"Summer of Soul"

 In mid-August 1969 I was living at a friend’s house in New Jersey and commuting to New York for an internship at the United Nations.  I “worked” in the Secretariat Building, but mostly I interviewed diplomats for my Ph.D. dissertation about the efforts of the U.N. to end colonialism 

The New York Port Authority Building for a few days was full of muddy hippies returning from the Woodstock Festival.  What I didn’t know was that on six Sundays that summer a Harlem Cultural Festival was happening in Morris Park.

The Festival had been filmed, but the tapes were in a basement and never shown–until now.  The film “Summer of Soul” is currently playing, with cuts of the various musicians including B. B. King, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Nina Simone, and many more.  

The previous summer Harlem had erupted in riots.  Not in 1969.  Mayor John Lindsey, a liberal Republican, welcomed the crowd at the first concert, and in all about 300,000 people attended the events.  The music is absolutely wonderful, and the clothes and hairdos are alone worth the price of admission.  

Or you can waste your money on “Black Widow” or the 9th installment of the “The Fast and the Spurious.”