Paul Ingles interviews Sara Dosa, director of Tricky Dick and The Man in Black

PI: For context, Tricky Dick and the Man in Black really focuses on a period of time between 1968 and 1970 when the United States was being torn apart by issues of race and war and peace and what it means to be an American and who is a real American patriot. That’s the timeline that this particular story covers.

You’ve got Johnny Cash as a man in conflict at a defining moment in his career, in his personal life and in his spiritual life it seems as well.

Our program being about peacemaking and conflict resolution on all levels, what I found so intriguing about it is that this sounds like Johnny Cash at a moment of decision. He’s forced into it to some degree, but he also comes to it organically in a lot of other ways.

Again, we should say that the main drama of the documentary is that Richard Nixon invites Johnny Cash to the White House to perform a concert. It’s introduced at the beginning of the film and then we watch as that timeline moves towards it throughout the rest of the film.

So, let’s talk a little bit about Johnny Cash in conflict, the way that you learned about it for this film and portrayed it. Could you talk a little big more about his upbringing that made Cash naturally a conservative traditionalist first?

SD: Johnny Cash was raised in Dyess Arkansas in the Depression Era. He was raised by a very poor family, but at the same time, his family talks about how they never really saw themselves as poor. They worked hard for their living. They were very much that classic “bootstrapping” Americans who worked hard and were grateful for what they had, but at the same time, they were no stranger to struggle.

Johnny’s brother in the film and just in our own conversations and research would talk about how patriotic their family was, particularly their father and that there was a tremendous respect for the institution of government.

They were also a deeply Christian family. Johnny’s older brother, Jack, who tragically died in 1944, was destined to be a preacher. God and faith were central not only in Jack’s life, but Johnny’s life and when Jack tragically died, Johnny very much wanted to follow in the footsteps of his brother and very committed himself to God. Those were some of the cultural elements that his family embraced and grew up with and that served as an initial guide as he was coming of age.

He also was in the military and that of course also formed the backdrop of his political world view and his relationship to the institution of government as well.

PI: All before he was taken seriously as a musician. Where he was going to land was totally up in the air for many years.

I know a lot of folks saw Joaquin Phoenix’s performance of Johnny Cash in the films and learned a little bit about his desire to please his father. That was hard to do all the way to the end of his fathers’ life.

There was also some responsibility that he felt for his brothers’ death and lots of other emotional turmoil.

SD: Absolutely. He felt tremendous responsibility and believed that Jack’s death was his own fault. From accounts from family members, they corroborated that view that Johnny really felt like he was a criminal so to speak; that his brother could have been alive if Johnny had done something.

Johnny spent countless hours in his life trying to win over his fathers’ approval, but the fact that he never felt like he could.
Mark Stielper, who is one of Johnny Cash’s great personal friends and also considered the Cash Family Historian, he talks about to the day he died, Ray Cash, Johnny Cash’s father did not give him the kind of approval that his son had always sought. That does real damage of course over the course of one’s life.

However, the other thing it did do was give Johnny a deep sense of empathy for those who struggle. I think that was the early seeds of his political awakening even though he would never use the word “political.” It was hot he stepped into his conscience and allowed him to begin to question what was happening in the country that he loved so dearly.

PI: Sara Dosa is one of the directors of Tricky Dick and the Man in Black, a story about Johnny Cash and Richard Nixon.
Let’s go back to the Richard Nixon side of the tale. You cover this a bit in the documentary. How were Nixon and Cash somewhat similar in their upbringings in a way that Nixon really thought he understood Johnny Cash?

SD: He did, Nixon thought he could understand Johnny Cash and did understand Johnny Cash because the two had somewhat similar upbringings. Nixon grew up on a struggling lemon farm. He had a father who was extremely hard on him. He lost two brothers to tuberculosis.

These were all experiences that resonated with Johnny Cash’s experiences. Johnny grew up on a farm in Arkansas, also losing his brother, also having an extremely difficult father. Both men were patriots. Nixon thought that Cash subscribed to conservative values.

Nixon really did think that in Johnny Cash he had a kindred spirit and saw in him his reflection.

PI: Both had been struggling a bit in their professional careers. Nixon had some famous failures in his political climb up the ladder. Cash had his ups and downs and was certainly struggling still, but at the time that they came together, they had both reached the top, hadn’t they? Nixon had won the election in ’68. Cash was a huge star and had just premiered his national TV show. They were above the fold again together, weren’t they?

