A King Has Fallen

King!

What is a king?

King is defined as the male ruler of an independent state, especially one who inherits the position by right of birth.

Everywhere they walk the cameras follow. Every more they make is microscopic leaving little room for error.

In the Jungle there is a king and it’s the Lion. One thing about Lions is that their heels don’t touch the ground when they walk. If you seen Lion Kings: Simba’s Pride you remember when Kovu taught Kiara how to hunt. When Kovu snuck up on Timon and he did not know he was coming up on them.

This animal is majestic and few will knock them off of the top. This pride rock will not be easily moved.

Chadwick Boseman, The Black Panther was nothing short of a King. This man demonstrated pose and elegance as he so wisely chose his roles. Roles that put black characters in the positive light and spoke great stories of the greats such as James Brown, Thurgood Marshall, and Jackie Robinson.

Growing up very rarely did I see myself on TV. That representation was not there all the time. Either it was in a scary movie where the black character was killed off first or it was a black character depicted as the villain or turning into an animal or a creature that was not human.

What Chadwick did was different. He created a black carpet. No more was it a red carpet with the blood of our ancestors working hard just to get a shot at a Hollywood status movie. No he created a black carpet where us young and old folk can aspire.

Before him you had James Earl Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes, and so forth who set the acting game into motion. What Boseman did was different. He became a black superhero. He was and is the realer than life Black Panther.

Unbeknownst to all of us, Boseman moved like a Lion and a Panther approaching us in the night time. He did about ten roles while suffering from cancer. Like the King he is, he did it with so much pose. Don’t you hear the jazzy tunes from Levee’s trumpet. He was sure he was going to make it big, he had dreams bigger than the moon itself.

Well, the actor portraying him, the real-life King T’Challa achieved all of those dreams and more. He was and is a King to the young and the old. When I worked at this summer camp we were at the pool. All of us, the campers and counselors mimicked T’Challa as if were follow Wakanda and for us Wakanda was made real.

When we speak of Black in Business, Boseman was and is the epitome of that. He created something new. Just recently I went back to watching one of my childhood heroes Static Shock. Just like Black Panther, it touched on some tough issues. One episode in particular was when Virgil Hawkins (The lead of the show and Static) went to spend the night at his friend Richie’s house. That night he overheard racist comments from his friend’s parents.

That show was before its time and there are other episodes like it. Boseman brought that hero to the screen and I hope there will be more to come. As black men and women, we can be Kings and Queens in our everyday walk of life. Let’s bring Wakanda with us everywhere we go and like Kovu let’s sneak up on the industry.

Creating our own Black Hollywood will take time. We will create our own shows and movies created by our black hands. It’s going to be beautiful to see us changing our communities and the world.

Thank you Mr. Chadwick Boseman. Gone too soon King, thank you for creating the black carpet and walking with so much pose and elegance.