ChickenBones: A Journal

for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes

   

Contact      Mission -- Nathaniel Turner -- Marcus Bruce Christian -- Guest Poets --  Special Topics -- Rudy's Place -- The Old South  --  Worldcat

Film Review -- Books N Review -- Education & History -- Religion & Politics --- Literature & Arts  - Black Labor --Work, Labor & Business -- Music  Musicians  

Baltimore Index Page

Educating Our Children

The African World

Editor's Page     Letters

Inside the Caribbean

Digital Links

 ChickenBones: A Journal -- Historic Website -- Collected by Library of Congress   (Ich habe negerschwer gearbeitet. - Rudy)

 

Hip Sites: E-Notes / DemocracyNow  / Somos Primos Black Agenda Report   // Cost of War in Iraq  /  Body Count /  storySouth  / The Negro Artist  / WorldCat

Haiti Action.Net / SeeingBlack.Com  / ASILI  / BlackPoetic  / Ekere Tallie / David Morse  / The MoAD Story Project   / Richard Lawson

 Content Tables:  Amin Sharif  /   Eugene B. Redmond / Floyd W Hayes  /  Jerry Ward   Kalamu ya Salaam   /  Marvin X  /  Miriam DeCosta-Willis 

  Rose Mezu  /  Wilson J. Moses  / Aduku Addae   / Amiri Baraka /Anupama Bhargava  / Askia M. Toure   / Baldwin / Bonhoeffer  /   Ceylan   /  Claire Carew  

 Crystal Cartier     Dennis Leroy Moore / E Ethelbert Miller  / Ekere Tallie   / Eldridge Cleaver   /  Irene Monroe  /  Jamie Walker  / Jeannette Drake  / John Maxwell 

 John Oliver Killens  Jonathan Scott   /    JR Stanton   / Kam Wms / Kola Boof / Komunyakaa  / Langston Hughes  / Larry Uklai Johnson Redd /  Lasana Sekou

 Lil Joe / Lee Meitzen Grue  /   Louis Reyes Rivera  /  Mackie Blanton  / Mary E. Weems   / Miriam DeCosta-Willis Mona Lisa Saloy Naomi Ayala   

 Patricia Jabbeh Wesley   /   Peter Eric Adotey Addo   Richard Wright   /   Sterling A. Brown  / Thomas Long  /  Toussaint   / Uche Nworah    /   Ugochukwu  

WEB Du Bois   /    Yictove  /  Yvonne Terry  //  Art for Life  / Black Librarians   / Blacks & Labor in Print   /   Blacks and Prisons

  Black Arts and Black Power Figures  /   Black Librarians     /  Black Tech Review   / Conversations   / Cow Tom   /   Criminalizing a Race

 Different Drummer /  The Economy  /  Education History of the Negro   / Fifty Influential Figures   / Jim Jordan  /  Hip Hop  / Interviews  / Kalamu Interview 

Katrina Flood Index   / Katrina Survivor Stories   /   A Look at Israel   / Love, Sex, and Erotica /  Lynching  / Literary New Orleans  /  Maria Syphax Case 

 Mau Mau Aesthetics   /   Negro Catholic Writers   / Nuba-Darfur-South Sudan   /  Satchel Paige Sports   /  Short Stories   / Speeches & Sermons Table  

 Transitional Writings on Africa  / Tributes Obituaries Remembrances / Turner-Cone Theology   / Uncrowned Queens  /  Washerwomen    

And more -- Obama 2008   //  Marvin Gaye sings American National Anthem / Marvin Gaye and The Star Spangled Banner

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Help Save ChickenBones—Our Literary Journal

An Appeal by The Committee to Keep ChickenBones Alive

 

   Conversation on ChickenBones Survival    Donate and Support our Fundraiser  Folk Life 

Send contributions to: ChickenBones: A Journal /  2005 Arabian Drive / Finksburg, MD 21048--  Rudy, I don't know if I've mentioned it recently but 'bones looks great.  There's not much out there to compete with it as a presenter of Black literary and philosophical thought. I'm constantly referring folk to it. Chuck (9/28/07)

We have received thus far $200 in Donations in October 2009.

Help meet our monthly goal of $500. Donate Today! or Visit ChickenBones Store (Books, DVDs, Music, and more)

Or make use of ChickenBones Publishing Services (Page editing, Critiques, and Book Promotion)  /  Stand By Me (video)

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Bring the Troops Home:  "A time comes when silence is betrayal." Beyond Vietnam A Time to Break Silence   (Martin Luther King)

Martin Luther King, "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam" / MLK: Mountaintop Speech (on War)

Is Our High-Tech Health Care System Better Than War-Ravaged Sudan's?

By David Morse

Wilson J. Moses  Files:   John Hope Franklin   Regulators, Obfuscators, and Inflators  / Thomas Friedman? Benjamin Franklin?  

 General Motors and General Petraeus / Republicans' Brilliant Cynical Coup   / Reaganite Denounces Bush?  / When the Master's Big House Burns

 Just Another Fine Gentleman  / Business, Industry, and Education for Success / If this be Lynching . . . (As in Merrill-Lynch)  / Economic status of African Americans‏ Eliot Spitzer, . . Whistle Blowing / Joe the Plumber and Adam Smith  / Aquinas, Smith, Jefferson, Malthus, Marx, Keynes  / Responses to an American Speculator  

Michelle’s Family Tree

By  Margaret Kimberley

BAR editor and senior columnist

Sam and Dave by Kalamu ya Salaam  (May 18, 2009)

(see videos) Right-Wing Radio Host Gets Waterboarded, and Lasts Six Seconds  / Behind the Scenes: Presidential Trip June 2 - 7

ChickenBones Best Poetry Book of 2008

 

An Unmistakable Shade of Red & The Obama Chronicles

New book of poems by Mary E.Weems

Mary E. Weems Table   4 Closure Poems Mary Weems on YouTube  Nomination

Black Poetic is a social consciousness raising, performance troupe I belong to that uses poetry to enlighten, inspire, and educate the Black community and the community at large with an emphasis on Black youth.—Peace, Mary

People Get Ready

Curtis Mayfield was the wail of black America.