SD: Yes, that is a great way to put that into context. I think both these men were no strangers to loss
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PI: So, you do have great moments looking at both of them heading towards this meeting in April of 1970 when Johnny Cash actually comes into the White House. You talk a little bit about the conservative plan for the South that was already sort of in swing by the time that Richard Nixon was winning the Presidency in 1968.

I guess the documentary does make the point that beyond Nixon’s apparent connection to Johnny Cash or even enthusiasm for music (he was not necessarily a country music enthusiast but pretended pretty well) there was subtext to him cozying up to Cash and the country music audience it seems.

SD: He absolutely was. Inviting Johnny Cash to the White House in April of 1970 was definitely inline with the Southern Strategy that was engineered by Nixon’s team.

Nixon had won the 1968 election by a very slim margin and in order to consolidate their base for reelection in 1972, they very much thought that they really needed to get the South on board, and particularly get the Wallace democrats to firmly align themselves with Nixon and the Republican Party.

They launched the Southern Strategy; this cultural strategy of appealing to the South, some perhaps stereotypical ideas of what the South meant and some cultural trends that they believed at that time Southerners would relate to. This is largely God, guns and country and they thought that country music would be a key avenue to go down in order to reach out to perhaps some undecided voters.

Johnny Cash being this huge star at the time that represented a certain American ideal, one of the most popular country singers at the time, for the Nixon Administration, they thought it was a win; a great way to align themselves with a popular icon, “Son of the South.”

Pat Buchanan, who was one of Nixon’s key advisers, loved Johnny Cash, so for him personally, he thought it would be a win.

PI: Nixon made a visit to the Grand Ole Opry (that you show) where he challenges people to love America and love the flag and “Country music does that;” a stereotypical view of what country music does.

In the meantime, Johnny Cash premiered his TV show. They recorded at the Ryman Theater. It was a big success in the Summer of 1969.

But not too far into that, you started seeing a very interesting parade of youth culture icons on Johnny Cash’s show; Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and Neil Young.

There is a really affecting moment when he’s in the dressing room with Pete Seeger where he’s just talking and they’re filming him, and he talks about Seeger as being one of the great American patriots of all time. Of course, Seeger was blacklisted, as other musicians were, and called “Communists” during that time for essentially advocating for basic freedoms.

It felt like this was the moment in the documentary where you’re trying to paint a picture of the broader education of Johnny Cash into the complexities of the American experiment.

SD: That’s a wonderful way to describe. From a storytelling perspective, this really was the moment that we were trying to illustrate that in the documentary.

As I mentioned before, Johnny always possessed a deep sense of empathy for the “downtrodden.”

PI: And he famously, in early 1968, did his Folsom Prison concerts and it became a big smash record hit too.

SD: Exactly. He had these experiences where he bore witness to the struggles of Americans, whether it was at Folsom Prison or Wounded Knee and seeing what life was like on the reservation. At that time, the American Indian movement was burgeoning.

PI: I didn’t realize that he had done a whole album of songs written about the American Indian experience.

SD: Yes, he did! It’s interesting you say that because most people are totally surprised to know that he did that. It was one of his lesser-known albums and certainly not as popular. A lot of the songs were spoken word-oriented songs, so very different from what he’s most known for, but it’s a very affecting album that really does give voice to the experience of Native Americans at that time.

Cash always shied away from the use of the words “politics or political,” but he believed in patriots. He believed in the country, however when the government did not support the American people, he would question it. That’s really what you saw him start to do at this time.

PI: Back to Richard Nixon and his 1968 campaign and early Presidency; he promises to “Bring an honorable end to the War in Vietnam,” which was the perfected crafted campaign line because it could sound like a call for peace, but to militarists, it could sound like a call to go win the war.

The way your documentary plays it out, Johnny Cash falls for it a little bit. Cash did tip his hand by making an explicit call for support for the President on his show and referenced the President’s call for “A just and lasting peace.” That seems to be the moment on the timeline where Nixon really embraces Cash’s support.

The Nixon White House made arrangements for Cash to make an appearance and sing at the White House on April 17, 1970. Nixon asks him to sing a couple songs specifically that he didn’t even write. Could you tell me more about that?

