Chuck Berry - Promised Land

A Civil Rights Masterpiece Disguised as a Rock Song

1. I stand firm in my belief that Chuck Berry is the true king of Rock and Roll. Miss me with that Elvis chatter. Charles Edward Anderson Berry of St. Lou, Mizzou, first of his name, King of Rock and Roll and the First Guitar Slingers, Protector of 12-Bar Blues, Father of Johnny B. Goode and the Cherry Red Gibson ES-335, Creator of the Blueprint, and the Lord of Duck Walks. He was Rock and Roll’s first great poet, a ground-zero, bedrock practitioner of Rock’s principal instrument, and the first great riff architect. He wrote all his own songs and played on them too. Elvis may have been the look of early Rock, but Chuck was its beating heart. Chuck Berry never covered the Boy from Tupelo, but the Boy from Tupelo covered Chuck four times, and he’s on the record as saying Chuck’s Promised Land is the greatest Rock song ever written. It’s track number five on the first album Chuck released following his prison term, an album called St. Louis to Liverpool. Chuck had a lot of time to think during his incarceration, and the mention of Liverpool wasn’t an accident. While he was in the slammer, four lads from Liverpool who worshipped at the altar of the true king had conquered Great Britain, Shea Stadium, and Ed Sullivan. They had ascended the mountain. Chuck knew what the score was, and in 1964 with St. Louis to Liverpool, he uncorked like Zeus throwing lightning from Mount Olympus - a Tolkein-esque return of the king.

2. The Beatles weren’t the only thing happening. Not in America. Congress finally got around to passing the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of gender, as well as race in hiring, promoting, and firing. That, of course, was not the beginning nor was it the end of the Civil Rights movement. No, that was essentially the middle of the story. Chuck had been paying attention. Shit was about to get personal. On the surface, Promised Land is a road-trip song about a man who leaves his home in Norfolk, Virginia with California on his mind. California in the middle ‘60s, was the land of milk and honey, the Promised Land. Our guy gets on a Greyhound Bus and rides it into Raleigh, North Carolina, stopping in Charlotte and notably bypassing Rock Hill. By the time the sun goes down, he’s 90 miles out of Atlanta and leaving the Peach State in the rearview. His bus has motor trouble in Alabama and he finds himself stranded in Birmingham. He gets a fresh ticket, motorvates through Mississippi, and starts smoking on toward New Orleans. He heads to Houston next, picks up a fresh suit, and gets some new luggage. Then he gets himself airborne, glances down at Albuquerque through the window, and then prepares for the descent into Los Angeles. Great story, and a trip one can replicate. I nearly did it in 2006, literally leaving from Norfolk, Virginia en route to California. And when I got to San Diego my father got a call from the Poor Boy to let him know the Promised Land was on the line. Safe and sound. Safe and Sound…

3. Let us re-examine. Let’s apply a civil rights lens to this story and see what we can see. Boynton v. Virginia, 1960, was a crucial decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. The case overturned a judgment convicting a Black law student for trespassing by being in a restaurant in a bus terminal which was "whites only.” It held that racial segregation in public transportation was illegal because such segregation violated the Interstate Commerce Act, which broadly forbade discrimination in interstate passenger transportation. So far, so good, but some of us are habitual line steppers, and sometimes, sometimes, ya just gotta make sure the law holds up under pressure. In 1961, the Freedom Riders sought to test their hypothesis under the worst possible conditions – The Jim Crow South. Lunch counters, waiting rooms, and bathrooms adorned with those repulsive little signs reading “Whites Only” would be their research laboratory. The original group of 13 Freedom Riders—seven Black and six white—left Washington, D.C., on a Greyhound bus on May 4, 1961. Their plan was to reach New Orleans on May 17 to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which ruled that segregation of the nation’s public schools was unconstitutional. The group traveled through Virginia and North Carolina, drawing little public notice. The first violent incident occurred on May 12 in Rock Hill, South Carolina. John Lewis, THAT John Lewis, a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, white Freedom Rider and World War II veteran Albert Bigelow, and another Black rider were attacked as they attempted to enter a whites-only waiting area. You can see why Chuck may have been happy to bypass Rock Hill. The next day, the group reached Atlanta, where some of the riders split off onto a Trailways bus. Chuck said they were 90 miles out of Atlanta by sundown, rolling out of Georgia state. Sundown… that’s an interesting word.

