Michael Jackson

You know Michael was an icon for our time.
He and I were the same age, had he reached his birthday this year, which is the same day as my youngest, August 29th.

The Jackson Five were my favorite group when I was growing up. Young black girls could now have a boy band to love that was like them. We didn't like Michael because he was our same age, we liked the older boys, Jermaine and Jackie.

The Jackson Five were our answer to the Osmond's and the Monkees and any other group that was suppose to reach young people.

They sang to the young and I was young. My father took me and my best girlfriend, Dale Brown to see them at the Amphitheatre. We shouted through the entire show. Along with every other girl in that packed place. He said he would never do that again. I know they sang all the songs that we loved so much.

The nuns at my school must have had quite a time trying to control us. They let us make up dances to their songs. ABC, Stop the Love You Save May Be Your Own. We danced and screamed and danced. This was during the civil rights movement where we were trying to find things that were positive to relate to and there was the Jackson Five. We watched their TV show, bought their albums and found them to be the best group for young black girls during the late 60's and 70's.

Even when he made Thriller, it was fresh and new. What he decided to do with his personal life was totally different but his impact on our live in the early days was significant.

Music is always at the heart of any movement.

As I have read some of the text in the Souls of Black folk by DuBois I see that a spiritual is at the beginning of each chapter.

Music is at the soul of the movement.

Tomorrow we will be inundated with the memorial service. Then it will be on VH1, MTV, TV One, and anything else that wants to play the many artist that plan on performing. How we treat our dead is interesting. They have treated him better in death than in life. I don't doubt that he we was a drug abuser and had a very thin grasp on reality but he was still some one's son, brother, father and former husband. He was a human being.