SD: Nixon’s team asked Johnny Cash to sing “Okie from Muskogee” and “Welfare Cadillac” which were two songs that embodied the rightwing cultural trend at the moment.

PI: Neither one of which Johnny Cash wrote.

SD: Exactly, neither of them were Johnny Cash’s songs. They requested that Johnny play his hits as well, but those were specific requests and were of course politically motivated that would clearly align Johnny and the camp of the rightwing were he to sing those songs.

The media had a field day with it; “How dare Nixon make fun of his own citizens, his own countrymen?” It backfired and really drummed up controversy before the actual concert.

PI: The Nixon White House wasn’t really connecting the dots about Johnny Cash’s emerging sensitivity and social consciousness it seems.

SD: Yes, they were absolutely not aware of his visit to Wounded Knee. They of course knew about Folsom Prison and his experience there, but it seems like they were just looking at the surface. Johnny represented the South in their minds and what a “good American” was to be at that time. They made a lot of assumptions that, for them, seemed politically strategic.

Judy Goldberg interviews Ndaba Mandela, Andrew Nalani, and Teddy Warria

Ndaba Mandela: Growing up, I’ve gone through so many different (I don’t know what you call it) privileged poor, hustling, part of the massive, exclusive. I’ve gone through all that, changing schools every year; Muslim school, Catholic school, Christian school. You can only imagine how that would affect one.

I grew up with my grandfather from the time I was 11 years old and he was the one who really started to entrench this notion of what it is to be a Mandela. The first thing he said to me was, “Ndaba, you are my grandson, therefore people will look at you as a leader, therefore you have to get the best marks in class.”

I was like oh wow, the pressure! “No, I don’t want this pressure! I don’t want to be a Mandela. I just want to be a normal kid.” “Actually Ndaba, this is not something you can escape. This is your heritage. This is your birthright. This is your lineage. This is who you are. This is your destiny my friend.”

As I’ve grown into who I am today, I realize as a global citizen, you are first an African and then you are [inaudible], then you are a South African and it is the African ethos, the value and the principles to say we are African first and foremost. If you look at slavery, if you look at how the world has evolved, we are African way before anything else.

Judy Goldberg: Andrew Nalani, a Ugandan native, graduated from United World College USA in 2012. He went on to study at Dartmouth, Harvard Graduate School of Education and now is at New York University as PhD student in the psychology and social intervention program. Andrew founded African Youth, leadership experience in Uganda and serves as a facilitator internationally.

Andrew Nalani: What does it mean to wake up one day and realize that what I know as my history was never my narrative. What does it mean to write myself into a history out of which I’ve been erased?

Your comment evokes for me that sense of solidarity around being African and the sense of being a global citizen. It also evokes for me a question of power. Coming into this world recognizing and owning our identity as a global citizen is also recognizing power and imbalance of power and a quest towards finding authentic power.

When I think of the fact that I was never black until I came to the United States. I was picking up my suitcase at the airport. It was overpacked and my zipper had broken. I felt ashamed that I was going to pick up this suitcase. I looked around and I saw that everyone had these nice, sleek suitcases and I told myself, “You know what, Andrew? Just go pick up your suitcase. Never mind, they will understand you’re black.”

The way I had constructed myself without anyone telling me anything about race, the way I had constructed myself in the eyes of whiteness was one that disempowered me. When we ask that question what it means to be a global citizen and what it means to share in African solidarity, I can’t help but also think about the power dynamics that are at play, how we choose to identify and how we choose to constitute ourselves. It’s about power and I ask myself; what might a different kind of power look like?

JG: To further explore this question around power, Ndaba takes us into the mindset of his grandfather well before the African National Congress claimed governance of South Africa.

NM: My grandfather had all those years in jail. He obviously saw from Ghana being the first black independent African country in 1950, the next one, the next one and Uganda and Zimbabwe, etc. that most of them would actually kick out the whites, the oppressors, the colonial masters. But then what would happen to those countries? They would be marred by political and economic instability. They wouldn’t be able to govern themselves or each other. It was like if you kick out the colonial masters, then we shall punish you to show you that you are unable to govern yourselves.

