"The
New Journalism began on the Lower
East Side in the mid-sixties when poets
and fiction writers became reporters for
The East Village Other, mother of
the Underground Press.
David Henderson was one of the
pioneers of the style. He combines his
gifts as a poet and a reporter in 'Scuse
Me While I Kiss the Sky, and the
result is a rewarding and unique reading
experience. It is part thriller and part
lament for some tragic lives who
enlivened an exciting decade."—
Ishmael Reed
The
poet and writer
David
Henderson
was a founding member of the Umbra
Poets, an influential collective of
poets and writers who were central to
the Black Arts Movement. His books
include
De Mayor of Harlem and
Neo-California. He has been
widely published in anthologies and
magazines, including The Def Jam
Poetry Reader, The Paris Review,
and Essence. He has read from his
poetry for the permanent archives of the
Library of Congress. Born in Harlem and
raised in Harlem and the Bronx,
Henderson now lives in downtown New York
City.
Carolyn Rodgers
met one of her mentors, Hoyt Fuller,
while working as a social worker at the
YMCA (1963-1966). Rodgers exhibits
clarity of expression and a respect for
well-crafted language in her work, "how
I got ovah: New and Selected Poems"
(1975). Her work, "The Heart As Ever
Green" (1978), incorporates themes of
human dignity, feminism, love, black
consciousness, and Christianity. Rodgers
has also published short stories such as
"Blackbird in a Cage" (1967), "A
Statistic, Trying to Make It Home"
(1969), and "One Time" (1975).
In her short stories, as in her poetry,
the dominating theme is survival, though
she interweaves the idea of adaptability
and conveys the concomitant message of
life's ever-changing avenues for black
people whom she sees as her special
audience.
During her
career she [Carolyn Rodgers]
has taught at Columbia College (1968-1969);
University of Washington (1970); Malcolm X Community
College (1972); Albany State College (1972); and
Indiana University (1973). She has also been a book
critic for the Chicago Daily News and a columnist
for the Milwaukee Courier. In 1967, along with Haki
R. Madhubuti, Johari Amini, and Roschell Rich,
Rodgers helped found Third World Press, an outlet
for African-American literature. Rodgers is also a
member of the Organization of Black American
Culture, a group that promotes a city-wide impact on
cultural activity in the arts.
http://www.aaregistry.com/detail.php?id=2850
This website is of, by, and for
Veterans of the Southern Freedom Movement during the years 1951-1968. It is
where we tell it like it was, the way we lived it. The mass media called it
the "Civil Rights Movement," but many of us who were involved in it prefer
the term "Freedom Movement" because it was about so much more than just
civil rights. Today, from what you see in the mass media and read in
textbooks and websites, you would think that the Freedom Movement only
existed in a few states of the deep South, — but that is not so. The Freedom
Movement lived and fought in every state and every city of America, North,
South, East, and West. There were some differences between the Southern and
Northern wings of the Movement, but those differences were minor compared to
the Movement's essence. North or South, it was the same movement everywhere.
http://www.crmvet.org/about1.htm
How the FBI and the Chicago
Police Murdered a Black Panther
By Jeffrey Haas
It’s around
7:00 A.M. on December 4, 1969,
and attorney Jeff Haas is in a
police lockup in Chicago,
interviewing Fred Hampton’s
fiancée. She is describing how
the police pulled her from the
room as Fred lay unconscious on
their bed. She heard one officer
say, “He’s still alive.” She
then heard two shots. A second
officer said, “He’s good and
dead now.” She looks at Jeff and
asks, “What can you do?”
The Assassination of Fred
Hampton is Haas’s personal
account of how he and People’s
Law Office partner Flint Taylor
pursued Hampton’s assassins,
ultimately prevailing over
unlimited government resources
and FBI conspiracy. Not only a
story of justice delivered, the
book puts Hampton in a new light
as a dynamic community leader
and an inspiration in the fight
against injustice. /
Also
Toward Freedom
So
we say—we always say in the
Black Panther Party that they
can do anything they want to to
us. We might not be back. I
might be in jail. I might be
anywhere. But when I leave,
you’ll remember I said, with the
last words on my lips, that I am
a revolutionary. And you’re
going to have to keep on saying
that. You’re going to have to
say that I am a proletariat, I
am the people. A lot of people
don’t understand the Black
Panthers Party’s relationship
with white mother country
radicals. A lot of people don’t
even understand the words that
Eldridge uses a lot. But what
we’re saying is that there are
white people in the mother
country that are for the same
types of things that we are for
stimulating revolution in the
mother country. And we say that
we will work with anybody and
form a coalition with anybody
that has revolution on their
mind. We’re not a racist
organization, because we
understand that racism is an
excuse used for capitalism, and
we know that racism is just—it’s
a byproduct of capitalism.
