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ChickenBones: A Journal for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes |
Home ChickenBones Store (Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
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Or Send contributions to: ChickenBones: A Journal / 2005 Arabian Drive / Finksburg, MD 21048 Help Save ChickenBones |
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Send contributions to: ChickenBones: A Journal / 2005 Arabian Drive / Finksburg, MD 21048-- I became aware of Rudy Lewis’ labor of love a few short months ago during a visit to Kalamu ya Salaam’s e-drum listserv. As soon as I saw the title of the journal I knew it was about Black folks, and the power of the written word. A quick click took me into a journal that’s long on creativity, highlighting well-known, little known, and a little known writers, and commitment to the empowerment of Black folks. I contacted Rudy to ask if he’d consider publishing some of my work. His response was immediate, and a couple of days after I’d forwarded some poems to him—they were part of ChickenBones. What I didn’t know was that this journal has been surviving for the last five years with very little outside financial support. . . If we want journals like this to “thrive” we need to support them with more than our website hits, praise, and submissions for publication consideration. —Peace,
Mary E. Weems (January 2007)
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African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation By Gerald Horne Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, said, the American revolt of 1776 against British rule “was basically a successful revolt of racist settlers. It was akin to Rhodesia, in 1965, assuming that Ian Smith and his cabal had triumphed. It was akin to the revolt of the French settlers in Algeria, in the 1950s and 1960s, assuming those French settlers had triumphed.” Dr. Horne explores the racist roots on the American Revolution in his new book, Negroes of the Crown. “It was very difficult to construct a progressive republic in North America after what was basically a racist revolt,” said Horne. “The revolt was motivated in no small part by the fact that abolitionism was growing in London…. This is one of the many reasons more Africans by an order of magnitude fought against the rebels in 1776, than fought alongside them.”In this path-breaking book, Horne rewrites the history of slave resistance by placing it for the first time in the context of military and diplomatic wrangling between Britain and the United States. |
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Libya set up by NATO—Fake Libyan Rebels exposed / Russia criticizes France over arming Libyan rebels / British brains, brawn and bombs bolster Libyan rebels |
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The Seneca Falls Convention is typically seen as the beginning of the first women's rights movement in the United States. Revolutionary Backlash argues otherwise. According to Rosemarie Zagarri, the debate over women's rights began not in the decades prior to 1848 but during the American Revolution itself. Integrating the approaches of women's historians and political historians, this book explores changes in women's status that occurred from the time of the American Revolution until the election of Andrew Jackson. Although the period after the Revolution produced no collective movement for women's rights, women built on precedents established during the Revolution and gained an informal foothold in party politics and male electoral activities. . . . Federalists and Jeffersonians vied for women's allegiance and sought their support in times of national crisis. Women, in turn, attended rallies, organized political activities, and voiced their opinions on the issues of the day. After the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, a widespread debate about the nature of women's rights ensued. The state of New Jersey attempted a bold experiment: for a brief time, women there voted on the same terms as men. . . . Yet as Rosemarie Zagarri argues in Revolutionary Backlash, this opening for women soon closed. |
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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) |
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African-American Odyssey, The Combined Volume By Darlene Clark Hine The African-American Odyssey is a compelling story of agency, survival, struggle and triumph over adversity. The authors highlight what it has meant to be black in America and how African-American history is inseparably woven into the greater context of American history. The text provides accounts of the lives of ordinary men and women alongside those of key African-Americans and the impact they have had on the struggle for equality to illuminate the central place of African-Americans in U.S. history more than any other text. This compendium of resources includes up to 100 most commonly assigned history works like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, and Machiavelli’s The Prince. Students can monitor their progress and instructors can monitor the progress of their entire class. Automated grading of quizzes and assignments helps both instructors and students save time and monitor their results throughout the course. |