My grandfather saw all this when he was in jail. Then what he decided was that we could not afford to kick out the colonial masters. We have to work with the colonial masters because if we try to kick them out and we try to avenge them, this is what’s going to happen to our people, clearly because it was happening throughout Africa. Let us choose a different way. Let us be smarter. Let’s find a way to actually work with these enemies.

I think that’s the decision he made; in order to defeat my enemy, I must work with my enemy because then he becomes my partner and maybe even my friend because I have been fighting this man as a liberation movement, these colonial masters, now I have defeated them, but I do not know how to run a government. Where am I going to learn how to run a government? I have to learn it from the enemy. So rather let us sacrifice, let us compromise for the benefit of the next generation.

You cannot come and say, “Listen, leave our lands and 100% our goldmines,” if you don’t even know how to make a gold bar, so how do you kick a man out when you haven’t got the skills to actually run a profitable goldmine? We have to learn from him first, then we are able to be in a position of power once we have the skill and the knowledge to be able to turn this iron ore into gold bars.

AN: It’s not an easy thing to arrive at. It’s not an easy way of being. It’s not an easy choice to make, especially when you’ve committed yourself for years and years to try to change the narrative, to trying to change the story, to finding more power. There is a new definition of power. It’s not about just winning, it’s about what winning can do.

JG: And it also seems to imply that there could be some mutuality. I don’t know if the end game is, as you said, to be able to know how to make that gold bar and then we are done with the white colonial master. Is that the end game or is it to see that friendships can form and people can reconcile? Can that happen? Is that happening?

NM: I believe that friendships can form, however when you are able to finally have that skill, to be able to run the government, to be able to turn that iron ore into a gold bar, you are trying to arrive at the position of independence. That is the aim of African society. We want to be independent from Westernized rule. Until today we are striving to be independent as Africans, of course, not to expel the white people, not to make then our enemy. As Europe has been governed by Europeans, Africa should be governed by Africans.

JG: So, putting on your grandfather’s hat, how would he be perceiving things now. What should be the strategy going forward? His strategy was always about moving forward.

NM: Oh, his strategy is still the best strategy; with each generation, you have to do a little bit to hand over to the next generation. That is the only strategy. There is no other strategy as far as I’m concerned, but I’m open.

AN: I think of the question that you just asked; how do we move from here? Where do we go from here? I think of what’s happening on the ground. We are the youngest continent. I come from Uganda. Currently, 80% of the country is under the age of 35, which means that we are looking at youth who are not just going through traditional education, but we are looking at the very future of the country depending on youth. For me, that is both terrifying and also a big opportunity beginning with the question “What might a different power look like?” but also “How might the ways that we engage young people, how might education support us to believe and trust in our own ways of knowing?” That is where it begins.

The very fact that the systems of governance, the systems of economics, the systems that we have currently, those systems have been developed from a particular standpoint of Western thought, Western philosophy, Western values that has undermined indigenous ways of knowing.

And so, I ask myself; what might a different kind of power look like, what might a different way of knowing look like, how can we begin with the ways of knowing. I think for example of Ubuntu, how can we begin from those things that have still lived on in spite of the destruction of violence.

JG: Ubuntu comes from a Zulu proverb that translates to “I am a person through other people. My humanity is tied to yours.” Andrew added Ubuntu includes “A sense of mutuality that only in wholesome relationships with others do I find my true selfhood.”

NM: Ubuntu is under attack and has been under attack. And we can see it slowly dissipating into history. Our forefathers fought a battle, a physical battle because they had to break physical chains. They could point out the enemy and say, “The enemy is the judge, is the police” and they have now defeated that enemy, but now there is a new enemy. The enemy is no longer a physical enemy, the enemy is a mental enemy now. The chains are in the brain. We are our worst enemy now. Our fight is actually a lot harder to fight than the fight of my grandfather because we’re fighting a fight of what? To say oh, you want to develop, you want to become successful? What is success?

AN: It makes me ask the question “If it’s about elevating the highest qualities of humanity, if it is about celebrating and invoking and bringing into this world the sense of a human being who has a right to be on this planet and the right to thrive, if I keep quiet, I’m not inline with that principle. I am not honoring my own humanity.

NM: Yes.

AN: And I think beginning with that clarity and then doing what I need to do to voice.

NM: One hundred percent.

