From Nelson George’s The Death of Rhythm & Blues:
During the 1960s James Brown singlehandedly demonstrated the possibilities for artistic and economic freedom that black music could provide if one constantly struggled against its limitations.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Brown was booked for that night at the Boston Garden. Initially city officials were going to cancel the show, in light of the riots shaking Boston’s black neighborhoods. Then the idea of broadcasting the show live on public television was suggested as a way to keep angry blacks off the streets. And so it was. …it served its purpose, keeping the historically tense relations between whites and blacks in that “liberal” city cool, at least for the evening.
For Brown, never one lacking in self-esteem, this confirmed his power in black America, a power that the previous summer had led vice-president and presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey to give him an award for helping quell riots with public statements. A capitalist and patriot (he played for troops in Vietnam and Korea), Brown was also genuinely moved by the black-pride movement. Seeking to fulfill his role as a leader, he cut “America Is My Home,” and was branded an Uncle Tom by radical blacks. (His “Living in America” is the 1986 counterpart.) But he saw no contradiction, and shouldn’t have, when he released “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” in the summer of 1968. Supported by the JBs’ usual rhythmic intensity, Brown shouted out a testimonial to black pride that, like the phrase “Black Power,” was viewed as a call to arms by many whites. For a time Brown’s “safe” reputation with whites in the entertainment business suffered… The irony of Brown’s musical statements and public posturing as “Soul Brother #1” was that he became an embarrassingly vocal supporter of that notoriously antiblack politician, Richard Milhous Nixon.
Looking back I find it is simply impossible to resolve all of the contradictions in James Brown. As a businessman with a long and lucrative career based in astute self-management, he was a sterling example, and advocate, of black self-sufficiency. He was also as happy as he could be within the white-dominated system, buying diamond rings for his fingers with the profits from his white fans…
There is another aspect of Brown, though, that causes some unease if we try to hold him up as a kind of model. Given the unbridled machismo that was part and parcel of the energy driving him… black women were simply attached as a postscript to a male-directed message.