By Kalamu ya Salaam

Atlanta Constitution on Race Problem    Origin of Segregation     Intermarriage a No-No       Who Wants Integration      The Problem of Integration      The Racial Problem

 

The Biography of Philip Reid

Historical Fiction by Eugene Walton

Recasting the Statue of Freedom

by Eugene Walton

Mourning Katrina: A Poetic Response to Tragedy . . .

is about devastation and mourning, about the failure of humanity to act humanely, about the politics of poverty and race, but it is also about hope and healing. The poets give voice to the rainbow that comes after the storm and the revival of spirit that comes out of the depths of tested faith.  All of them share a willingness to see beyond their sorrow to reinvent the spirit of "Laissez les bon temps rouler!"  Though human suffering shaped the beginning of this project, the result of it is a morning of hope and inspiration

Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, A Memoir

By Cornel West

Smiley Books  2009

The House at Sugar Beach

In Search of a Lost African Childhood

By Helene Cooper

Illustrated. 354 pp. Simon & Schuster. $25

 I Studied My Own Self Obama's Dreams of My Father Review by Rudolph Lewis

 

Dillard University's Creative Writing Program

Study with Published Award-Winning Writers

Mona Lisa Saloy and Dedra Johnson

 

Saloy Files: Red Beans and Ricely Yours (2005) WE: A Poem  For Frank Fitch  For Daddy V  Mother with Me on Canal Street  A Life Won with Blood & Tears

Mona Lisa Saloy Winner of the PEN Oakland National Literary Award   Trouble in Paradise (Mona Lisa Saloy) /   Red Beans and Ricely Yours -- Reviews

Creative writing + The Dillard Review  /  Mona Lisa’s First Website

Black Studies in the Age of Obama

By Dr. Muhammad Ahmad
 Conference Co- Convener,  Chairman, PCIAS Inc.

Jordan Flaherty. Media as a Weapon: New Orleans' 2-Cent  (May 22, 2009)

Hip Hop Resistance in Gaza (June 5, 2009)

Nooses and a legal lynching in Jena, Louisiana   Jena Ignites a Movement  

K-Ville Cop TV Show   Media Crisis and Grassroots Response

The Price of Racial Reconciliation  / Contents White Nationalism  / White Nationalism  Reviews  /  Introduction White Nationalism  Legitimacy to Lead 

whose really blues

By Q. R. Hand Jr.

R. Dwayne Betts. A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (2009): At the age of sixteen, R. Dwayne Betts—a good student from a lower-middle-class family—carjacked a man with a friend. He had never held a gun before, but within a matter of minutes he had committed six felonies. In Virginia, carjacking is a “certifiable” offense, meaning that Dwayne would be treated as an adult under state law. A bright young kid, weighing only 126 pounds—not enough to fill out a medium T-shirt—he served his eight-year sentence as part of the adult population in some of the worst prisons in the state.
A Question of Freedom: is a coming-of-age story, with the unique twist that it takes place in prison. Utterly alone—and with the growing realization that he really is not going home any time soon—Dwayne confronts profound questions about violence, freedom, crime, race, and the justice system. Above all, A Question of Freedom: is about a quest for identity—one that guarantees Dwayne’s survival in a hostile environment and that incorporates an understanding of how his own past led to the moment of his crime.

On Silences and Father's Day

By E. Ethelbert Miller

 June 20, 2009

 Askia M. Touré Dawnsong Reviews  / Rudy Interviews Askia Touré   /  Rudy Interviews Askia Touré 2  /  Osirian Rhapsody: A Myth 

   Askia on Pan Africanism  /  Black Arts and Black Power Figures  /  Askia Toure' Talks To Konch  / Black Arts Movement  / Three for “O” in Light and Shadow

Black Arts and Cultural Revolution (Askia M. Touré) / Dingane Joe Goncalves  / Journal of Black Poetry Festival   

ChickenBones Best Book of 2009

 

Go, Tell Michelle

 Barbara A. Seals Nevergold and Peggy Brooks-Bertram

Las Acciones Simples

se Pueden Desarmar

By Rudolph Lewis

Women Talking to Michele Vas-y, Parle à Michelle  Par: Jacqueline Jean-Baptiste

I am because we are and since we are therefore I am (The Soho of South Africa ) / The society made up of brothers and sisters provides strength. (Igbo of Nigeria)

Poet Laureate Eugene B. Redmond

Eighty Moods of Maya  / Images and Homages: "Memwars"

DrumVoices Revue

Dudley RandallPublisher, Editor, Poet

April is National Poetry Month

Unity's all we ask and need

For Rudy Lewis

By Richard Lawson

Media Crisis and Grassroots Response
By Jordan Flaherty

 Jena Ignites a Movement   K-Ville Cop TV Show  

World Social Forum Diary 

Akoli Penoukou:  Love One Another / The Ancestors Are Not Really Dead  /  Into His Arms  / On Learning of Walter Rodney's Death & Other Poems 

Iraqi police get motivational speech by Army solider. / Iraqi police strike fear with rape and beatings

"Black Schools Kill Smart Niggers?”
Reconciling the Romance for Black Institutions in the Post-Soul Era

By Mark Anthony Neal

Kam Williams Interviews:  Alicia Keys  Cornel West   Naturi Naughton  Malik Zulu Shabazz  / Djimon Hounsou in New Movie  / Kam Williams Interviews Rashida Jones

Shawn and Damien Wayans Will. i. Am of Black Eyed Peas  / Jamie Foxx Riveting as Homeless Savant

Langston Hughes and Africa

By Harold R. Isaacs

 Langston Hughes Table

The White Masters of the World

from The World and Africa, 1965

By W. E. B. Du Bois

W. E. B. Du Bois’ Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization (Fletcher)

Africa and Afro-American Identity (Everett E. Goodwin)

 

The 10 Biggest Myths About Black History 

The Black Experience in America is Unique  / Folk Life in Black and White

 Speeches & Sermons:   -- The American Dream is Under Siege at Home (Bill Clinton) / Time to Take Back the Country We Love (Hillary Clinton)

The America George Bush Has Left Us (Joe Biden) / We Must Listen and Lead by Example (John Kerry)  / Seize this Opportunity for Change (Al Gore)

Reclaiming America’s SoulOthers, I suspect, would rather not revisit those [Bush] years because they don’t want to be reminded of their own sins of omission. For the fact is that officials in the Bush administration instituted torture as a policy, misled the nation into a war they wanted to fight and, probably, tortured people in the attempt to extract “confessions” that would justify that war. And during the march to war, most of the political and media establishment looked the other way. It’s hard, then, not to be cynical when some of the people who should have spoken out against what was happening, but didn’t, now declare that we should forget the whole era — for the sake of the country, of course. Sorry, but what we really should do for the sake of the country is have investigations both of torture and of the march to war. These investigations should, where appropriate, be followed by prosecutions — not out of vindictiveness, but because this is a nation of laws. We need to do this for the sake of our future. For this isn’t about looking backward, it’s about looking forward — because it’s about reclaiming America’s soul. NYTimes  America With Its Pants Down  / The Dark Side of Obedience / A Lie Unravels the World 