AN: To make my voice heard; uniting, organizing, finding others, speaking out, not to bash or make somebody else look evil, but speaking out to honor what is truly human, speaking out and acting on any action that is life affirming. It’s what we need to be doing.

NM: We need to take a step back and look at humanity in general. We have diseases, whether it’s prejudice, sexuality or racism. Now all these different things divide our humanity. We need to take a step back and ask ourselves where is the planet going to be? What kind of planet do I want my grandchildren to inherit and once you answer that question, then you will understand how we, as human beings, should evolve.

I don’t want my kids to be still fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic. I don’t want my kids to still be fighting prejudices and racism. I want them to be fighting new challenges that we have not yet foreseen and the only way we can do that is by likeminded people coming together and recognizing our common bond that brings us together as humanity for the sustainability of this planet. Otherwise, this planet will cease to exist in a few generations from now.

AN: There is hope only if we act now. I think it’s going to be a catastrophe if we do not with migration, security, climate change, the issues that the younger generation has to deal with are enormous. For me, I even begin to think of what might it look like to have a government that is shared between older folks and younger folks. We have to begin asking the disruptive questions.

NM: We need to work harder at inspiring and encouraging young people to push against the grain. I will start with myself; if I am at a talk or an interview on a daily basis, am I doing that with my whole existence? No, I’m not. I should be doing it with my whole existence if I believe in it wholeheartedly. Why am I not dedicating my whole existence to making sure that every young person that I meet on a daily basis is getting that encouragement and that inspiration to understand that they are the masters of their destiny?

AN: There is nothing that inspires courage more than narrative. I think we need to put tools in the hands of young people, young people on the continent to see themselves as active creators of their own narratives. The more of those narratives we have rather than just a single narrative, the better. How do we put tools in the hands of young people that support them to create transformative narratives?

JG: In a separate conversation, Teddy Warria, collaborator with Ndaba Mandela, adds specifics to how the African narrative is changing financial independence, skill development and accountable leadership which are taking shape all over the continent of Africa.

According to Teddy Warria, the total philanthropic aid sent to Africa is $19 billion per year, however the total revenues Western and Arabic countries extract out of Africa are three times as much.

Teddy Warria: I believed in Obama rising. I believe in Africa Rising. There is a gentleman from the University of Texas, an MBA professor who had written a fantastic book called Africa Rising and I’ve read the book and I believe that Africa is becoming a big consumer market and the middle class is rising and I wanted to be part of that and not just be a bystander. I wanted to be a contributor and a representative of the African Renaissance. I live to see that day.

Africa Rising is just a state of mind of young Africans who we call the generation who have determined that in their lifetime, they want to own Africa, they want the resources of Africa to benefit Africa and Africans first and foremost and they want to also play on the global stage by creating world-class blue-chip companies.

They want Africa not to be seen just for animals and for the exploitation of our resources, but to be seen to create products.
Africa Rising wants to empower, educate and open up rural Africa where more than 75% of Africans live so that they can get jobs, have livelihoods and be educated.

They also want to champion and are championing entrepreneurship.

They are also championing and working towards an AIDS-free generation in Africa. Ndaba is actually a UN AIDS Ambassador and through his work with Africa Rising, they’ve been able to lessen the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS.
They operate as a non-profit, which is really a social entrepreneurship venture and one of the signature programs that we are creating now, because we saw the need, was the Mandela 100 because we saw that Africa’s greatest need is to create excellent, high caliber leaders who will have a 10, 50 or 100 year vision for Africa and not just want to amass wealth for themselves once they get into these positions of power and prestige. That’s really the heart of Africa Rising; to create a new kind of leaders who are Mandela-like who will propel the vision of a united, prosperous and peaceful Africa.

If you’re a leader and when you’re leading, the first thing you need to do is listen to everybody’s concerns to the best of your ability. The second thing is you need to be very observant. The third thing is that you need to understand everybody’s interests. Everybody has an interest. Once you’ve done that and you have knowledge and good judgement, you can arrive at a solution of how to tackle the conflict.

We just want to play our part like Mandela finishing his job of politically liberating South Africa. We want to do our job to connect Africa with technology, first and foremost and secondly, creating a visa-free Africa.

Thirdly, making sure we create strong families in which parents have jobs and can earn their livelihoods and be examples to their children. Their children will learn what discipline and routine are all about and then we can create this Africa that we desire.