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Bob Dylan—Highway 51 1963 / Bob Dylan—Ballad of Hollis Brown / Harry Belafonte—John Henry / Nina Simone—Ballad of Hollis Brown
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No University Is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom By Cary Nelson No University Is an Island offers a comprehensive account of the social, political, and cultural forces undermining academic freedom. At once witty and devastating, it confronts these threats with exceptional frankness, then offers a prescription for higher education's renewal. In an insider's account of how the primary organization for faculty members nationwide has fought the culture wars, Cary Nelson, the current President of the American Association of University Professors, unveils struggles over governance and unionization and the increasing corporatization of higher education. Peppered throughout with previously unreported, and sometimes incendiary, higher education anecdotes, Nelson is at his flame-throwing best. The book calls on higher education's advocates of both the Left and the Right to temper conviction with tolerance and focus on higher education's real injustices. Nelson demands we stop denying teachers, student workers, and other employees a living wage and basic rights. He urges unions to take up the larger cause of justice. And he challenges his own and other academic organizations to embrace greater democracy. Q&A with Cary Nelson |
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Nat Turner's Rebellion / Marable's biography, Malcolm X: Panel / / The Ruin of Riches—Angola / De Beers Diamond Company & Black Labour |
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American Women's History See Also the bibliographies of these files Bolden, Tony. The Book of African-American Women: 150 Crusaders, Creators, and Uplifters. Adams Media Corporation, 1996. Kazickas, Jurate, and Lynn Sherr. Susan B. Anthony Slept Here. A Guide to American Women's Landmarks. Random House, 1994 Nevergold, Barbara A. Seals and Peggy Brooks-Bertram. Uncrowned Queens: African American Community Builders. Uncrowned Queens, 2002. Weatherford, Doris. American Women's History. Prentice Hall General Reference, 1994 |
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Claire Carew files: The Artist as Social Activist From Birmingham Alabama to Qana Lebanon It Ain't About Race Healing Wisdom of Mexico |
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Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution By David. A. Nichols David A. Nichols takes us inside the Oval Office to look over Ike's shoulder as he worked behind the scenes, prior to Brown, to desegregate the District of Columbia and complete the desegregation of the armed forces. We watch as Eisenhower, assisted by his close collaborator, Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr., sifted through candidates for federal judgeships and appointed five pro-civil rights justices to the Supreme Court and progressive judges to lower courts. We witness Eisenhower crafting civil rights legislation, deftly building a congressional coalition that passed the first civil rights act in eighty-two years, and maneuvering to avoid a showdown with Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, over desegregation of Little Rock's Central High. Nichols demonstrates that Eisenhower, though he was a product of his time and its backward racial attitudes, was actually more progressive on civil rights in the 1950s than his predecessor, Harry Truman, and his successors, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. . . . In fact, Eisenhower's actions laid the legal and political groundwork for the more familiar breakthroughs in civil rights achieved in the 1960s. |
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Interview with Ngugi Wa Thiong'o / From the Heart of Black Nova Scotia / Marsalis and Martins—ffbeat (1994) / Noam Chomsky—The Conscience of America |
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Aquinas, Smith, Jefferson, Malthus, Marx, Keynes (Moses)
Speech on the Founding of the OAAU (Malcolm X) / Howard University Board Approves Academic Renewal Plan |
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Bob Dylan—Highway 51 Live at Town Hall 1963 / Ballad of Hollis Brown / Harry Belafonte—John Henry /
