Self-Care in Movement History
This is my second piece in a series on “freedom as a long distance struggle.” It was originally published in July 2020, a few months after the George Floyd uprisings.
Of the thousands of pages that I’ve read by and about W.E.B. Du Bois, a random fact lodged itself in my consciousness: Du Bois went to bed at 10. Without looking at any of my copious notes on the man, I super randomly know Du Bois’s bedtime. Once he travelled thousands of miles to a Pan-African Congress he had helped to organize, and in the middle of a passionate meeting with members of the African diaspora from around the world… he got up from the meeting and shocked everyone by saying it was his bedtime.
Du Bois’s bedtime isn’t a meaningless bit of trivia: it’s how he structured his life in order to be productive. I think it stuck with me because I saw it as a key that allowed him to channel his genius into incredible productivity. I will probably never be the kind of person who would leave a massive gathering of movement figures at 10PM while rich discussions were flourishing: but looking at what helped different movement figures most fully manifest themselves feels like an opportunity for reflection. What foundations of self-care allow us to most fully bring ourselves — and our movement work — most fully into this world?
Yes, self-care means figuring out healthy routines such as sleep (I think of King never getting enough and suffering and Malcolm’s asceticism meaning he didn’t need as much as most of us would) and exercise (I think of all the Black Panther elders who practice yoga and gardening these days). I think of the way meditation is flourishing in movement spaces that are challenging how easy it is to be reactive in today’s world, and are creating spaces that nurture reflection for the sake of building a better world. I think of how the Black Buddhist movement is gaining momentum. But I also think of all the very human ways we find to relieve ourselves of stress: Pauli Murray getting kicked out of the Harlem Ashram because she smoked… but that was how she decompressed, and processed, and she decided she needed to do that. I think of the dirty and outrageous humor that has filled so many movement spaces, and which deescalates the potential for an unhealthy sense of seriousness (see Indigenous comedian/activist Dallas Goldtooth’s The Power to Make Light in Pleasure Activism). I think of outrageous silliness — King and his friends getting into pillow fights and prank calling his parents (I wrote about it here).
Self-care is also all about friendship — caring for others and allowing oneself to be cared for. Perhaps my favorite example of friendship as self-care is Anne Braden and Ella Baker retreating up to a cabin in the woods to sip whiskey, decompress, and just talk about life. Both of them were relentless movement workers, but they recognized that it was important to step outside of the movement from time to time. They offered one another reminders of that, and were intentional about creating space simply to talk about life… their relationships, kids, emotions, etc. There’s an important movement lesson here: organizing efforts are far more long-lasting and effective if organizers don’t just spend time organizing, but getting to know one another on a deeper level and developing friendships. Movement comrades need to party together, go on hikes together, cook together, go on retreats together. That helps to build everything from trust to commitment to enjoying freedom as a long-distance struggle as a beautiful way of life.
There are many dimensions to self-care, and they are important for movement activity, past and present… especially for those with a long-haul vision and way of life. If we visualize what that might look like for us today, it will empower ourselves, our communities, and our movements for decades to come.
I’ll end with a quote from David Levering Lewis’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography on Du Bois: “Shortly before his ninety-second birthday, the two of them [Du Bois and his wife Shirley Graham] enjoyed a months vacation in the Virgin Islands. Du Bois took high dives from the hotel diving board and swam across the lagoon.” Swimming was one form of self-care, which is one dimension of freedom as a long distance struggle. After that swim, W.E.B. and Shirley Graham Du Bois moved to Ghana, where Shirley would later mentor Malcolm X.: an intergenerational relationship that points towards another dimension of the long-distance struggle… and a topic for a future piece of writing.
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