An essay in Curtis Mayfield’s time
Curtis Mayfield didn’t write anthems—he wrote indictments, love letters, cautionary tales. He summoned brass and bass to sketch the contours of a democracy that refused to hear its drumline. This essay riffs off Mayfield’s enduring question—“We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue”—to argue that the republic is not merely in peril, but being quietly repossessed by those who mistake governance for grift. “Are we going to stand around this town,” as Mayfield intoned, “and let what others say come true, … pardon me, brother, as I tell the whole story.”