Jazz is the only original American art form. And basketball is the only original American sport. Many white people only see basketball as a ghetto game. Many black people see basketball as a form of love. Jazz and basketball are our blue note reminders to those white people that they brought us here from another land.

When the trumpet wails, it is a call from Africa. When the trumpet wails, it is a call from home. When the trumpet wails, we remember the Trails of Tears, too – yes, Trails. Of. Tears. When the trumpet wails, it describes the lines in our faces, etched pain of scalding tears, worn from years – of expression, depression, cultural detention. And on the court outside of the law on the hardwood where the rat-a-tat of that ball to that wood, that is our first world, while we are treated like third world visitors to a paradise called uo topos, or utopia. Or - “No Place.” The basketball court is our syn topos, our Some Place. Somewhere where five men to a side reside as ten and then, seek a harmony - together.

Each player might have a turn to solo on any one trip up the floor. And when a play is run there is a weave like a tapestry, like a melody, and the ball is passed – a call, and passed – a response, until there is a shot – the coda, and the swish of leather sphere through nylon.

It is blues, that call and response. And, after all, the root of jazz is so very blue – black like a fresh bruise of our everyday reminder of who we are.

We cannot even contemplate the beginning anymore, save for when we hear Elvin’s “boom-clack.” We cannot even contemplate freedom save for when we hear Jimmy Smith’s Hammond Organ swing.

We cannot contemplate the struggle until we see five black men in no-arch Converse shoes in a smoky 1960s Boston nightclub called, “The Garden.” We cannot contemplate our haunting until we hear Andrew Hill’s Baldwin riffing off diminished chords – or know that “The Pearl’ was really “Black Jesus” and was forced to play his trade off Broadway at Winston-Salem, practicing hardwood voudon and leaving hot foot powder ‘Round About Midnight at the doors of all those who might attempt the challenge to guard him.

Sheeee-izzz, nobody understood Chitlins Con Carne like the ‘Goat, but nobody could bring its spice on a cold wind to those smoky clubs like The Hawk. And when Jerry Mulligan did his west coast swing, that was us telling white people that we accepted an east coast man with behind-the-back magic and a Holy Cross-over named “Cooz.”

As long as you felt the pain but knew the joy that you could gain,

You could come and join and touch the flame

And ball with us and play the game.

For us there was no depression. That was our everyday. How do you think that almost 40 years later Herbie’s “Cantaloupe Island” could make us sway – and almost 40 years later make us sway again?

When a black man has his grind on and is doin’ good he’s not “getting his thing together.” Noooooo! He’s — ballin’. That’s how far away a leather bag full of hay in a peach basket in Canada is from the rat-a-tat, the silence of that leather sphere through the air and its – ching! on a concrete jungle playground in Harlem or Anacostia or Coney or Cabrini on a 35 degree winter day.

That is our freedom ringing, Mr. White Man. Oh say can you see – us?

See (yeah, take off those rose-colored glasses so you can, we’re color enough) we come full circle in this new century where you think Yourstory is enough to make us forget and play us for your American Gangster, like we were the ones flying Air America planes back to the left cost. Where you filled black soldiers like gutted goat carcasses and brought that hair-oh-juan to our neighborhoods. You act like we conducted your destabilizing efforts in the Middle of the East that amounted to that powder you brought to New Amsterdam and gave to the ‘Goat, who filled his needle and squeezed the plunger to cease the ever rain in his head and passed that needle to the Hawk who filled his ball with air instead and sold a move for free to a young, skinny boy on the fin-ger roll, while brothers even younger hit those same streets and played that same Rucker game – and they would be Kings, Bernard and Albert.

There’s names like Clifford Brown, Sidney Bechet, like Curtis Fuller, Kenny Dorham, Bud Powell, Larry young, Grant Green, Paul Chambers, Joe Henderson, Cannonball Adderly, Miles, Davis, Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane, Ron Carter and so many more.

And for every one of those players there’s names like Hal Greer, Jazzie Cazzie Russell, Wayne Hightower, Nate Thurmond, Chet “the Jet” Walker, Wayne Embry, Lew Alcindor-Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Dick Barnett, Tom “Satch” Sanders, K. C. and Sam Jones, Bob Love, Oscar Robertson, Bob Boozer, John Tresvant, Walt “Clyde” Frazier, and so many more.

And all those roundball players knew the jazz players because their parents playedsome or all of them for 11-and-a half months a year (but they all played Miss Queen, Mahalia J., for two weeks around and through Christmas).

That’s our freedom ringing. That’s our Liberty Bell. Yourstory only really works on the deaf, dumb, and blind.

But when we turn away from the dreaming and the glory of us, we know Abraham Lincoln didn’t give a damn about us and his proclaiming that most of our ancestors were emancipated was just an afterthought. We know our rights that had to be “given” to us must be renewed – and we know white people in Congress just recently fought hard against that renewal.

And we know you have some of us so afraid to speak that many of won’t even whisper those facts. Just like some of us have turned our backs on the only original American sport. We know we only have one extra day this month for anyone to read this writing and every other writing that’s written about us this month and think about it in the context of us, black, people.

Hell, we’ll even tell each other that what we write this month is irrelevant, especially if it isn’t what Yourstory wants us to write. Some of us will turn our backs on us the rest of the year and suddenly get “Black” in February as if it is a recurring “thing to do” forever trapped in our Blackberry.

But here’s a FAQ about this month:

Did you know that some of us write lyrics and poetry and stories and articles and plays every, single day of the year while we listen to or certainly remember that Jazz is the only original American form of music and Basketball is the only original American sport?

And when the trumpet wails, we know the call,

And when we hear the rat-a-tat we know each beat of leather on hardwood is a heartbeat for us all.

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