If 2Pac Were Alive Today

Where Would He Be ?

letter #18

History shows us that eventually every significant person is realized and
understood, whether it's right on time or after his or her time. It's not
possible for us to totally miss the beat, the heartbeat, the life beat,
the spirit of wondrous individuals even though it may take a generation.
Some college students asked me a couple of years ago who was the emerging
black leader for the late 1990s. I instinctly replied, "it's supposed to
be 2Pac." Although 2Pac had already been taken away, I knew for a fact
that he was the one who would have set it off for African America. Just
like Malcolm X, just like Dr. King, just like Fred Hampton and others,
2Pac knew history and knew reality, and he was not afraid of death. I
guess we could have expected him to be assassinated because he had
managed to present a very clear and revolutionary image of what life was
like. In one of his songs he said "Somebody needs to explain why I ain't
got nothing."

2Pac was a young man, so there are some things we should expect with
youth. So we won't, we can't define 2Pac solely on some of the frivolous
youthful playa playa things he projected in his music and his life. His
power goes much deeper.

So although 2Pac is not here living on earth, his legacy has grown. When
visionary and powerful mother-women and mother-warriors like Nikki
Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez spent their publishing and lecturing praising,
revering, and understanding 2Pac for masssive audiences, intellectual and
street, we know that 2Pac was on his way to becoming the leader that the
Black community, beginning with our urban , hip-hop visionaries wanted to
foresee. His power was not in a business suit or a Congressional meeting
or a forum with President Clinton. His power was reaching all the real
people first.

As evidence for knowing and feeling all that 2Pac is, will be and could
have been as a living, rather than a current "spiritual" presence, is
Nikki Giovanni's poem where she prophecied a 2Pac back in 1967. I'm going
to write out her poem as prose, if you don't mind.

"POEM FOR BLACK BOYS"

Where are your heroes, my littl Black ones/You are the indian you so
disdainfully shoot/Not the big bad sheriff on his faggoty white horse/You
should play run-away-slave/or Mau-Mau/These are more in line with your
history/Ask your mothers for a Rap Brown gun/Santa just might comply if
you wish hard enough/ask for CULLURD instead of Monopoly/DO NOT SIT IN DO NOT FOLLOW KING/GO DIRECTLY TO THE STREETS/This is a game you can win/As you sit there with your all understanding eyes/You know the truth of what I'm saying/Play Back-to-Black/Grow a natural and practice vandalism/These are useful games (some say a skill is even learned)/There is a new game I must tell you of/Its called Catch The Leader Lying/(and knowing your sense of the absurd you will enjoy this)/Also a company called Revolution has just issued a special kit for little boys/called Burn Baby/I'm told it has full instructions on how to siphon gas and fill a bottle/Then our old
friend Hide and Seek becomes valid/Because we have much to seek and
ourselves to hide/from a lecherous dog/And this poem I give is worth much
more than any nickel bag/or ten cent toy/And you will understand all too
soon/That you, my children of battle, are your heroes/You must invent your
own games and teach us old ones how to play.

What more can I say about 2Pac. Amen.

Dr. Christel N. Temple
Baltimore, MD