Ralph Clingan Lively Living Word  /  An Annual Clingan Christmas Letter  / Against Cheap Grace   /  Nuking Westerns and White Manliness

The Cost of Lies -- America With Its Pants Down    The Dark Side of Obedience    Locked Up   A Lie Unravels the World  Lies Truth and Unwaged Housework

Stand Up Against Police Brutality--In the city of Philadelphia and the state of Pennsylvania from May 2008 until April 2009 there have been 36 unarmed African American men killed by the Philadelphia Police Department. The racist Fraternal Order of Police has also gone after a strong and courageous African American judge, Judge Craig Washington.  The reason for this vicious attack is because he refuses to turn his courtroom into a tool of propaganda for the Philadelphia Police Department.Bro. Robert - African American Freedom and Reconstruction League; Sister Debbie Moore and Bro. Harold Fisher, Attorney Leon A. Williams -- more information 215-474-3677  215-732-0180

Gun Violence: The American Way—Since Sept. 11, 2001, when the country’s attention understandably turned to terrorism, nearly 120,000 Americans have been killed in nonterror homicides, most of them committed with guns. Think about it — 120,000 dead. That’s nearly 25 times the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the most part, we pay no attention to this relentless carnage. The idea of doing something meaningful about the insane number of guns in circulation is a nonstarter. So what if eight kids are shot to death every day in America. So what if someone is killed by a gun every 17 minutes. The goal of the National Rifle Association and a host of so-called conservative lawmakers is to get ever more guns into the hands of ever more people. Texas is one of a number of states considering bills to allow concealed guns on college campuses. Supporters argue, among other things, that it will enable students and professors to defend themselves against mass murderers, like the deranged gunman who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech two years ago. They’d like guns to be as ubiquitous as laptops or cellphones. One Texas lawmaker referred to unarmed people on campuses as “sitting ducks.” NYTimes

The State of Black-Asian Relations: Interrogating Black-Asian Coalition   Paul Robeson's Greetings to Bandung

 Speeches & Sermons:   -- The American Dream is Under Siege at Home (Bill Clinton) / Time to Take Back the Country We Love (Hillary Clinton)

The America George Bush Has Left Us (Joe Biden) / We Must Listen and Lead by Example (John Kerry)  / Seize this Opportunity for Change (Al Gore)

The Employee Free Choice Act—If we want to propel this economy forward [and] have a sound expansion, it has to be an expansion whose benefits are more broadly shared . . . [it] goes to the question of having a healthy and well-functioning trade union movement. . . . It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the way in which our labor laws have functioned, and have been enforced and been acted on over many years, have not been constructive from the point of view of having a healthy trade union movement. And an attempt to redress that balance seems to me something that is appropriate at such a time.—Lawrence H. Summers, the National Economic Council director, Brookings Institution, 13 March 2009  WashingtonPost

African Slave Castle (video)

Poetic Mission

A Forum on the Role of the Poet and Poetry

The First Time I Heard Billie

Poem by Amin Sharif

On Cultural Work

The Free Southern Theatre Institute

a Venue for Truth-Telling

By Jerry W. Ward, Jr.

Native Son

for Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong)

By Professor ARTURO

Malcolm  SHINE and THE TITANIC   Poem for Our Fathers  Poem for Our Mothers

I'll be interviewed about my upcoming book (My Name Is New Orleans: 40 Years of Poetry and Other Jazz) and read from the text on an online radio show (Neutral Ground) on Wed., May 27 at 9 PM EST. Hit www.blogtalkradio.com/onword . Anyone can listen to the show live or listen from the archive later. It can also be downloaded if you want to put it on a website or MP3 player. NOO AWLINS 2 DUH MAX!!!!!!!!--Professor ARTURO

Beltway Poetry Quarterly Museum Issue: Thirty-three poets write about museums, historical sites, and other public places

A Review of The Bandana Republic

A Literary Anthology by Gang Members & Their Affiliates

Edited by Louis Reyes Rivera and Bruce George

By Amin Sharif

From Gangs of the Ghetto to Gangstas of the Inner City (Ted Wilson)  The First Time I Heard Billie (Sharif)

The Fifth Element: Send Forth the Word!  /  The First Time I Heard Billie (Sharif)

Poetry and National Security  (Lorenzo Thomas) /   Ancestors and Spirituality   / Love and Spirituality  (Marvin X)

Music  MusiciansLiving Legends / Robert Johnson and other BluesmenOne Mississippi, Two Mississippi: John Hurt. Fred McDowell

Runoko Rashidi - African Libraries Project  Runoko Rashidi    / The Black Presence in the Bible: A Selected Bibliography / Delany and Blyden 

Runoko in Budapest   / Niger and the National Museum    / Photos of Global African Presence  / Tribute to Ivan Van Sertima

A Statement of Racism & Racial Oppression: "The virtuous aspirations of our children must be continually checked by the knowledge that no matter how upright their conduct, they will be looked upon as less worthy than the lowest wretch who wears a white skin. Daily Star (Alabama) 21 May 1867 [James S. Allen, Reconstruction: The Battle for Democracy (1937), pp. 237-238]

Governor says everyone must leave New Orleans  / Eighteen Months After Katrina (Bill Quigley) /  Ending Poverty As We Know It: Guaranteeing a Right

A Letter to Warren on the "Contours of Racial Identity" from Dr. Joyce E. King

Humility does not mean you think less of yourself—it means you think of yourself less. We are not here to earn God's love, we're here to spend it! The world is my country; to do good is my religion. No one shows a child the Supreme Being. Change how you see things, and the things you see will change.—Nana Yao Opare Dinizulu I

Seat_at_the_Table—Memo from John D. Podesta, Co-chair—The Obama-Biden Transition Project—Revitalizing the Economy / Ending the War in Iraq  Providing Health Care for All / Protecting America / Renewing American Global Leadership. Change.gov

The 10 Best Black Books of 2008 (Non-Fiction)

By Kam Williams 

The 10 Best Black Books of 2007

From Orenthal to Obama: Who Has the Juice?

