Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Gridiron gods and theirVoodoo? and Move African-American History Month to Black August?
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
09 Feb 2022
Gridiron gods and theirVoodoo? and Move African-American History Month to Black August?
Illustration by Michael Kennedy

                                                                                Gridiron gods and theirVoodoo?

 

Gridiron gods please remind

Kansas City fans how Indigenous

People pleaded with them to

drop

the

‘Chop’ and their Faux Native noises

for decades; How they’ve beseeched

the owners to do the right thing in the

Name game, do like movements made

the Commanders do…

Gridiron gods please remind

49ers fans about a front office fielding its

Curse of Kap 7 months every year. Remind ‘em that Physical Xs and Os may

not be enough for them to Overcome it—

wet, cold, Wikileak washing scales from barber

shop, bar, factory floor, campus, stadium seat

Eyes. He kneeled—and revealed Plantation

Nation behind the shield—trigger-happy, bellicose Business partners, black-

washing bloody reputations Laundering dark, dirty warmongering money…

Gridiron gods please remind

Raiders fans of owners abandoning sport’s best

Black/Brown/blue collar/longshore/autoworker

fan base not once, not twice—but three times—when Games go up in flames; And

tragedies pile up like goal line stops; And Firsts are burned beyond recognition: 1st

Mexican-American QB/coach;1st modern-era African American coach; 1st female

executive; 1st cheerleaders looking like Tha Town…

Gridiron gods please remind

NFL fans about the band of billionaires—their Mickey Mouse Rooney Rule/their racist

recycling machine of mediocre men; their extorting struggling cities; and

weaponizing Private profit playthings and playground palaces—just kickoffs away from

honeycombed colonies of unhoused

Sidewalk sleeper cells, tents, tarps, cardboard mattresses…

Remind them that their threatening theme song about “Bombs bursting in

air/rockets’ red glare;” their maudlin Militarist pomp and circumstance/war-

mongering flyovers Fail to

drop

2x4s

rebar

bricks

hammers

nails saws…

Fail to

drop

masks

gowns

gloves

tests…

How many tests/how much housing would one foolish flyover pay for?

 

                                                                         Move African-American History Month

                                                                                         to Black August?

 

Are our customs and celebrations discretionary?

Or, to quote Don Corleone, “Is this necessary?”

Who digs up a Black or Indigenous cemetery?

African-American History teaches: Be wary…

…in a coal mine and spotting a dead canary—

Who sang most musically and insurrectionary…

Sent this modest proposal to the powers that be—

through back channels of the black bourgeoisie—

We demand ’31 days’ of African-American history

’28 days’ just don’t cut it—that ain’t no mystery!

No mini month slashed by marketing of the NFL

with its war-profiteering and bloodthirsty clientele

Post 9/11, football slid into February—

feinting that their slick move was only temporary

They just super bowled into our truncated month—

greedy billionaires chasing a league trillionth!

Ever deeper into our twenty-eight days they’ll go—

Silencing Black truth-tellers Omalu, ‘Kap’ and ‘Flo!’

Once upon a time their season ended in December— back when they’d play a

’63 Sunday in November… We ain’t claimin’ the klan Act or RICO or antitrust

‘Cause—since1619— it’s all-ways us who must adjust— to lynch mobs,

massacres—involuntary wanderlust!

Maybe it’s time we move AAHM to Black August?

We’d bleed into the Labor Day and top off September— kids returning to school with

hot dates all would remember minus NFL cooptation—and lethal cash lust—

Maybe it’s time we move AAHM to Black August?

 

© 2022. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

Black August
Black History Month
NFL
Kaepernick Protest

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Safiya Bukhari
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: On the Question of Political Prisoners, Safiya Bukhari,1995
07 August 2024
To commemorate Black August, read Safiya Bukhari's essay on political prisoners and political mov
Counter-insurgency and Black Studies: An Interview with Tea Troutman
Tea Troutman , Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
Counter-insurgency and Black Studies: An Interview with Tea Troutman
30 August 2023
LETTER: For George, The Seventh of August Movement, 1971
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
LETTER: For George, The Seventh of August Movement, 1971
16 August 2023
A letter commemorating George Jackson speaks to the origins of Black August.
Black August for the Pendleton 2
Too Black
Black August for the Pendleton 2
16 August 2023
Black August is an important month of political education, but it should not solely be about the past.
Nehanda Abiodun and the Legacy of Resistance to the Prison Industrial Complex
Abayomi Azikiwe
Nehanda Abiodun and the Legacy of Resistance to the Prison Industrial Complex
31 August 2022
The late Nehanda Abiodun was an African American revolutionary who exemplified the movement to end national oppression and the criminaliza
ESSAY: Racial Genocide: The Case of the Martinsville Seven, William L. Patterson, 1969
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: Racial Genocide: The Case of the Martinsville Seven, William L. Patterson, 1969
24 August 2022
For Black August, read William L. Patterson on racial genocide, the law, and the Martinsville Seven.
ESSAY AND PETITION: Massacre at Attica, The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, 1971
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY AND PETITION: Massacre at Attica, The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, 1971
17 August 2022
To commemorate Black A
Black August Builds on Our Black Radical Traditions
Charles Brooks
Black August Builds on Our Black Radical Traditions
10 August 2022
Black August is the commemoration of actions carried out by revolutionaries ranging from Nat Turner to George Jackson.
Ruchell Magee: US Prisoner, Political Thinker, Rebel, and Still Fighting for Release After 67 Years
Natalia Marques
Ruchell Magee: US Prisoner, Political Thinker, Rebel, and Still Fighting for Release After 67 Years
10 August 2022
Ruchell Magee has been incarcerated for 67 years and is the longest serving political prisoner in the world.
Honor Fallen Black Freedom Fighters: Two Letters on Black August, 1979
Black Agenda Review
Honor Fallen Black Freedom Fighters: Two Letters on Black August, 1979
04 August 2021
DOCUMENTS: Honor Fallen Black Freedom Fighters: Two Letters on Black August, 1979

More Stories


  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    The Green Zone of Controlled Opposition (Or, How The U.S. Climate Network Became Agents of Climate Inaction)
    06 Aug 2025
    The U.S. climate movement claims to fight for change while systematically silencing radical action. This isn’t resistance. It’s controlled opposition dressed in green.
  • Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Karen Antoinette Scott’s Book, SACKRED Birth
    06 Aug 2025
    In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Karen Antoinette Scott.
  • Black Alliance For Peace
    BAP Condemns the Zionist Brutalization and Detainment of Chris Smalls, Emblematic of the White Supremacy at the Core of Zionism
    06 Aug 2025
    The arrest and assault of Chris Smalls is about more than the repression of any effort to subvert the genocidal blockade on Gaza; it exposes Israel’s attempt to sever Black and Palestinian solidarity…
  • Vijay Prashad
    Unilateral and Illegal Sanctions – Mainly by the United States – Kill Half a Million Civilians Per Year: The Thirty-First Newsletter (2025)
    06 Aug 2025
    A study in The Lancet estimates that unilateral sanctions have caused as much death as wars, with an estimated half a million deaths per year.
  • Pindiga Ambedkar , Arnold August
    Were Canadian Elections Existential in the Context of US-Canada Tensions? (Part 2)
    06 Aug 2025
    Interview with Arnold August, writer, political commentator, and analyst of the North American continent, on the political situation in Canada and its relationship to the US.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us