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Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920 By Jackson Lears Lears describes his book as a “synthetic reinterpretation” of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, an effort to dislodge classics like Richard Hofstadter’s Age of Reform (1955) and Robert Wiebe’s Search for Order, 1877-1920 (1967). It’s an ambitious project; both books, despite legions of critics, have shown remarkable staying power. Fortunately, Lears is well qualified for the task. One of the deans of American cultural history (as well as a professor at Rutgers University), Lears has spent decades writing about turn-of-the-20th-century debates over consumerism, modernity, religion and market capitalism. With Rebirth of a Nation, he expands his vision to include politics, war and the presidency as well.—NYTimes Lears, full of high purpose, is not a slave to method. He collapses distinctions between public and private, conscious and unconscious, and high, low, and middlebrow culture into a singular, undifferentiated mass of evidence. Everywhere he looks, he sees the signs and symbols of rebirth, which remains a trope rather than a principle of historical selection. Rebirth, renewal, revival, regeneration, and revitalization are used interchangeably, imprecisely. The book’s politics are clear enough.—BookForum |
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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) |
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Bill H.R.40: The Commission to Study the Reparations Proposal By M. Quinn Bill H.R. 40 / Congressman John Conyers, Jr. on Reparations / Amendment XIII - US Constitution / Amendment XV - US Constitution |
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A Matter Of Law: A Memoir Of Struggle In The Cause Of Equal Rights By Robert L. Carter and Foreword by John Hope Franklin Robert Lee Carter (March 11, 1917 – January 3, 2012) insisted on using the research of the psychologist Kenneth B. Clark to attack segregated schools, a daring courtroom tactic in the eyes of some civil rights lawyers. Experiments by Mr. Clark and his wife, Mamie, showed that black children suffered in their learning and development by being segregated. Mr. Clark’s testimony proved crucial in persuading the court to act, Mr. Carter wrote in a 2004 book, “A Matter of Law: A Memoir of Struggle in the Cause of Equal Rights.” As chief deputy to the imposing Mr. Marshall, who was to become the first black Supreme Court justice, Mr. Carter labored for years in his shadow. In the privacy of legal conferences, Mr. Carter was seen as the house radical, always urging his colleagues to push legal and constitutional positions to the limits. He recalled that Mr. Marshall had encouraged him to play the gadfly: “I was younger and more radical than many of the people Thurgood would have in, I guess. But he’d never let them shut me up.” Robert Lee Carter was born in Caryville, in the Florida Panhandle . . . . —NYTimes |
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John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War By Tony Horwitz Plotted in secret, launched in the dark, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was a pivotal moment in U.S. history. But few Americans know the true story of the men and women who launched a desperate strike at the slaveholding South. Now, Midnight Rising portrays Brown's uprising in vivid color, revealing a country on the brink of explosive conflict. Brown, the descendant of New England Puritans, saw slavery as a sin against America's founding principles. Unlike most abolitionists, he was willing to take up arms, and in 1859 he prepared for battle at a hideout in Maryland, joined by his teenage daughter, three of his sons, and a guerrilla band that included former slaves and a dashing spy. On October 17, the raiders seized Harpers Ferry, stunning the nation and prompting a counterattack led by Robert E. Lee. After Brown's capture, his defiant eloquence galvanized the North and appalled the South, which considered Brown a terrorist. |
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| Uncrowned Queens Project: Generosity of Asa Hilliard / Nappy Headed Women / Origin of Civilization from the Cushites / Righting an 86-Year-Old Injustice |
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Sussex County: A Tale of Three Centuries / Public Education in Sussex County in Black and White / The Official History of Jerusalem Baptist Church |
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Cudjoe Lewis—Last African Born in Africa Brought to the United States by the transatlantic slave trade Cudjoe Lewis is believed to be the last African born on African soil and brought to the United States by the transatlantic slave trade. He was a native of Takon, Benin, where he was captured in 1860 during an illegal slave-trading venture. Congress outlawed the importation of slaves in 1808. Together with more than a hundred other captured Africans, he was brought on the ship Clotilde to Mobile, Alabama. Cudjoe and 31 other enslaved Africans were taken to the property owned by Timothy Meaher, shipbuilder and owner of the Clotilde. 5 years later slavery was over so Cudjoe and his tribespeople requested to be taken back to Africa, but it was left ignored. He and other Africans established a community near Mobile, Alabama which became called Africatown. They maintained their African language and tribal customs well into the 1950s. He died in 1934 at the age of 94. Before he died, he gave several interviews on his experiences including one to the writer Zora Neale Hurston. During her interview in 1928, she made a short film of Cudjoe, the only moving image that exists in the Western Hemisphere of an African transported through the Transatlantic Slave Trade.—MasterAdept |