Everything would be alright if
everything was put back in the
hands of the people, and we’re
going to have to put it back in
the hands of the people.
Fred Hampton
A feature
length documentary of the black arts movement
that exploded in Fort Greene from the mid 1980s
through the 90s as intimately told by writer,
historian and director, Nelson George. The film
features Spike Lee, Chris Rock, Rosie Perez,
Branford Marsalis, Vernon Reid, Carl Hancock Rux,
Saul Williams, Lorna Simpson, Alva Rogers, Kevin
Powell, Toure, Bill Stephany to name a few.
Note: The above list was inspired by James Smethurst's
Appendix 2 (375-376) in
The Black Arts Movement. This list is a
Work-in-Progress, that is to say, it is incomplete and
much shorter than Smethurst's list, which contains over
100 names.
Mamadou Lumumba [(Kenneth Freeman),
b. October 11, 1938 – d. October 20, 2009]
was editor of
Oakland-based Soulbook, a journal
"mainly political but included poetry in a
section ironically titled 'Reject Notes'." (“Historical
Overviews of The Black Arts Movement,” Kalamu ya Salaam).
. . .
Memorial services:, December 12, 2pm, at the
Afrikan Children's Advanced Learning Center,
3268 San Pablo also known as 949 33rd Street
(corner of 33rd Street & San Pablo Avenue),
Oakland, CA 94607 (510) 923-0164.
Mamadou Lumumba (Kenneth
Freeman; October 11, 1938 – October 20, 2009) was one of
the premier neo-black intellectuals of the 1960s. He was
the first black student to attend Bishop O Dowd high
school. He graduated from University of San Francisco in
1960, with graduate studies at the University of Mexico.
In Mexico he learned of the Cuban revolution and this
expanded his radical conscious and social activism. When
he returned to Oakland, he joined the group of young
radicals at Merritt College, including Bobby Seale, Huey
Newton, Ernie Allen, Isaac Moore, Ann Williams, Marvin X
and Carol Freeman, his wife. Mamadou became a member of
Donald Warden's Afro American Association, a Black
Nationalist organization. The AAA and the young radicals
studied world revolution, including events in South
Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and the Congo where the
first elected prime minister was assassinated.
Apparently his similarity to Congolese Patrice Lumumba,
made him adopt the name.
Mamadou
became editor of Soulbook, The Quarterly Journal of Revolutionary
Afro-America, one of the most radical publications of the 60s, a
leading theoretical journal in African revolutionary circles, a
publication of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM).
* *
* * *
National Black Political Collection,
1972–1973—This
collection contains six folders of materials gathered by Guy E.
Russell. The materials relate, mostly, to the National Black Political
Convention held in Gary, Indiana on 10–12 March 1972 (folders 1–4). Of
particular note are a conference program, a fact sheet describing the
history of the organization, an outline of the delegate selection
process in Indiana (folder 1) and a transcript of a speech attributed to
Carl B. Stokes, former mayor of Cleveland (folder 2).
The
convention was an outgrowth of planning meetings conducted in 1971 by a
broad cross section of black leadership throughout the United States.
There are also materials that relate to state (Indiana State Black
Political Caucus) and regional (Mid-West Regional Coalition) initiatives
to form coalitions to address various issues pertaining to African
Americans. A 1972 anniversary booklet and a newsletter from the Indiana
State Black Caucus are in folder 4. The Mid-West Regional Coalition,
along with several other black organizations hosted the Black Unity
Conference held at Dunbar High School in Chicago on 13–15 April 1973. A
program of the conference is in folder 6.
Indiana History
