Public Enemy - By the Time I Get to Arizona

I never knew they made a video for this song. In fact, it never occurred to me that they could. Somehow (things were surely different in 1991), they produced this video, while on Def Jam/Columbia, while at the height of their popularity, and MTV played it, at least once, given the icon in the corner.

This song is incredible, the record from which it comes is fantastic, and you can download the whole thing, Apocalypse 91...The Enemy Strikes Black here. Public Enemy was really on it at this point. So many excellent songs on the record. "1 Million Bottlebags," fuck:

Then I ask a question

"Yo brother, what the hell is you drinkin?"

He don't know but it flow

Out the bottle in a cup

He call it gettin' fucked up

Like we ain't fucked up already

See the man they call Crazy Eddie

Liquor man with the bottle in his hand

He give the liquor man ten to begin

Wit' no change and he run

To get his brains rearranged

Serve it to the homies and they're able

To do without a table

Beside what's inside ain't on the label

They drink it thinkin' it's good

But they don't sell the shit in the white neighborhood

Exposin' the plan, they get mad at me I understand

They're slaves to the liquor man

Fuck. This video captures so much emotion. So much rage. So much desperation for a recognition of dignity. It's so moving. What a fantastic video. No one would do this anymore. Especially not in their position. People are so fucking scared to offend, to jeopardize their place on the fame ladder. As though it's permanent.

Back then, the governor of Arizona, along with some (lots of?) other people in the state government refused to recognize Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday as a holiday. Flat out.

That's what a real video is. It communicates something very real and elevates the song into something so much more than it was.

Here is an article from the Washington Post about the subject matter of the video, and what had been going on for a few years by that point:

NEW GOVERNOR RESCINDS KING HOLIDAY - ARIZONA'S MECHAM IGNITES PROTESTS BY FULFILLING CAMPAIGN PLEDGE

Washington Post - Wednesday, January 14, 1987

Author: Paul Taylor, Washington Post Staff Writer

Of the 21 new governors being sworn in this month, none is off to a shakier start or shorter honeymoon than Arizona's Evan Mecham (R), a political outsider who won office on his fifth try.

Mecham, 62, has drawn fire for making good this week on a campaign pledge to rescind what he termed an illegal executive order by his predecesssor, Democrat Bruce Babbitt, to establish a state holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The move, expected since Election Day, has triggered accusations of racism and spurred civil rights demonstrations around the state. A large one is planned here for Jan. 19, the federal observance of King's birthday.

Mecham, in turn, has accused his critics of either misunderstanding or misrepresenting his motives. A soft-spoken man, both admired and disliked here for his deep conservative political convictions, Mecham has said the issue is strictly legal and technical, and on Monday he proposed that it be settled by the electorate in a referendum. He has also argued, however, that King is not a figure comparable in historical importance to Washington or Lincoln, and therefore is unworthy of a holiday.

"He says the issue is technical, but the longer he talks, the more he makes it clear his problems are philosophical," said the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, in the state to address student and church groups. Jackson wound up meeting privately with the governor yesterday aboard the state airplane.

"He said he felt that Babbitt had pandered to the blacks," Jackson said. "The reality is that Dr. King embodied the quest for equal protection for everybody. If the world can recognize him with a Nobel Peace Prize, if the federal government can recognize him with a holiday, then surely Arizona will not be able to turn the clock back."

Last year the state Senate passed a bill to make Arizona one of 40 states that observe the King holiday, but the measure was defeated 30 to 29 in the state House. A spokesman for the Martin Luther King Federal Holiday Commission in Washington said he believed it was the only state legislature to vote down such a bill since King's birthday became a federal holiday last year.

Babbitt then proclaimed the holiday on his own -- a move that state Attorney General Bob Corbin, a Republican, subsequently declared illegal. "I'll see you on the courthouse steps," responded Babbitt, who was preparing to leave office and run for the presidency.

There the matter stood until the fall gubernatorial campaign, when Mecham, in response to a newspaper questionnaire, said he would rescind the order. The issue was never prominent in the campaign -- which Mecham won when two Democrats, one running as an independent, divided 60 percent of the vote.

The day after the election, he reiterated his intention to rescind the order, and has been under fire since. A recall petition is being circulated, but it is not taken seriously here. The Rev. Warren Stewart Sr., pastor of the First Institutional Baptist Church and a leader of a civil rights group trying to restore the holiday, has accused Mecham of having a "racist mentality." Martin Luther King III came to Arizona and said Mecham's actions were motivated by racism. Entertainer Stevie Wonder, who was a leader of the movement to make King's birthday a national holiday, has refused to schedule concerts here.

Some here have speculated that Mecham was motivated by his religious beliefs as a Mormon; until 1978, Mormon Church doctrine gave blacks an inferior status. Jackson said he raised the question with Mecham, and "he assured me that was not the case."

The governor declined to be interviewed, but his spokesman, Ron Bellus, said the issue is due process. "Let's get serious," he said. "Babbitt saw a chance to use the memory of Dr. King for political purpose, and he did an illegal thing . . . . I find that despicable."

Babbitt said in an interview that he considers Mecham's action an "insult, not just to blacks, but all Americans," and plans to participate in protest marches here next week. He denied he was motivated by politics.

The issue, meanwhile, is also back in the legislature, which convened Monday for its 1987 session. Three bills are in the hopper: one would establish the King holiday; the second would establish the holiday and combine the Washington and Lincoln holidays so as not to incur the estimated $2.5 million cost of a new state holiday; and the third would establish the holiday as a Sunday observance, but not make it official unless voters approved it in a referendum next year.

Mecham has not said whether he would veto the first two bills; he supports the third. Holiday backers oppose the Sunday-observance proposal, but doubt they have the votes to block it.

"If you've got the votes, you vote; if you don't, you talk, and right now I am doing a lot of talking," said House Minority Leader Art Hamilton (D), who sponsored the holiday bill that failed last year.

Arizona is a conservative state with a black population of less than 3 percent, and many are unsure whether the symbolic Sunday holiday would survive a referendum. "When I voted for the holiday last year, my mail came in 50-to-1 against me," said Rep. Jim Green, a Republican from Tucson, who is sponsoring the referendum measure.

This Time article provides a quick history of the King holiday, including how piece of shit John McCain opposed it until it wasn't cool to do so anymore and then came out in support of it. Please note that even Reagan was pleading with Arizona governor Evan Mecham to drop his opposition to the King holiday.

Fuck yes, Public Enemy.