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How a New Generation Is Remaking America By Morley Winograd and Mr. Michael D. Hais About every eight decades, coincident with the most stressful and perilous events in U.S. history—the Revolutionary and Civil Wars and the Great Depression and World War II—a new, positive, accomplished, and group-oriented “civic generation” emerges to change the course of history and remake America. The Millennial Generation (born 1982–2003) is America’s newest civic generation. In their 2008 book, Millennial Makeover, Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais made a prescient argument that the Millennial Generation would change American politics for good. Later that year, a huge surge of participation from young voters helped to launch Barack Obama into the White House. Now, in Millennial Momentum, Winograd and Hais investigate how the beliefs and practices of the Millennials are transforming other areas of American culture, from education to entertainment, from the workplace to the home, and from business to politics and government. The Millennials’ cooperative ethic and can-do spirit have only just begun to make their mark, and are likely to continue to reshape American values for decades to come.—Rutgers University Press |
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Tracy Chapman—Telling Stories / Film: The Killing Of The Imam / Elaine Brown: Black Panthers, Freeing political prisoner / Bassey Ikpi—Apology to My Unborn |
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Richard Wright Print Resources / China II Report (June 4-19, 2010) / Open Note to President Barack Obama // Searching for the Half Sign (O. R. Dathorne) // Farrakhan in Harlem On Libya |
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How Black Colleges Are Turning White and Keeping Their Historically Black Colleges and Universities Status: The Ethnic Cleansing of African Americans in the Age of Obama (Part 1 of 3)—By Jahi Issa, Ph.D.—Although the Higher Education Act of 1965 clearly states that an HBCU is a school “whose principal mission was, and is, the education of black Americans,” economist and scholar at American Enterprise Institute, Richard Vedder, reminds us that there is a trend being shaped where as HBCUs who formally had an African American majority student and faculty body, and now have White majority populations, still receive federal funding geared for African Americans. These two schools are Bluefield State College and West Virginia State University. According to a May 19, 2000 CNN report, White enrollment at HBCUs is on the rise. Other schools such as Kentucky State University, Elizabeth City State University and Delaware State University are only a few schools that have a growing White and non-African American student and faculty population. Furthermore, according to an August 17, 2011 Wall Street Journal article called “Recruiters at Black Colleges Break From Tradition,” HBCUs such as Tennessee State University, Delaware State University and Paul Quinn College are cited as no longer focusing exclusively on recruiting African Americans. The author of the article points out that Tennessee State University’s Black enrollment has reduced to around 70 %, while Paul Quinn College Black enrollment has been predicted to fall from 94% to 85% for the Fall 2011 academic year. . . . —Voxunion / HBCUs Table |
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Notable Black Memphians by Miriam DeCosta-Willis—This 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 Memphis
Diary of Ida B. Wells /
Homespun Images /
Through My Open Window
/ Ties
that bind /
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Libya set up by NATO—Fake Libyan Rebels exposed / Russia criticizes France over arming Libyan rebels / British brains, brawn and bombs bolster Libyan rebels |
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Barack Obama: The corporate masters’ 21st century ‘House Negro’ / A Day in the Life—Marvin X and Discussion / A Day in the Life— 2 / A Day in the Life—Marvin X and Discussion 3 |
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Journal of Pan African Studies is Online (Edited by Marvin X) / Capitol Hill in Black and White |
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Of St. Augustine, the African Restless Heart, and Search for Peace: St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.) – Feast Day - August 28 Dr. Rose Ure Mezu / Preface to Chinua Achebe: The Man and His Works (Rose Ure Mezu) / Chinua Achebe: The Man and His Works |