By E. Ethelbert Miller  E-Notes

The Meaning of Barack Obama

By E. Ethelbert Miller  E-Notes

It Must Be Lester Young

When a Job Disappears, So Does the Health Care December 7, 2008— About 10.3 million Americans were unemployed in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of unemployed has increased by 2.8 million, or 36 percent, since January of this year, and by 4.3 million, or 71 percent, since January 2001. . . . . Some parts of the federal safety net are more responsive to economic distress. The number of people on food stamps set a record in September, with 31.6 million people receiving benefits, up by two million in one month. Nearly 4.4 million people are receiving unemployment insurance benefits, an increase of 60 percent in the past year. But more than half of unemployed workers are not receiving help because they do not qualify or have exhausted their benefits. About 1.7 million families receive cash under the main federal-state welfare program, little changed from a year earlier. Welfare serves about 4 of 10 eligible families and fewer than one in four poor children. NYTimes                           Single-Payer Health Care Would Stimulate Economy

Guns, Butter, and Obama—While the "official" 2009 U.S. military budget is $516 billion, that figure bears little resemblance to what this country actually spends. According to CDI, if one pulls together all the various threads that make up the defense spending tapestry - including Home Security, secret "black budget" items, military-related programs outside of the Defense Department, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and such outlays as veterans' benefits - the figure is around $862 billion for the current fiscal year. Johnson says spending is closer to $1.1 trillion. Even these figures are misleading, since it does not project future costs. According to Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, when the economic and social costs of the Iraq War are finally added up—including decades of treatment for veterans disabled by traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder—the final bill could reach $5 trillion. . . . A recent study by a Pentagon advisory group, the Defense Business Board, says that current defense spending is "not sustainable" and recommends scaling back or eliminating some big-ticket weapon systems. . . . While Obama has pledged to stress diplomacy over warfare, he has also promised to "maintain the most powerful military on the planet" and to increase the armed forces by some 90,000 soldiers. According to the Congressional Budget Office, that will cost at least $50 billion over five years. CommonDreams

The State of HBCUs for Black Students & Faculty  /  Wole Soyina Kongi's Harvest  / African HungarianKlara Bassey  (Hakeem Babalola)

 

Parable

    Poem by Jeannette Drake

Jeannette Drake Table  / The Truth May Not Set Us Free  / Give Peace a Chance  / Obama Prayer 

"Arise and go, your faith has made you well"  (Luke 17 v. 15-19).  / / / Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will (I Thessalonians 5, v. 18).

How the markets really work (from 2007): How did these comedians see it coming when financial reporters did not? Brasschecktv

Commentary on ChickenBonesI want to say that you have given a wonderful gift to humankind by establishing and maintaining ChickenBones.  In the history of African American journals of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, I rank your magazine with Negro Digest/Black World, which was "blessed" to have the financial backing of Johnson Publications. It is required reading for people who wish to be informed about the trajectories of thought in the contemporary world.  It is a dynamic, growing textbook that ought to be used in courses on African American literature and culture.  I am using it as an external link for the course I teach this semester on the Foundations of African American Literature.  My students need to know that academic journals do not tell us everything. So, thank you Rudy for your gift to black folks and everybody else. Peace and brotherhood, Jerry Ward, Jr. (24 August 2008)

Cliff Chandler, musician and detective novelist: Chandler Bio  The Paragons   In Search Of Our Culture   Devastated   Sir Charles Mingus 

“The Supreme Court has surrendered. . . . It has destroyed the Civil Rights Bills, and converted the Republican Party into a party of money rather than a party of morals."  -- Frederick Douglass, 1894   

 After Hours: A Collection of Erotic Writing by Black Men -- Simmons Review  After Hours Contributors  Love, Sex, and Erotica Table 

 

In-Dependence from Bondage

Claude McKay and Michael Manley

Defying the Ideological Clash and Policy Gaps in African Diaspora Relations

By Lloyd D. McCarthy

 

Snake in the Garden of Eden

 A Negro Folktale

from Sam Greenlee's "Djarkarta Blues"

How the Riots Might Have Turned Out    Sam GreenLee's Book as Film  Be-Bop Man/Be-Bop Woman  When Desoree Danced

 Why South Sudan Wants Obama to Lose White House Bid (Mulumba)  / Obama and the Israeli Lobby   (Uri Avnery)

Obama Victory Creates African Excitement  Obama Declares Victory  / An Obama Love Story / Meditation for Obama /   Obama 2008 Table

How US Energy Policy Got Militarized—The association between "energy security" (as it's now termed) and "national security" was established long ago. President Franklin D. Roosevelt first forged this association way back in 1945, when he pledged to protect the Saudi Arabian royal family in return for privileged American access to Saudi oil. The relationship was given formal expression in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter told Congress that maintaining the uninterrupted flow of Persian Gulf oil was a "vital interest" of the United States, and attempts by hostile nations to cut that flow would be countered "by any means necessary, including military force." To implement this "doctrine," Carter ordered the creation of a Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, specifically earmarked for combat operations in the Persian Gulf area. President Ronald Reagan later turned that force into a full-scale regional combat organization, the U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM. Every president since Reagan has added to CENTCOM's responsibilities, endowing it with additional bases, fleets, air squadrons, and other assets. As the country has, more recently, come to rely on oil from the Caspian Sea basin and Africa, U.S. military capabilities are being beefed up in those areas as well. Alternet

There's Another New Orleans

By Patricia Jabbeh Wesley

Deng and Alek: Lovers Paradise Lost Short story by Jane Musoke-Nteyafas

 

"ChickenBones: A Journal," an online journal . . . There's nothing like it on the web, with fascinating poems, essays, reviews, and articles by all kinds of people from many cultures. . . . Miriam

Black Librarians Table  / David Parks' Letters  / A Post Industrial Blues  /  Monroe N. Work Intro 

  Monroe N. Work Bibliography of the Negro

Gullah Festival in Beaufort South Carolina, 2008  by Junious Ricardo Stanton

Grace Lee Boggs:  Crime Among Our People  Conversation about Religion   Give Detroit Schools a Fresh Start  

Organizing Comes Before Mobilizing

Notable Black Memphians by Miriam DeCosta-WillisThis biographical and historical study by Miriam DeCosta-Willis (PhD, Johns Hopkins University and the first African American faculty member of Memphis State University) traces the evolution of a major Southern city through the lives of men and women who overcame social and economic barriers to create artistic works, found institutions, and obtain leadership positions that enabled them to shape their community. Documenting the accomplishments of Memphians who were born between 1795 and 1972, it contains photographs and biographical sketches of 223 individuals (as well as brief notes on 122 others), such as musicians Isaac Hayes and Aretha Franklin, activists Ida B. Wells and Benjamin L. Hooks, politicians Harold Ford Sr. and Jr., writers Sutton Griggs and Jerome Eric Dickey, and Bishop Charles Mason and Archbishop James Lyke—all of whom were born in Memphis or lived in the city for over a decade. . .  .