4. Let’s remain curious. What is a Sundown Town? They were and ARE, towns that practice racial discrimination through fear, intimidation, and violence. The classics. The term comes from signs posted at the city limits telling black people they had to leave my sundown. James Loewen, the sociologist and historian behind such works as Lies My Teacher Told Me and Teaching What Really Happened, cataloged lists of known Sundown Towns, districts, and municipalities. His work suggests there were some 20 areas in Georgia known to be Sundown Towns. Yeah, Chuck, go ahead and avoid the hassle and get the hell up on out of Georgia. On May 14 the Greyhound bus was the first to arrive in Anniston, Alabama just east of Birmingham on Interstate 20. There, an angry mob of about 200 people - you already know their skin tone - surrounded the bus, causing the driver to continue passed the station. The mob followed the bus in their cars, and when the tires on the bus blew out, someone threw a bomb into the bus. The Freedom Riders escaped as it burst into flames, only to be beaten by members of the mob. The second bus, a Trailways vehicle, traveled to Birmingham, and those riders were also beaten by an angry white mob, many of whom were sporting pipes, chains, and baseball bats. Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor, an all-time, world-class son of a bitch, said, although he knew the Freedom Riders were arriving and violence awaited them, he posted no police protection at the station because it was Mother’s Day. As a white supremacist, Bull Connor enforced racial segregation and denied civil rights to black citizens, especially during 1963's Birmingham campaign led by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He is well known for directing fire hoses and police attack dogs against civil rights activists, including against children supporting the protests. I don’t believe in Hell, but if I’m wrong, that motherfucker belongs there. Photographs of the bus and the violence showed up on the front pages of newspapers nationwide. As you know, or should know, if it bleeds, it leads. Now the whole damn world was paying attention. After that, no one could find a driver to get behind the wheel of the bus. The situation required a hero, and Diane Nash, an activist from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee found her cape. She organized a group of ten students from Nashville to continue the rides. That would not be all though. That sort of attention demands a heavy hitter.

5. Enter U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the President, some fella named Jack. RFK began negotiating with Alabama Governor John Patterson and the bus companies to secure a driver and state protection for the new group of Freedom Riders. The rides finally resumed, on a Greyhound bus departing Birmingham under police escort, on May 20. The violence toward the Freedom Riders was not quelled, oh no—rather, the police abandoned the Greyhound bus just before it arrived at the Montgomery, Alabama, terminal, where a white mob attacked the riders with baseball bats and clubs as they disembarked. So, the nation’s top cop sent 600 federal marshals to the city to stop the violence.

   Freedom Riders News Report

   The following night, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a service at the First Baptist Church in Montgomery which was attended by more than one thousand Freedom Riders supporters. A riot ensued outside the church, and King got on the horn and asked RFK for protection. Kennedy summoned the federal marshals, who used tear gas to disperse the white mob. Patterson declared martial law in the city and dispatched the National Guard to restore order. On May 24, the Freedom Riders departed Montgomery for Jackson, Mississippi. Jackson is currently in the news over some ol’ bullshit, go ahead, give it a Goog. In 1961 anyway, several hundred supporters greeted the riders. However, those who attempted to use the whites-only facilities were arrested for trespassing and taken to the maximum-security penitentiary in Parchman. During the Mississippi hearings, the judge literally turned and looked at the wall rather than listen to the Freedom Riders’ defense—as had been the case when sit-in participants were arrested for protesting segregated lunch counters in Tennessee. He sentenced the riders to 30 days in jail. Attorneys from the NAACP appealed the convictions all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed them. So, again, you can see why Chuck would sing “Right away I bought me a through train ticket, got across Mississippi clean.” According to the song’s geography and road trip plan, that gets us to Houston.

   Chuck wrote:

   Somebody help me get out of Louisiana just

   Help me get to Houston town

   There are people there who

   Care a little 'bout me

   and won't let the poor boy down

   While much of the South was in true turmoil in the late 1950s and 1960s, the Houston Civil Rights Movement was a more peaceful, low-profile end to that prick James J. Crow. What is little known outside of civil rights veterans is that Houston’s lunch counter sit-in was just a few weeks later than the famous Greensboro, North Carolina lunch counter sit-in staged in February of 1960. More recognition is due to Eldrewey Stearns and other leaders connected with Texas Southern University, who organized and exerted peaceful, effective pressure on the white Houston power structure. But let’s not start talking about the better angels of our nature just yet. You see, the Houston Astrodome, the world’s first indoor stadium, was about to open, and that power structure really didn’t want the bad press. At this point in the song, Chuck hops on a flight and starts flying his way to the Golden State. He waves hello to Albuquerque while he’s working on a T-bone steak. Sheesh… I’m old enough to remember when airlines served full meals… The pilot comes over the intercom and lets the passengers know they’ll be landing in 13 minutes. Chuck sings “Swing low sweet chariot, come down easy.” Swing Low Sweet Chariot… If you don’t understand why that particular song is particularly relevant to the Civil Rights Movement, I suggest you get in touch with your school board and sue them for malfeasance and dereliction.

6. I’m too seasoned and too well-versed in Rock’s poetry to believe in happenstance or coincidence. I cannot be convinced Chuck Berry, while awaiting his release from prison, reading and watching the news, wrote Promised Land as a simple Rock and Roll number in C Major and in 4/4 time. Chuck was deliberate. He wrote songs for white radio on purpose. He didn’t drink or smoke on purpose. He was keenly aware of the social and political landscape. It would have been impossible for him to ignore. And again, he was his genre’s first great poet, and like all good poets, he was morally obligated to see his era, his time, and his place in the arc of America’s trajectory for what it truly was. And now, the people who swung the bats and chains and clubs don’t want their kids and their grandkids to know they swung bats and chains and clubs. To quote another poet, one Zacharias Manuel de la Rocha, who was born in Long Beach, California, the Promised Land:

   Walk the corner to the rubble
   That used to be a library, line up to the mind cemetery now
   What we don't know keeps the contracts alive and movin'
   They don't gotta burn the books, they just remove 'em

   -Rage Against the Machine, Bulls on Parade