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Here lies Jim Crow: Civil rights in Maryland By C. Fraser Smith Though he lived throughout much of the South—and even worked his way into parts of the North for a time—Jim Crow was conceived and buried in Maryland. From Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney's infamous decision in the Dred Scott case to Thurgood Marshall's eloquent and effective work on Brown v. Board of Education, the battle for black equality is very much the story of Free State women and men. Here, Baltimore Sun columnist C. Fraser Smith recounts that tale through the stories, words, and deeds of famous, infamous, and little-known Marylanders. He traces the roots of Jim Crow laws from Dred Scott to Plessy v. Ferguson and describes the parallel and opposite early efforts of those who struggled to establish freedom and basic rights for African Americans. . . . Smith's lively account includes the grand themes and the state's major players in the movement—Frederick Douglass, Harriett Tubman, Thurgood Marshall, and Lillie May Jackson, among others.—and also tells the story of the struggle via several of Maryland's important but relatively unknown men and women—such as Gloria Richardson, John Prentiss Poe, William L. "Little Willie" Adams, and Walter Sondheim—who prepared Jim Crow's grave and waited for the nation to deliver the body.—Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008 |
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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 |
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At Columbia, Faith of
Some in President Is Shaken
Many professors support
their president, including his handling of diversity.
Almost 15 percent of Columbia freshmen last year were
black, which the
Journal of Blacks in Higher Education said was the
largest percentage of any of the top 30 universities in
U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings. In 2009,
the journal reported, 6.3 percent of Columbia’s faculty
was black, placing it second among those 30 schools.
“I think President
Bollinger has a very good record — I don’t doubt his
commitment to this,” said
Jean E. Howard, an English department professor who
was Mr. Bollinger’s vice provost for diversity from 2004
to 2007. “He’ll have some work to do in making sure that
what happened this summer is not misunderstood.” |
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Maryland HBCUs Sue State For Racial Discrimination Over Funding—By Alexis Garrett Stodghill—16 May 2011—A civil rights group is suing Maryland’s Higher Education Commission for allegedly discriminating against the state’s four historically black colleges. The plaintiffs argue that Morgan State University, Coppin State University, Bowie State University and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore have underdeveloped programs because black schools are funded in a manner that puts predominately white schools at a huge advantage. Administrators at Maryland HBCUs believe their institutions are deprived of the tools needed to create competitive curricula, while being forced to wait much longer to receive appropriated monies. The results are outdated infrastructures and inferior courses leading to low student retention. The Baltimore Sun reports that: “Parity among higher-education institutions has been an issue in the state and country for centuries, and the lawsuit recounts 200 years of [racist] history[.]” . . . —NewsOne Changing the HBCU Narrative (Secretary Arne Duncan) |
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Martin David Jenkins at Morgan State 22 Years Dr. Martin D. Jenkins, PhD (September 4, 1904–1978) was an African American educator, known for his pioneering work in the field of education. He graduated with a B.S. in Engineering in 1925,from Howard University. Upon earning an engineering degree from Howard, Jenkins became a partner with his father in a Terre Haute highway contracting business while taking classes at State Normal. He secured an A.B. degree in Education from Indiana State in 1931 and, on September 7, 1927, wed Elizabeth Lacy. After teaching briefly at Virginia State College (now Virginia State University), Jenkins began graduate work at Northwestern University under Terre Haute native and Indiana State alumnus, Paul A. Witty. He earned a master’s in 1933 and a doctorate in education in 1935. His dissertation was a socio-psychological study of African-American children of superior intelligence.Before becoming President of Morgan State College of Baltimore in 1948, Jenkins was registrar and professor of education at North Carolina A&T (1935–1937); dean of instruction at Cheyney State (Pa.) Teachers College (now Cheyney University) (1937–1938); and professor of education, Howard University (1938–1948). |
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“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 |
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Black Studies in the Age of Obama
By Dr. Muhammad Ahmad 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 |
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Dr. King Said It: I'm Black and I'm Proud! /Reparations, Queen Mother Moore / Stokely Carmichael—We Ain't Goin' |
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Tracy Chapman: Baby Can I Hold You Tonight / Talkin bout a revolution / Give me one reason / Crossroad / New Beginning |
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Classicism within the Black Consciousness / Celebrating Alexander Crummell |
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Carrie Mae Weems—Art: 21 / Carrie Mae Weems Talks/ Rev Curtis Watson—Come Out of the Wilderness / Louis Armstrong—Mack the Knife 1959 |
