WOKE – A Brief History

In July of 2020, I sent an email to a collector congratulating her and her daughter who was entering college. I included in my message a word that was percolating up in the media. It was a word I was familiar with, but one I hadn’t heard on the streets or in the news for quite some time. The word was, ‘woke’.

The Movement

It was in the late 1960’s to mid ’70’s. ‘Woke’ was the word on the streets. It described a black person being conscious of secret things going on in the world, especially in our government. ‘Woke’ was especially applicable to a sista or brotha pushing back against ‘the man’. I was woke.

The grievances we were addressing back in the day are some of the same grievances many conservatives are ‘woke’ to today. To put it nicely, government shenanigans. I’d like to say, “We told you so,” but I won’t do that.

Since I had resurrected the word in my email, I did some research on its history. How is it being used some 50 years later?

A Brief History of Woke

In 1938, blues sanger Lead Belly wrote and sang a song about the Scottsboro Boys. These were six young black men who were jailed in Alabama for six years for being on a freight train with white women. In an interview about the Scottsboro Boys incident, Lead Belly advised all good colored people to ‘stay woke’.

In a 1962, African American professor William Melvin Kelley wrote an essay which the New York Times published. It had the lengthy title, ’If You’re Woke You Dig It; No mickey mouse can be expected to follow today’s Negro idiom without a hip assist. If You’re Woke You Dig It.’ Kelly highlighted the phenomenon of Black American slang being appropriated by white people who often missed or altogether distorted the words’ original meanings. “The idioms were taken over, inevitably transformed, and ultimately abandoned by their original Black creators,” wrote Kelly.

It lost its groove, then found it again

‘Woke’ disappeared from the conversation for several decades after ‘the movement’ lost steam in the 1970’s and early ’80’s. Sex, drugs and disco iced it. Of course, government shenanigans played their hand. Thank God, I found Jesus, or should I say ‘He found me’.

In 2016, it was picked up again by the documentary film ‘Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement’. Woke has been hijacked by BLM who has done little to improve the lives of black Americans except to pad the pockets of the black founders. African American men seem to hold little value other than to be used as slain poster boys. Send a donation and your guilt will be absolved, right? Wrong! Only God can do that and it’s free. BLM has weaponized woke by inciting rage and dividing people along racial lines and sexual identities.

Sometime around 2020, woke was hijacked again. This time it was on the tongues of many conservatives and some Bible believing Christians. Woke is the label being used to describe liberal and progressive policies and ideologies. Today, it identifies behavior that stray from centuries-old social norms. It attempts to vanquish the values set forth in the scriptures.

Under the banner of woke, the life of the unborn is at risk. Our youth are being experimented on sexually. Parental rights are under attack. Women’s sports are taking a dive due to male participation. Freedom of speech is being threatened. God’s rainbow has been taken hostage. I could go on.

Now is Not the Time to WOKE Up. It’s time to WAKE up.