The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones  /  Biblical Scholars   /  ChickenBones Interviews  /  Depression Shopping List

Your Whiteness is Showing (Tim Wise )

Lingering Issues in Achebe's Female Characterisation (Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye)

Book Discussion: The Beautiful Struggle (video): Atlantic contributor Ta-Nehisi Coates reads passages

Nuking Nagasaki & Hiroshima, Our Nuking Nevada / / Like a Tortoise Shell  / Asa G. Hilliard III Obituary 

   

Apartheid dead but racism endures—Under apartheid, black education was purposely substandard and certain skilled jobs, notably in big corporations such as the railroad, were reserved for whites. Now white South Africans complain about government affirmative action programs that work against them. Yet despite these programs and a booming economy, more blacks are out of work than under white rule. Government statistics show that 10 percent of black households are in the top income bracket compared with 65 percent of white households. Blacks are 85 percent of the 48 million population. President Thabo Mbeki hoped business friendly policies would create a trickle-down effect, but they didn't, and many blacks criticize Mbeki for leaving the reins of the economy in white hands. Yahoo News

  The Exhilarating Generosity of Asa Hilliard  / Slow Death in Gaza (Margaret Kimberley)

      "Djimbe Danse"  Artwork (left) by Chuck Siler

Driving Drops as Gas Prices Hit $4—The Department of Transportation said figures from March show the steepest decrease in driving ever recorded. . . .Compared with March a year earlier, Americans drove an estimated 4.3 percent less—that's 11 billion fewer miles, the DOT's Federal Highway Administration said day, calling it "the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history." Records have been kept since 1942. . . . According to AAA, the national average price for a gallon of regular gas rose to a record $3.936. That compares with an average price per gallon of $3.23 last Memorial Day. . . . The Energy Information Administration says gas consumption for the first three months of 2008 is estimated to be down about 0.6 percent from the same time period in 2007. For the summer season, gas consumption is expected to be down 0.4 percent from last year Money AOL

A Short History of “When the Levee Breaks”On Saturday [30 August 2008], a million citizens fled Louisiana for safer ground, after Hurricane Gustav metamorphosed into a Category 4 hurricane in a mere 24 hours. It is scheduled to slam into the U.S. almost exactly three years after Hurricane Katrina did the same, visiting the kind of disaster dystopia one usually sees in film or music. . . . Louisiana authorities explain that there will be no shelter for those left behind or who choose to stay behind. It's a familiar refrain for those caught up in this recurring environmental nightmare, perhaps more familiar than you think. "When the Levee Breaks" was first created by the Delta bluesmen Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie. Listen to the original.  / Where's Fats Domino? 

    Rudy's Place : Sussex County: A Tale of Three Centuries  Public Education in Sussex County in Black and White   History of Jerusalem Baptist Church

 

 

The Crossings

(WHO IS prepared to hold our torch of Democracy)

By Beverly Jenai

Do Cowboys Dance?   That Which Binds   The Painting  My Friend Yictove   Bevjenai Obama Order Page

Studies: Iraq Costs US $12B Per Month—The flow of blood may be ebbing, but the flood of money into the Iraq war is steadily rising, new analyses show. In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the ''burn'' rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book. Beyond 2008, working with ''best-case'' and ''realistic-moderate'' scenarios, they project the Iraq and Afghan wars, including long-term U.S. military occupations of those countries, will cost the U.S. budget between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion—or more—by 2017.Interest on money borrowed to pay those costs could alone add $816 billion to that bottom line, they say. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has done its own projections and comes in lower, forecasting a cumulative cost by 2017 of $1.2 trillion to $1.7 trillion for the two wars, with Iraq generally accounting for three-quarters of the costs. NYTimes

Fats Domino, Ray Charles, and Jerry Lee Lewis  /  The Holloway Series in Poetry - Amiri Baraka  / Bill Moyers and James Cone (Interview)

The three trillion dollar war—The cost of direct US military operations—not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans—already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War. And, even in the best case scenario, these costs are projected to be almost ten times the cost of the first Gulf War, almost a third more than the cost of the Vietnam War, and twice that of the First World War. The only war in our history which cost more was the Second World War, when 16.3 million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007 dollars, after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion (that's $5 million million, or £2.5 million million). With virtually the entire armed forces committed to fighting the Germans and Japanese, the cost per troop (in today's dollars) was less than $100,000 in 2007 dollars. By contrast, the Iraq war is costing upward of $400,000 per troop. Most Americans have yet to feel these costs. The price in blood has been paid by our voluntary military and by hired contractors. The price in treasure has, in a sense, been financed entirely by borrowing. Taxes have not been raised to pay for it—in fact, taxes on the rich have actually fallen. Deficit spending gives the illusion that the laws of economics can be repealed, that we can have both guns and butter. But of course the laws are not repealed. Times Online

Lessons and Warnings from South Sudan Notes from Bakie Bankie, Gaddafi, and Chinweizu

Read A Book - Get Crunk about Reading  /  Read A Book (Cartoon) / Bomani "D'Mite" Armah - Read a Book    /  Read a Book OKAYY!!!   /  CNN interview

 

Sex, Love & Relationships: African Women Struggling with Love  / Black Brothers And Their White Chics  /  A Rejoinder To Black Brothers . . .White Chics   Feminism in Africa / Some Brothers Do Have 'Em  / Women We Hate / Contemporary African Women Struggling with Love /  Equality in African Relationships 

Negro Psychosexuality / Exploring Sexuality from a Black Perspective  /  Feminism, Black Erotica, & Revolutionary Love  / Kalamu's Feminist Erotica

How To Love A Thinking Man (poem)  How to Love a Thinking Woman (poem)  / Toward a Feminist Theology  / To White Women Who Think

We're in Love, But You Don't Know Me  /  On Marriage Equality  /  Impotence Need Not Be Permanent 

   Jane Musoke-Nteyafas:  WHERE IS THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS AFRICAN?   / Women’s Role in Hip Hop

Enslaved Igbo and the Foundation of Afro-Virginia Slave Culture and Society  /  Tom Feelings  /  Nuking, Westerns, and White Manliness

Sonia On My Mind (Muhammad)  /  / When I Became a Woman (Ezimora)