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The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt By Daniel Rasmussen In January 1811, a group of around 500 enslaved men, dressed in military uniforms and armed with guns, cane knives, and axes, rose up from the slave plantations around New Orleans and set out to conquer the city. They decided that they would die before they would work another day of back—breaking labor in the hot Louisiana sun. Ethnically diverse, politically astute, and highly organized, this slave army challenged not only the economic system of plantation agriculture but also American expansion. Their march represented the largest act of armed resistance against slavery in the history of the United States—and one of the defining moments in the history of New Orleans and the nation. |
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Keenan Norris Of Obama and Oakland / Coal, Charcoal, and Chocolate Comedy / fresno gone / Freedom Vision / 27 Days |
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Letter to the Wall Street Journal HBCUs Table / A Shift in Direction at Howard / State of HBCU Archives / Love Letter to Gay and Lesbian Youth |
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Louis Armstrong—Solitude / Billie Holiday & Louis Armstrong—Farewell to Storyville / Cree Summer—Savior Self / Edwidge Danticat Speaks at York College |
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Left of Black— Jelani Cobb and Bassey Ikpi / Left of Black— Nathaniel Friedman and Bomani Jones / Slavoj Zizek—Are we living in the end times? |
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What’s Going On: Black Studies and the Arts Historically, Black artists and scholars have used their work to investigate and articulate the heart of the global Black experience. We seek work that addresses innovative ways visual art, music, poetry, literature, dance and other art forms critique, illuminate and/or bear witness to problems and solutions to critical issues in k-12 and postsecondary education. These issues include but are not limited to use of the arts as an integral part of the curriculum, to critique or explore the achievement gap, to report on the consequences of No Child Left Behind, use of the arts in Teacher Education programs, and the experiences of Black artist scholars in academia. We are interested in author's doing qualitative research using interpretive methods including auto/ethnography, ethnography, poetic inquiry, narrative, and ethnodrama; as well as interview and focus groups. What's Going On welcomes work from all educational disciplines and will also consider collaborative book projects on the cutting edge of crucial issues facing Black people today pertinent to the field. Help me spread the word about Peter Lang's, Black Studies and Critical Thinking (BSCT) series and contact me at mweems45@yahoo.com or mweems@jcu.edu with questions about What's Going On or to suggest folks who might be interested in submitting proposals. Also, note the other series editors and their areas below. Peace, Mary E. Weems, Series Editor, Black Studies and Critical Thinking, Peter Lang Publishing Other Series Editors
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Basil Davidson obituary—By Victoria Brittain—9 July 2010—Davidson [(9 November 1914 – 9 July 2010) a British historian, writer and Africanist] was enthused early on by the end of British colonialism and the prospects of pan-Africanism in the 1960s, and he wrote copiously and with warmth about newly independent Ghana and its leader, Kwame Nkrumah. He went to work for a year at the University of Accra in 1964. Later he threw himself into the reporting of the African liberation wars in the Portuguese colonies, particularly in Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. . . . In the 1980s, with most of the African liberation wars now won—except for South Africa's— Davidson turned much of his attention to more theoretical questions about the future of the nation state in Africa. He remained a passionate advocate of pan-Africanism. In 1988 he made a long and dangerous journey into Eritrea, writing a persuasive defence of the nationalists' right to independence from Ethiopia, and an equally eloquent attack on the revolutionary leader Colonel Mengistu and the regime that had overthrown Haile Selassie. Guardian |
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Basil Davidson's "Africa Series": Different But Equal / Mastering A Continent / Caravans of Gold / The King and the City / The Bible and The Gun |
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Excerpts Compiled By Baffour Amankwatia II [Asa G. Hilliard III] (22 August 1933-13 August 2007) |
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The Exhilarating Generosity of Asa Hilliard / On the Passing of Asa Hilliard / Asa Hilliard Obituary / If I Ain't African / Pan-African Nationalism in the Americas |
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Recollections of Ivan Van Sertima—The Early Years By Runoko Rashidi |
