Paul Bass Photo
Robyn Porter and Rahassan Langley mix it up old-school at the polls.
Outside a Newhallville polling place Tuesday, R&B singer Rashaan Langley invited State Rep. Robyn Porter to join him on the chorus of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.”
First, Porter dropped some history on him.
That was the scene mid-day outside Lincoln-Basset Community School, the Ward 20 voting precinct.
Langley set up a tent with DJ Herman Ham to blast tunes as part of a “Party at the Polls” organized outside voting places citywide by political science prof and NPR’s weekly “Disrupted” program host Khalilah Brown-Dean. (Click here for a story by the Arts Paper’s Lucy Gellman about how and why Brown-Dean organized put the project together.)
As Langley prepared to start singing, Porter spoke of a story Brown-Dean told her in conjunction with organizing the event: How in 1870 African-American women turned out to create parties outside polling places to support Reconstruction-era Black men showing up to vote.
“They brought food. They had music. They had singing. They had dancing,” Porter said.
“The ancestors have already been here. … We can really channel this, the spirit of our ancestors. Here we are, party at the polls! If you know your history, they did it big.”
Which was the point Tuesday, at a time when Black and brown communities are combatting another wave of efforts to keep them from the polls.
“We’re going to celebrate this day. Because so much was lost and gained to be able to do this,” Porter said.
Ham turned up the beat. Langley launched into “What’s Going On.” At the 16-minute mark of this video, you can watch Porter join him for the chorus.
Yexandra Diaz recites her poem at Liincoln-Bassett stop,
As part of the citywide program, poets Yexandra Diaz, Jason Dorsey and Dwayne Sparks drove to different polling places to deliver original conscious verse.
You can watch some of their performance outside Lincoln-Bassett in this video.
Diaz invoked Sun Ra and Jim Crow, among others, in her poem, which begins at the two-minute mark and read in part:
Black children always
Fit the description
But not the criteria …
White children go missing
Slaves run away
Black boyis can’t whistle
White girls tell white lies …
I should have named you Amber
So when you speak
You don’t have to repeat yourself …
They dread little black girls
With magical powers …
Oh children of the ghetto
You should have all been named Amber …
Melanin still goes
For three-fifty a gram