Akoli Penoukou: Stories and Poems

 Love One Another / The Ancestors Are Not Really Dead  /  Into His Arms

 On Learning of Walter Rodney's Death & Other Poems 

 How can we trust them?  / Out of the Clouds (poems)  Short Stories Table

Missing People in New Orleans—Its figures paint a dramatic picture of jobs and housing decline in the central city area. During the storm's aftermath, thousands of residents were evacuated from the city. Two years later, one in three households have still not returned, and the population has dropped from 455,000 to 274,000. Poor households with children are particularly likely to have stayed away, with the number of children in public schools at only 40% of its pre-Katrina level. To some extent, migrants from Mexico and Central America have replaced Afro-Americans in New Orleans, with an estimated additional 100,000 Hispanic people in the region. They have been attracted by some of the relatively well-paying jobs in construction and tourism. Looking for jobs—But overall, the News Orleasn metro area employs 113,000 fewer people than in August 2005, and the pace of job creation has slowed to a crawl. The biggest declines were in tourism jobs (down 24,500), government jobs (down 29,000) and healthcare jobs (down 23,000). And 4,000 smaller firms closed after the storm. "We apparently are at a place where the post-storm employment recovery is peaking," said demographer Elliot Stonecipher. "Those categorical drops in jobs paint a picture of a devastated economy and we have to stop acting like they didn't happen."  Steve Schifferes. Two years on, New Orleans stalls News BBC

Guerilla warfare and sniping, / Shun every open fight; / But snipe their flanks through the livelong day / And harry them through the night.  --Beleagured Men

Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption

Edited By Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, Sun Yung Shin

Toward a Feminist Theology  /  How to Love a Thinking Woman  / How To Love A Thinking Man  / Land of My Daughters  /  To White Women Who Think

 Status and Standard Language  / The Problem of "Settling"  / Black Immigrants Deported  /   WHAT IF  / Wish I Could Tell You the Truth  

Is Obama Backing Off a Crucial Pledge to Labor?—While running for office, Obama said he strongly backed the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a long overdue labor law reform measure that should be part of his promised economic stimulus plan. . . . Just as the NLRA did, as a centerpiece of the New Deal, EFCA would encourage collective bargaining to raise workers’ living standards and restore greater balance to labor-management relations. Beginning in the late 1930s, this federal labor policy helped create a vast new post-World War II American middle-class. Now, facing the worst financial crisis since the Depression, the Democrats have an unparalleled opportunity to link labor law reform to their broader economic recovery efforts. CounterPunch

The Ground on Which I Stand   Professor Sandra Shannon   Situating August Wilson   The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson     

 

Okonkwo's Curse

 Relevance of Achebe's Things Fall Apart

A Discussion by Dr. Rose Ure Mezu & Rudolph Lewis

Old School Music  (Love My Oldies) / Nigerian Elections 2007 (S. Okechukwu Mezu)

Pop Culture Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race Selected Critical Essays 1979 to 2001  By Carol Cooper

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation

on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present  By Harriet A. Washington -- Reviewed by Kam Williams

Anarcha's Story by Alexandria C. Lynch, MS III

Send  a Gift to ChickenBones: A Journal  -- Perform a Selfless & Commited Act Give a New Gift Book -- Support Writers & Poets     

Only one copy of each title now available (except where indicated):  -- Donations at all levels welcomed

 Music & Other Reviews (Amin Sharif)

AfriClassical.com: Song of a New Race         Arturo Sandoval in Baltimore       Muddy Waters on PBS

Blue Note: A History of Modern Jazz             Good Looks          A Blues for the Birmingham Four     God's Trombones

Black man descending: On Mike Tyson   /  Ugliness in the Beautiful Game

The Very Idea: Stem Cell Research  by Ben Schwartz

Do people have a moral responsibility to remember certain things? This is the question that lies at the heart of "The Ethics of Memory." : Policy review.org

East St. Louis Plans Big Tribute to Katherine Dunham  Kwansabas for Jayne Cortez

 

DrumVoices Revue

A Confluence of Literary, Cultural & Vision Arts

WRITERS CLUB & DRUMVOICES REVUE CELEBRATE POETS
Issue Call for Kwansabas for Maya Angelou & Quincy Troupe

The original date for submission of the seven-line poem Nov. 1--has been extended to Jan. 1, 2007

Jane Musoke-Nteyafas--Poems, Interviews, & a Story by : Meet Jay Lou Ava   Where Is the Love of All Things African? WE BE BLACK PEOPLE 

REMEMBER: CHEIKH ANTA DIOP   AFRO-DISIAC   FORBIDDEN FRUIT  Enough with the Poisonous Lyrics   Interview with Rudolph Lewis  

 

5 Reviews by 5 Strong Black Women

Of  Loving Black Women

By Larry Uklai Johnson Redd 

Report to African Union Summit   Conversations of Africa    Larry Uklai Johnson Redd Table

Larry Ukali Johnson-Redd Listen to Conversations of Africa  by following this link: http://www.conversationsofafrica.asmnetwork.net/ You are invited to listen to this and join in the conversation and make it a discussion by calling in and participating at 347-215-7831! Remember this segment will begin at 8 PM Pacific Standard Time!  Conversations of Africa  / Attending The Ninth National Black Writers Conference   / Larry Uklai Johnson Redd Table

  37 Poems by Lasana Sekou taught at US university   Salt Reaper  – Poems from the Flats    Tortured Fragments   Haiti 200   Lasana Sekou in Oxford Poetry Book    Skin Poems The Salt Reaper       Visit & Fellowship II  Sekou Knighted  Sekou Writes with "Erotic Power"

Black Votes, the Senate, and Voter Suppression Vote NO on Hans von Spakovsky's Confirmation By The Color Of Change Team

 

Dwight Hayes Poems  

Niyi Juliad The Poet's Pen & Other Poems

Patricia Wesley Wesley:  What I Tell My Daughter   In the Beginning  Monrovia Women  Surrender

Richard Lawson : The Shed View From Crook Peak  Tsunami  A Wood in Somerset, Iraq   Leaves on the lawn Hail to the Chief

Carolyn  Maun: Faceless / The Red Rat Snake / Colors ChickenBones Poetry Book for 2006 The Sleeping Poems

Rose Ure Mezu Poems: Chiege, Woman of Splendor   Obinna  To My Daughters and Kelechi

Jane Musoke-Nteyafas: WE BE BLACK PEOPLE  REMEMBER: CHEIKH ANTA DIOP   AFRO-DISIAC   FORBIDDEN FRUIT  

Ayodele Nzinga: Blessings Are Due -- Remembrances of Thanksgiving Then & Now  Duet for The Godfather (Wordslanger) 

Glenis Redmond    What We Carry Lifting   Mama's Magic   She   Mango  If I Ain't African 

Vince Rogers Legends and Legacies     Necromancers of Negritude & Other Thoughts

Austin L. Sydnor Jr.: To Brother Rudolph Lewis   Idle Minds Have Idle Time   Home   Brother Rudy

Yictove American Money  Blue Print  (Poems) Jammin  Mr Politician  My Life Story  Tropical Love  (On the Passing of Malvina Turk )