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Why Africa Is Not Israel in Today's African-American Thinking / Bearing the Owners' Names & Other Burdens / Sensualization of Pain |
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The Death and Life of the Great American School System How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education As an education historian and former assistant secretary of education, Ravitch has witnessed the trends in public education over the past 40 years and has herself swung from public-school advocate to market-driven accountability and choice supporter back to public-school advocate. With passion and insight, she analyzes research and draws on interviews with educators, philanthropists, and business executives to question the current direction of reform of public education. In the mid-1990s, the movement to boost educational standards failed on political concerns; next came the emphasis on accountability with its reliance on standardized testing. Now educators are worried that the No Child Left Behind mandate that all students meet proficiency standards by 2014 will result in the dismantling of public schools across the nation. Ravitch analyzes the impact of choice on public schools, attempts to quantify quality teaching, and describes the data wars with advocates for charter and traditional public schools. Ravitch also critiques the continued reliance on a corporate model for school reform and the continued failure of such efforts to emphasize curriculum. Conceding that there is no single solution, Ravitch concludes by advocating for strong educational values and revival of strong neighborhood public schools. For readers on all sides of the school-reform debate, this is a very important book.—Vanessa Bush The Myth of Charter Schools / Why I Changed My Mind About School Reform |
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Runoko Rashidi -- Delany and Blyden Niger and the National Museum African Libraries Project Runoko Rashidi The Black Presence in the Bible |
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The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government By Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer American democracy is informed by the 18th century’s most cutting edge thinking on society, economics, and government. We’ve learned some things in the intervening 230 years about self interest, social behaviors, and how the world works. Now, authors Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer argue that some fundamental assumptions about citizenship, society, economics, and government need updating. For many years the dominant metaphor for understanding markets and government has been the machine. Liu and Hanauer view democracy not as a machine, but as a garden. A successful garden functions according to the inexorable tendencies of nature, but it also requires goals, regular tending, and an understanding of connected ecosystems. The latest ideas from science, social science, and economics—the cutting-edge ideas of today—generate these simple but revolutionary ideas: (The economy is not an efficient machine. It’s an effective garden that need tending. Freedom is responsibility. Government should be about the big what and the little how. True self interest is mutual interest. We’re all better off when we’re all better off. The model of citizenship depends on contagious behavior, hence positive behavior begets positive behavior |
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Joseph H. Rainey (1832-1887) Joseph Hayne Rainey was the first African-American man to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Rainey was born the son of a slave who bought his freedom. After he was conscripted to work on the Confederate fortifications, he escaped to Bermuda and stayed away until the end of the Civil War. He was appointed to fill out the term of the U.S. congressman from South Carolina who had been expelled from Congress and was reelected four times (1870-1879). During Reconstruction, Rainey strove for moderate treatment of the South while working to protect and expand civil rights. PictureHistory |
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The Fourth World and the Marxists Letters from Young Activists Lessons from France Paris Is Burning "The Pyres of Autumn" Responses to Jean Baudrillard Geraldine Robinson remembers The Family of Cow Tom :The Connection of Africans & the Civilized Tribes |
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Muslim
American Literature as an Emerging Field Langston Hughes "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" Poem / Interview: Malcolm X |
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The African Medicine Women of New Jersey / Try Jah Love (Third World 1982) /Chinua Achebe, Pt 3/3 / Champagne & Reefer (Muddy Waters) |
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Yale Slavery and Abolition Portal This site is designed to help researchers and Yale students find primary sources related to slavery, abolition, and resistance within the university's many libraries and galleries. Across the top of the website, you will find the chance to view relevant collections in each Yale institution. You can view items across the different institutions by entering a keyword or phrase on the search page. You can also sort items according to a particular period, place, or topic by selecting a category from the tag cloud. Under links, you will find a collection of electronic databases that provide access to digital resources with significant relevant content. Yale My Archival Experience |
