![]() ![]() ![]() But were they grateful for his diverting serenades? No. And as his people dragged their hot, heavy bags down the endless rows of cotton, young Moses' soul would burst with song, startling fellow cottonpickers. Working at the arduous job of picking cotton, a job he was in the fields to do, was not on his mind. The youthful Black Moses, only 11 years old, stood in the fields, daydreaming, wondering, listening, awestruck by the wonders of nature–the birds of the air, the fowl, insects, animals of the fields, woods the fish of the streams. The fields stretched, in broad concourse, to the murky waters of the River Nile (Mississippi River) of which the oppressed people had fashioned many a joyful and plaintive song unto the Lord. The broad reaches of the cotton fields, where tall, green plants, their white fluffy heads gently nodding in the hot and humid breezes, became the bullrushes, paradoxically, "hiding" Moses and his oppressed people from the immediate genocidal clutches of the racist and xenophobic Pharoahs. It was to claim, ultimately, one of the chosen people's greatest leaders: Dr. Never officially voiced or sanctioned by the Pharoahs, the sanguine practice was, nevertheless, slyly winked at by them. Black Moses and the chosen people oppressed in the Kingdom of Cotton, were its especial targets. There was abroad in that land in those times even as to this very day, a chilling pathology that loosed the blind and mindless forces of racial hatred and bigotry. So despite welfare aid the family received during the early years of his life, young Hayes was hard put to fill with the staff of life, the aching and empty void that was his belly, or to hide his shameful nakedness with the hand-me-down rags donated by loving and God-fearing neighbors who yet believe that cheerful givers are blessed and some day will see the Kingdom of Heaven. And though their heart and spirit were more than willing, the resources of the unschooled Wades were meager to an extreme. Willie (Bushia) Wade, Sr., to care for, nurture and suckle the budding young prophet and his sister, Willette Rankin, who is one year older. His mother died at an early age and the male child Hayes never really knew his dad of whom he sadly recalled not long ago: "I haven't seen him since I was one-and-a-half years old."Īnd so it fell the hard and beleaguered lot of his grandparents, Mr. ![]() ![]() and Eula Hayes, and already on his black and sweating brow there was a mark of prophecy. Liner notes by Chester Higgins, Senior Editor, Jet Magazine:Īnd so it came to pass that 28 years ago Isaac (Black Moses) Hayes was born in the town of Covington, Tenn., a snoozing little hamlet that is 38 miles, as a crow flies, from the ancient Cotton Kingdom of Memphis. ![]()
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