Poems on Katrina Flood    After the Hurricanes (Jerry Ward) Neighbors and Invaders (Mackie Blanton) Sitting ducks at the superdome  (Claire Carew)  

It Ain't About Race (Claire Carew     Big Easy Blues (Amin Sharif ) After Katrina . . .   (Latorial Faison)  Where's Fats Domino?  (Marvin X) 

I'm in the Eye of Katrina  (Joe Williams)  A Survivor's Poem (Denay Fields)  Battle for New Orleans ( Rudolph Lewis)  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Poems

To Brother Rudolph Lewis (Austin Sydnor)   A Poem for Rudy   Poem for Rudy   This Is Your Day

This Is Your Day . . . (Rev P. E. Adotey Addo) The Shed (Richard Lawson)  A Poem for Rudy (Latorial Faison)  Griot (Vince Rogers)

17 Poets Reading Series: Lee Grue     Brenda Marie Osbey P r o f e s s o r   A R T U R O My Name is New Orleans 

Brenda Marie Osbey at the GOLD MINE SALOON

Ceremony for Minneconjoux   In These Houses  Desperate Circumstance, Dangerous Woman   All Saints: New & Selected Poems

17 Poets Reading Series at the GOLD MINE SALOON

Martin Luther King’s Vision 

 I Have A Dream     

Letter from Birmingham Jail

Literary New Orleans

Poems, Essays, Reports, etc.

Katrina by Caroline Maun  There's Another New Orleans: by Patricia Jabbeh Wesley

After Katrina by Mackie Blanton

 Kalamu ya Salaam Reports: Post-Katrina New Orleans

  I Love You  It's Hard   I'm Crazy  Cracking Up  Stephanie  Take Deep Breaths  Spirits in the Dark  I Am Ashamed of Myself 

Breath of Life  The Storyteller of New Orleans  by Elizabeth D. /  LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE: The Neo-Griot New Orleans Project 

Reconstruction of a Poet: The Call: Ideology or Poetry?    My Life Is the Blues   Producing & Recording Poetry    A Black Poetics    African-American Language

What Is Life: Reclaiming the Black Blues Self (Kalamu ya Salaam)

A Short History of “When the Levee Breaks”On Saturday [30 August 2008], a million citizens fled Louisiana for safer ground, after Hurricane Gustav metamorphosed into a Category 4 hurricane in a mere 24 hours. It is scheduled to slam into the U.S. almost exactly three years after Hurricane Katrina did the same, visiting the kind of disaster dystopia one usually sees in film or music. . . . Louisiana authorities explain that there will be no shelter for those left behind or who choose to stay behind. It's a familiar refrain for those caught up in this recurring environmental nightmare, perhaps more familiar than you think. "When the Levee Breaks" was first created by the Delta bluesmen Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie. Listen to the original Jordan Flaherty about New Orleans  /  New Orleans pre-Gustav

 Conversations with Kind Friends /  Dollar Day--Katrina Klap (Audio-Video)

Katrina New Orleans Flood Index

Essays, Poems, Survivor Stories, Reports

George Bush Doesn't Care  (Lyrics) / A Prayer for Our Enemies  (Fenton Johnson)

People of Color Less Likely to Own Cars    Katrina-TimeLine    Chuck Siler Response to Katrina

My Soul is anchored: poems from the mourning Katrina national writing project -- now on sale

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Ode to a Magic City  & Didn't He Ramble  by Rudolph Lewis  / Buddy Bolden in New Orleans

 The Importance of Civil Disobedience in Post-Katrina New Orleans By Elizabeth Cook  Katrina New Orleans Flood Index

Rudy's Amazing Facts    Wages Continue to Fall

Rise of the Have-Nots—It's no great achievement for a people to recognize that their nation's economy has tanked, but recognizing that their nation's class structure has slowly but fundamentally altered is a more challenging task. It's harder still for a people who are conditioned, as Americans are, not to see their nation in terms of class. Which is why a poll released this month by the Pew Research Center reveals a transformation of Americans' sense of their country and themselves that is startling. Pew asked Americans if their country was divided between haves and have-nots. In 1988, when Gallup asked that question, 26 percent of respondents said yes, while 71 percent said no. In 2001, when Pew asked it, 44 percent said yes and 53 percent said no. But when Pew asked it again this summer, the number of Americans who agreed that we live in a nation divided into haves and have-nots had risen to 48 percent -- exactly the same as the number of Americans who disagreed. Americans' assessment of their own place in the economy has altered, too. In 1988, fully 59 percent identified themselves as haves and just 17 percent as have-nots. By 2001, the haves had dwindled to 52 percent and the have-nots had risen to 32 percent. This summer, just 45 percent of Americans called themselves haves, while 34 percent called themselves have-nots. Harold Meyerson (WP, 27September 2007

Government Increasing Inequalities BALTIMORE CITY PAPER

Chuck Collins and Felice Yeskel, Inequality in America: Version 2.0

<---Sketch left ("Ostrich USA")---Chuck Siler

Communism as Russian Imperialism  (Nicholas Berdyaev)   Global News: Politics—Literature & the Arts  /    Dublin Quarterly

Black Tech Review (by Rudy)                       

Digital Technology & Telling Our Story  / The Impact of the Internet  /  Citizens As Journalists  / Responsibility of Blacks in Cyberspace  

Neo-Griot Manifesto  /  President Museveni of Uganda Opens First E-School   / No phone, No computer for Most Africans

Making Use of IT for Black Liberation  / Can We IT Users Create Communities? 

Chocolat (1989) An African film on Love & Racism  Starring: Isaach De Bankolé, Giulia Boschi  / Director: Claire Denis

Global News: PoliticsLiterature & the Arts

Marxist critical theory and analysis -- Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford University Press, 1977). / Fredric Jameson. Marxism and Form: Twentieth Century Dialectical Theories of Literature (Princeton University Press, 1971) / Eagleton, Terry.  Marxism and Literary Criticism (Routledge, 1976)

 Check out ASILI's  Extraordinary Walls of Respect  (Photos) Celebrating Black Writers 

 

Books on African Film

African Film: Re-Imagining a Continent / Symbolic Narratives: African Cinema / African Cinema: Politics and Culture 

Africa Shoots Back: Alternative Perspectives In Sub-Saharan Francophone African Films   Black African Cinema  /

African Cinemas: Decolonizing the Gaze / Questioning African Cinema: Conversations with Filmmakers

*   *   *   *   *

African Films on DVD

Heart of Darkness: The Democratic Republic of the Congo

Black Girl / Borom Sarret Sugar Cane Alley Kirikou and the Sorceress Lumumba   Amandla: A Revolution in Four Part Harmony /

