I could see the S&H Green Stamps sign clear across the room, hanging on a peg wall with its red, white and green colors pocked with a few black spots and nicks.
The sign was divided into three flaps that probably waved in the wind at whatever location it was first used. Now, it was waiting to be taken home with the highest bidder.
Every time I see a Green Stamps sign, the childhood memory of licking stamps to buy merchandise invades my mind – one shared by many Baby Boomers, as I learned at a flea market a few years ago where several stamp books were for sale.
The sign also elicited another recollection: the revolutionary writings of the poet who was then named Don L. Lee (He changed his name to Haki R. Madhubuti in the early 1970s and converted to Islam in 1974). Lee wrote a poem about S&H Green Stamps that was more political than sentimental.
In the poem titled “In the Interest of Black Salvation,” he poked at the superficiality of the stamps, their commercialism and their insignificance. I remember that poem well from my college days, and understood and accepted its meaning. It was a poem about the hypocrisy of Christianity in a country that had used it to subjugate African Americans. It offered a cynical view of the religion by juxtaposing a Jesus who saves with the frivolity of saving Green Stamps to buy stuff.
Lee’s poems were terse, but the pointed messages were powerful. He spoke to a generation of young African Americans who had lived through the conflicting messages of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X – along with society’s perception of them – and were trying to piece together their own identity.
African Americans were black, not Negroes – “I see / integration / of / Negroes / with / black / people,” Lee wrote in one poem. His poems were always designed to stir passions and to teach (he’s now a professor at Chicago State University and has written nearly three dozen books through his own Third World Press).
Don Luther Lee was born in Little Rock, AR, in 1942, and his folks later moved to Detroit, where his father left the family. His mother worked to take care of her family, but became addicted to drugs and alcohol that killed her when he was a teenager. Lee apparently was a Catholic, because in a March 1969 article in Ebony magazine, he said that he remembered “a time when he was ‘so hung up I was taking catechism twice a week at two different Catholic churches.'”
He rejected Christianity in the poem “In the Interest of Black Salvation.” It was published in the June 1967 edition of Negro Digest, along with a mention of Lee’s first collection of poetry titled “Think Black” (which could be bought for a mere 75 cents). The cover of the magazine featured “The Worker” by artist Charles White.
The poem was later published as part of an interview in the March 1969 edition of Ebony. It was often requested at readings, according to the Ebony article. The ending of the poem may be seen as blasphemous to some, but its comic truths and unexpected ending were endearing. Now re-reading the poem, I see that it doesn’t treat women kindly.
“Whom shall I confess to
The Catholics have some cat
they call father,
mine cutout a long time ago —
like His did.I tried confessing to my girl,
but she is not fast enough — except on hair styles
clothes,
face care and
television.
If ABC, CBS, and NBC were to become educational stations
She would probably lose her cool,
and learn to read
Comic books.My neighbor, 36-19-35 volunteered to listen
but I couldn’t talk —
Her numbers kept getting in the way.
Choking me.To a Buddhist friend I went,
Listened, he didn’t —
Advise, he did.
“pray, pray, pray and keep one eye open.”
I didn’t pray – kept both eyes open.Visited three comrades at Fort Hood,
There are no Cassandra cries here,
No one would hear you anyway. They didn’t.
Three tried to speak, “don’t want to make war.”
why???When you could do countless other things like
Make life, this would be —
Useless too …When I was 17,
I didn’t have time to dream,
Dreams didn’t exist —
Prayers did, as dreams.I am now 17 & 8,
I still don’t dream.
Father forgive us for we know what we do.
Jesus saves,
Jesus saves,
Jesus saves – S & H Green Stamps.
Lee apparently took the ending from the countless “Jesus Saves” signs that could be found atop buildings, painted on the sides of buildings and outside churches. They were ubiquitous in the South, where people wore their religion as comfortably as broken-in shoes, and professed it profusely while acting in ways unbecoming a Christian.
But Southerners were not the only ones attached to the slogan: Buildings in cities from Charlotte to Houston to Los Angeles bore the signs. Among the ones in Los Angeles were twin neon-lighted signs that had painted the night skyline since 1935.
In my hometown of Macon, GA, the slogan was decidedly different. Sitting high on the roof of the Macon Rescue Mission building, a sign signaled that “Jesus Cares.” The mission in the 1950s decided that it needed a sign on top of its building to attract those in need and hired a sign-maker to create a “Jesus Saves” sign. The sign-maker thought the slogan was too commonly used, and suggested the other words, which had the same number of letters. And so it was done.
As for the Green Stamps sign, the auctioneer got the bidding started by noting that it was double-sided. The sign sold for $160.
