NATION OF ISLAM - JAZZ.

£975 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Pair of handbills for Black Family Day Part 2. Scarce original handbills for the second of two extraordinary Black Family Days organized by the Nation of Islam in 1974, staged at Downing Stadium on Randall's Island, New York, and featuring music by, among others, Lionel Hampton, Eddie Palmieri, Machito, Gil Scott-Heron, Jimmy Cliff, and "modern black music giants" Max Roach, Clifford Jordan, Archie Shepp, and Jackie McLean. Black Family Day Part 2 was held on 15 September and followed Part 1, held in May, the latter described as "the largest gathering of African-Americans in the history of Harlem" (Clarke, p. 189), when an estimated 70,000 people attended, and Farrakhan's address was recorded and distributed on the Nation of Islam's own label. "In September, Scott-Heron joined Eddie Palmieri and Celia Cruz to perform at the Nation of Islam's Black Family Day at Downing Stadium on Randall's Island, at the top of the East River below the Triborough Bridge. A stone's throw from where Robert Moses and the Triborough Commission ran their empire, Brother Reverend Louis Farrakhan spoke for two hours to around twenty thousand people, denouncing the United States as 'the wickedest nation on the face of the earth' under sunny fall skies. Jimmy Cliff sang, 'I'd rather be a free man in my grave, than living as a puppet or a slave'" (Hermes).

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