The Genesis of “What Colour Is God’s Skin?”
(Around Christmas time 1963 Dame Flora MacLeod, the 28th Clan Chief of the Clan MacLeod arrived in Los Angeles on a speaking tour establishing Clan Societies. With her was her personal piper, Sandy Gordon, her grandson Patrick Wolrige-Gordon, his wife Anne, and Anne’s parents Peter and Döe Howard. Tom Wilkes and I were their chauffeurs as they visited various sites around Southern California. In October 1961 Peter Howard had assumed the leadership of Moral Re-Armament when its founder, Frank Buchman, died. Tom and I were working with MRA at this time.)
One of the more exciting stops on this tour was the New Year’s Day Rose Bowl game in Pasadena, which we all attended. Following the game there was a reception for this party at the home of Don and Sue Birdsall who lived in Pasadena. Tom and I were there. The main topic of conversation was praise for the energy and enthusiasm of the young people on display in the stadium during the game and what an influence that might have on America if it were channeled in a positive direction. It wasn’t long after this that it was announced that the focus of the upcoming summer conference at the MRA center on Mackinac Island would be for youth from around the world.
(It was about this same time that in a conversation with Peter Howard he said to Tom and me, “Do you think God has a plan for teenagers after 10 o’clock at night?” In considering this question, Tom and I and others came up with an idea.)
This was the era of the folk-singing Hootenany in American music and we suggested that we begin to stage our own hootenanys in the “Club”, the MRA headquarters building in Los Angeles.
On Saturday evenings in the winter and spring of 1964 we staged our own hootenannys inviting musical groups from the local schools, colleges and universities to come to perform. Most of their songs were of the protest variety so we decided to write and perform our own more positive songs. On February 23, 1964 Peter Howard made a speech in the Wheat Street Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. This was four months before what came to be known as “Freedom Summer” in the American South. In that speech he said among other things: “The different races in America are her strength and glory. They are no handicap. They are an asset that no other country possesses." The title of his speech was “What Colour Is God’s Skin?”. The title and content of Peter Howard’s speech were the inspiration for the lyrics which I wrote and which Tom and I set to music. Tom and I performed the song for the first time at one of the hootenanys in the “Club” in March 1964. When the 1964 conference at Mackinac was being planned with the theme “Tomorrow’s American” Tom and I and others suggested that the hootenanys be expanded into a nightclub at the conference. On February 24, 1964 (it’s interesting that this is the day after his speech at the Wheat Street Baptist Church), Peter Howard wrote:
Dear Tom and Dave
“I salute your imaginative genius. It makes me feel almost young again and supremely happy that I still have young friends like yourselves. “You must keep right ahead planning intelligently for the nightclub. The whole concept of it depends on people like you. By all means have a dry run of the performers you have nominated. But I give you fair warning that we are going to have professional standards in that place. “Let’s trust for the numbers and start off with that Sky Straits room of ours, which always seems to me designed for a nightclub. If by any chance the customers overflow the place we can expand to the wigwam down below.”
With the arrival at the 1964 conference of Herbie Allen and the Colwells the nightclub concept exploded into a full-blown musical performance which became Sing-Out 64. Peter Howard gave the keynote address at the conference, then spent the following months speaking at several universities around America recruiting delegates for the second international youth conference to be held in the summer of 1965. Sadly he died very unexpected in February in Lima, Peru and was not there to see the birth of Sing Out 65 which in the following August was rebranded as “Up With People.”
(On a personal note, Jane and I were married in Toronto at the end of November 1964. Tom Wilkes was the best man at our wedding and Peter Howard gave the toast to the bride.)
April 12, 2015
English
