Introduction
“If Hip Hop has the ability to corrupt young minds, it also has the ability to Uplift them.”KRS One Hip Hop is One Parker, 2014.1
One of my male students walked into class with his headphones, music blaring and nodded towards me a good morning as he spouted out the following line:
“And just imagine how my girl feel
On the plane scared as hell that her guy look like Emmett Till,”West, 2003.2
When I asked him what he was rapping about, “Aww, Ms. Ponder, it's just a song.” I pushed him further by asking if he had any idea who Emmett Till was and his response again was “Ms. Ponder, it’s just a song. When Chicago’s own twenty-two Grammy Award winning Kanye West produced this song titled “Through The Wire,” he was in a near fatal car accident in 2002. His jaw was wired to his face for reconstructed surgery. With his mouth wired, Kanye raps about this experience, which ultimately turned him the mega star he is today. However, when artists make historical references in their music, I think that it is a conscious effort to keep history as dark as it may be, alive. The majority of my students who grew up in Chicago revealed that they had no idea who Emmett Till was. Kanye makes a facial disfigurement comparison to the 1955 brutal and tragic murder/lynching of Chicagoan Emmett Till a 14 year old boy who visited relatives in Money Mississippi. Hip-hop is rooted in social justice. I want my students to realize that there is power in voice. Kanye wouldn't allow a wired mouth due to a fractured jaw to silence his words. Hip-hop artists from the 1970s to the present continue to use their voices to express personal and universal inequities and have the platform to bring awareness to a multitude of issues.
It is extremely unfortunate that it took video footage (thanks to Darnella Frazier) of the murder of George Floyd to galvanize Americans and citizens globally to protest police brutality. The black community has been hemorrhaging for years from the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile and countless others. Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times by Chicago Police in 2014 and it took community activists over a year to secure the release of the body camera footage for public viewing. In 2019 a social worker Anjanette Young’s home was tragically raided by Chicago Police as she stood naked in her own home as a team of all white officers continued to search her home. Although she screamed on numerous occasions that she lived by herself and that there was no one else in her home. She was repeatedly demeaned and degraded as they ransacked her home. Later the police department admitted that they targeted the wrong house. Most recently Adam Toledo, a Mexican American was shot and killed by a Chicago police officer on March 21, 2021. Protests erupted throughout Chicago, including the Little Village community where 13 year old Adam lived. Since violence has become commonplace for my students, I admonish them about becoming complacent. So when that same student who entered my classroom singing “Through the Wire” by Kanye West asked me what could students do about this injustice, the Hip Hop and Social Activism unit evolved.
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