 Cry, The Beloved Country   /  The Power of One  / Bopha / Mandela and deKlerk / Cry Freedom  / Hotel Rwanda / Sarafina / Yesterday

Tsotsi  / Hyenas Mandabi  / Xala Madame Brouette  / Yeelen / Life on Earth / Karmen Gei  / Guimba The Tyrant / Daresalam  / Abouna / Chocolat

Ousmane Sembene, African cinema pioneer, dies

 

Other Yictove files: On the Passing of Malvina Turk    That Town  Jammin   American Money  Mr Politician   Blue Print Contents 

Soliloquy for Cain  Photograph      Grandma Turk   Tropical Love   Guest Poets  Poetic Journey  Yictove Obituary & Poems / In Future

North Star Spring  issue -- available:   northstar.vassar.edu

Armstrong Williams: Business & Religion www.BmoreNews.com  /

Will Americans Ever Learn--I have this theory in life that there is no learning. There is no learning curve. Everything is tabula rasa. Everybody has to discover things for themselves. . . . Again, there's no learning curve. No learning curve at all. We'll be ready to fight another stupid war in another two decades.—Seymour Hersh, Interview Spiegel Online (28 September 2007)     What Black Men Think (Film, 2007)

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Articles On Haiti

Haiti Action.Net

Maxine Waters on Haiti Letter to Colin Powell on Thugs and Killers 

Statement from Prison of Sò  Anne  Haitian folksinger and champion of the poor

Anne Auguste (Sò No)  Demand Immediate Release of Anne Auguste

  John Maxwell Table   The Black Joan of Arc

Toussaint Table 

Dreams Buried in Freedom’s Coffin

Amnesty International on Haiti

James Terry—The Willie Harris Collection Chronicles Southern University and Life in Scotlandviille / My Archival Experience (Lewis)

 What Is A Library By Ernest Cushing Richardson

Notes on the Journal of Black Poetry Festival

Marvin X, Chief Planner

Tentative date for the Journal of Black Poetry Festival: late September, 2007.

Purpose: Honor and respect to Brother Dingane (Jose Goncalves), publisher and editor of the JBP.

Lynching in America—Crucifixion and lynchings are symbols. They are symbols of the power of domination. They are symbols of the destruction of people's humanity. With black people being 12 percent of the US population and nearly 50 percent of the prison population, that's lynching. It's a legal lynching. So, there are a lot of ways to lynch a people than just hanging 'em on the tree. A lynching is trying to control the population. It is striking terror in the population so as to control it. That's what the ghetto does. It crams people into living spaces where they will self destruct, kill each other, fight each other, shoot each other because they have no place to breathe, no place for recreation, no place for an articulation and expression of their humanity. So, it becomes a way, a metaphor for lynching, if lynching is understood and as one group forcing a kind of inhumanity upon another group. James Cone   Bill Moyers Interviews James Cone  /  Eric Dyson on Bill Cosby (video)

 

Be  The One of the Ten

One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus feet and thanked himand he was a Samaritan.   Jesus asked, "Were not ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give thanks except this foreigner?" Then he said to him "Arise and go, your faith has made you well"  (Luke 17 v. 15-19).

Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will (I Thessalonians 5, v. 18).

Black Prayer 1   Black Prayer 2     Black Prayer 3    A  Prayer by Martin Luther King  Baltimore Page 

Annual Founders Kwanzaa Message 1966—40th Anniversary—2006 Nguzo Saba: The Principles and Practice of Bringing Good into the World

 

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Koran Exordium: In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful. Praise be to Allah, the Lord of Creation. The Compassionate, the Merciful, King of the Last Judgment. You alone we worship. To You alone we pray. Guide us to the straight path, the path of those whom You have favored, not those who have incurred Your wrath, nor those who have gone astray.  Luqman -- In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful / The Name of Allah Be Round About Us

To 'Joy My Freedom  /  Washerwomen Sons and Daughters  Vanishing Washerwoman     Washerwomen in Brooklyn   Washer-Woman Poem 

Is Your Hair Like Mine?‏

I had to fwd this one.

I left the comments of friends:

I had nothing better to add . . .

Here is an image of humility: 

a scene of empowerment. 

There is only ONE picture.

Many of us still can't believe our eyes,

understand how unreal to every

little black boy and how each sees

every day for the rest of their lives.

That what change means . . . 
  
Little boy visiting the White House. He wants

to feel Obama's hair. He wants to know if the

President's hair feels just like his. Obama obliges.

Priceless.

                                         Found poem, 10 June 2009

Sites for Feminism  The Womanist  /  Duke University Special Collections / MIT Thistle, Alternative News Network

My Archival Experience

Or the State of HBCU Archives

By Rudolph Lewis

Days of US Slavery Closer Than We Think--Al Sharpton's Forebears were owned by relatives of Senator Strom Thurmond, 1948 Dixiecrat   NYTimes

Al Sharpton and Barack Obama Wow Democratic National Convention

A Matter of Life and Debt

As for what will happen to us next, I have no safe answers. If fair regulations are established and credibility is restored, people will stop walking around in a daze, roll up their sleeves and start picking up the pieces. Things unconnected with money will be valued more — friends, family, a walk in the woods. “I” will be spoken less, “we” will return, as people recognize that there is such a thing as the common good. On the other hand, if fair regulations are not established and rebuilding seems impossible, we could have social unrest on a scale we haven’t seen for years.

Margaret Atwood

Interviews with Kam Williams  Time to Take Back the Country We Love

Tasha Smith: Why Did I Get Married   /  Sean "Diddy" Combs: A Raisin in the Sun  /    Rutina Wesley  African American Lives 2  / Nicole Ari Parker

Voting is not enough—If voting was that effective, to quote the activist Philip Berrigan, it would be illegal. And voting in an age when elections are stolen by rigged ballot machines and a stacked Supreme Court willing to overturn all legal precedent to make George Bush president, will not work. I am not saying do not vote. We should all vote. But that has to be the starting point if we want to reclaim America. We must lobby, organize and advocate for the dissolution of the World Trade Organization and NAFTA. The WTO and NAFTA have handcuffed workers and consumers and stymied our efforts to create clean environments. These agreements are beyond the control of our courts and have crippled our weakened regulatory agencies. The WTO forces our working class to compete with brutalized child and prison labor overseas, to be reduced to this level of slave labor or to go without meaningful work. We need to repeal the anti-worker Taft-Hartley law of 1947. The act obstructs the organization of unions. We need to transfer control of pension funds from management to workers. If these pension funds, worth trillions of dollars, were in the hands of workers, the working class would own a third of the New York Stock Exchange. America's Democratic Collapse