chapel CME Church, site of the private viewing.

The viewing of the documentary coincided with the church’s 175^th anniversary and the 101^st birthday of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), a nationwide organization founded by Carter G. Woodson, the “father” of Black History Month.

“We are about African-American history,” said Clarence Christian, president of the Memphis Area Branch of ASALH, which studies, researches and disseminates local history in the community. Chapters nationwide also research, preserve and interpret Black life, history and culture.

The local chapter hosted the documentary, which began as a classroom project, said Christian, who told the story of J.B. Horrell, a guitarist and former student who wanted to write about something that no one had ever written about before.

“So I suggested the Invaders,” said Christian. “Then I introduced him to Minister Shukhara Yahweh (a.k.a. Lance “Sweet Willie Wine” Watson), a former Invader.” Horrell made the connection, and from that first contact with Yahweh, he would go on to co-write and produce “The Invaders” documentary.

“I was fascinated with the Invaders,” said Horrell, who was present to tell the diverse audience of activists, educators and civic leaders that he’d learned a lot about social and political upheaval in the ‘60s in large part due to the Invaders project.

“This is public vindication,” said Smith, who speaks quite a few times in the 76-minute film. “Not only is it vindication, it’s an opportunity to present Dr. King from another standpoint. He was not the meek, timid individual the media has presented him to be over the years.”

  Smith shared the spotlight in the film with fellow Invaders Charles Cabbage, Calvin Taylor, Juanita Thornton, Dr. Coby Smith, Willie Henry and others. They paint a riveting picture of the civil rights movement while juxtaposing it against the non-violent principles espoused by Dr. King.

The sanitation workers’ strike drew Dr. King to Memphis. But the Invaders were already on the ground trying to strengthen the strikers’ position by attempting to stop garbage trucks from rolling into the neighborhoods. When the riot broke out, the Invaders were blamed.

Dr. King vowed to return to Memphis to finish the march peacefully. The resolution the Invaders sought for the plight of the sanitation workers differed from Dr. King’s, who mutually agreed to work with the militant group after meeting with them on April 4, 1968.

The Invaders were looking for funding for their “community unification program.” Dr. King agreed to help, said Smith, if they would serve as marshals for the Poor People’s Campaign in Memphis. They agreed.

“We met two times on April 4,” said Smith, noting that Dr. King was evolving in his tactics. “He wanted to hook up all the power groups around the country. This is what we talked about in that meeting, which would demonstrate that Black people were together all over the country.”

The last meeting ended at 5:30 p.m. At 6:05 p.m., an assassin’s bullet fell Dr. King.

Former ‘Invader’ says Black Lives Matter is doing a better job than his group

As Dr. Coby Smith was watching Min. DeVantae Hill on TV and other leaders of the local Black Lives Matter movement shepherd roughly 1,000 protestors to the off-ramp of the Memphis I-40 bridge on July 10, the scene, the movement, reminded him of the 60s-era group that demanded redress for some of the same problems affecting African Americans.

“These youngsters are doing a better job than we were able to do. Their movement is the most consistent movement this country has ever seen,” said Smith, a founding member of The Invaders, a local black militant group of college students espousing black power during the civil rights movement.

Dr. Coby Smith

“I’m proud as the dickens of what these young people are able to do and say. They’ve done some things that we were not able to do,” said Smith, 70. “But it would be nice occasionally [for the leaders] to reach back to get some advice.”

Smith said he wouldn’t have advised the leadership to host the forum on July 11 at Greater Imani Church with Mayor Jim Strickland. “They didn’t have a chance to sit down amongst themselves and discuss what they wanted to say to establish their own agenda,” he said.

Hill, whose mission is "One Memphis, One Vision," demanded redress for the problems affecting today’s African-American community. And he wanted swift justice for the misconduct of others in the seat of power.

He presented the mayor with four demands:

1)     Hire interim police director Michael Rallings as the permanent top cop

2)     Cultural and sensitivity training for police officers

3)     More funding for African-American businesses to reflect the city’s demographics

4)     Increase spending for youth empowerment initiatives

Hill, however, wasn’t the only visible leader at Greater Imani making demands. Others exerted their authority and angry participants wanted their say as well. The forum spun out of control and images of discord were broadcast over the airwaves.

“They were trying to show as many faces and mindsets as they could,” Smith said. “In other words, the media wanted to get a story out of anybody and tried to get a rise out of anybody they could. That’s the same thing they did to us in the sixties.”

The Invaders emerged in 1967. Inspired by the Black Panther Party, the formidable group rose to prominence and drew suspicion, government surveillance, and the ire of the police. They met with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while he was in Memphis to support the sanitation workers.

Dr. King was the face and moral authority of the civil rights movement. Hill, by default, has become the face of the local Black Lives Matter movement, a potpourri of local groups.

“I don’t know if one leader is the answer,” said Smith. “We had that problem in 1968 after the King assassination. We were not interested in a person singled out as a leader, because we thought they could be assassinated or, in many ways, marginalized.”

Smith suspects that Hill, 24, will be looked at with suspicious eyes, marginalized, and become a target. “You’ll see them doing the same thing to DeVantae [as they did to Dr. King and other leaders in movements past],” he said.

Hill reported receiving death threats. But he was taken into custody on July 14 for a felony allegation of filing a false offense report. The case involves a MacBook laptop that he’d reported stolen from a rooming house in 2013.

A warrant for driving on a suspended or revoked license was dismissed. Hill was released that night on a $7,500 bond. He was in court the next day (July 15), but the case was reset for July 22. He said he’ll press on with "One Memphis, One Vision" and will not be deterred.

Although The Invaders’ reign ended as quickly as it began, Smith believes Black Lives Matter is here to stay.