The taste of freedom

When my friends and I were turning 16, we pooled our money and bought a six pack. We knocked it down quickly, while it was still warm, and belched our way through the afternoon. Little did we know it was the only time we’d score cans of Afro-Kola, “The Soul Drink.”

Afro-Kola was an unspectacular generic soda, like RC or C&C Cola, but the thrill was in the colorful can, with its great graphic of the African continent set against a blue background as if it were a map and the idea that we were indulging in something cool and “black.”

While the Afro-Kola radio jingle doesn’t seem to be anywhere on the internet, here are the lyrics, an evocative and minimalist haiku:

Afro-Kola

The taste of freedom

The soul drink

Right on

The soul drink

Afro-Kola

Right on 

Three black cultural icons were involved with the production of the radio ad. The music was written by one of the great jazz drummers and bandleaders, Max Roach, no doubt as a favor to Frank Mabry, Jr., a friend of Roach’s who owned Afro-American Distributors, makers of Afro-Kola. The singer was Brock Peters, who had a long career on stage, movies and TV, including playing Tom Robinson in To Kill A Mockingbird. The advertising company working to get media buys (in New York City the jingle ran on black radio stations WWRL, WLIB and WADO) was owned by Abbey Lincoln, the slyly named singer and civil rights activist, and Max Roach’s wife.

We found our Afro-Kola at the IGA grocery store in Maywood, ironically at the time one of the whitest towns in Bergen County. We should have bought more, as the brand seemed to vanish quickly. Afro-American Distributors was ambitious, also selling Afro-Orange and Afro-Grape sodas, but there was only so much shelf space available and marketing a new soda brand from scratch, regardless of the company behind it, is an uphill struggle in the face of national and regional competition. From what I’ve seen on the internet, it’s possible that Coca-Cola bought the brand and buried it.

As the realization of black-owned company, Afro-Kola didn’t become the household name that Frank Mabry had hoped for, except in my room where I proudly kept an empty can atop my dresser for years, using it as a coin/pen holder. Someone on the internet has a complete six-pack for sale, still in its plastic rings, although the contents have evaporated over the past 50 or so years. He’s asking $800, which probably eclipses Afro-Kola’s total sales while it could still be found in stores.