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Everybody Loves the Sunshine (Incognito) / Superwoman, Where Were You When I Needed You (Stevie Wonder) |
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Sheila Johnson: America’s First Black Woman Billionaire Interviewed by Kam Williams |
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Gray-Haired Witnesses for Justice / Modern Day Lynching of the Scott Sisters of Mississippi / Free The Scott Sisters / People Get Ready (alicia keys) |
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By Diane Ravitch Why I Changed My Mind About School Reform—. Most significantly, we are not producing a generation of students who are more knowledgable, and better prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship. That is why I changed my mind about the current direction of school reform. —WSJ |
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Mass incarceration of black men hurts black women—Black women tend to stay in school longer than black men. Looking only at the non-incarcerated population, black women are 40% more likely to go to college. They are also more likely than white women to seek work. One reason why so many black women strive so hard is because they do not expect to split the household bills with a male provider. And the educational disparity creates its own tensions. If you are a college-educated black woman with a good job and you wish to marry a black man who is your socioeconomic equal, the odds are not good.—Economist |
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My Holy Bible for African-American Children King James Version. by Cheryl and Wade Hudson Book Review by Kam Williams |
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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. Amen. Luqman -- In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful / The Name of Allah Be Round About Us |
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John Hope Franklin WPSU Booknotes (Wilson J. Moses) Saturday, April 04, 2009 / What Can Be Done? |
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By Nell Irvin Painter
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David Walker Discusses the Education of the Negro, 1830 Subconscious connection between blacks, apes may reinforce subtle bias -- Penn State Faculty/Staff (ALL) Newswire - 03.06.08 |
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Ghana Freestyle / Part I—Addressing Sexual Terrorism / Abbey Lincoln—Where Are The African Gods? / Max Roach—All Africa / Abbey Lincoln—Down here Below |
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John Hope Franklin, Scholar Who Transformed African-American History, Dies at 94—He is perhaps best known to the public for his work on President Clinton’s 1997 task force on race. But his reputation as a scholar was made in 1947 with the publication of his book, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans, which is still considered the definitive account of the black experience in America. “My challenge was to weave into the fabric of American history enough of the presence of blacks so that the story of the United States could be told adequately and fairly,” he said when the 50th anniversary of the book was celebrated in 1997. “That was terribly important. . . . Looking back, I can plead guilty of having provided only a sketch of the work I laid out for myself.” DukeNews John Hope Franklin WPSU Booknotes (Wilson J. Moses) |
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Still I Rise: A Graphic History of African-Americans by Roland Laird with Taneshia Nash Laird Illustrated by Elihu “Adofo” Bay Foreword by Charles Johnson Book Review by Kam Williams |
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March 24, 2009:
Oakland, Toward Radical Spirituality (Marvin
X)
Notes from the occupied territories (Jean Damu)
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By Eric Holder, Attorney General
"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. |
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Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution---"Desmond and Moore’s fascinating new look at Darwin forces us to revise and expand the way we look at this revolutionary figure, and to see him wrestling with moral as well as scientific questions. And it is a reminder of just how much the issue of slavery loomed over everything in the nineteenth century, including even fields that were apparently far distant." —Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost and Bury the Chains- "This exciting book is sure to create a stir. Already widely admired for their pathbreaking biography of Charles Darwin, Desmond and Moore here give an entirely new interpretation of Darwin’s views on humankind, bringing together scholarship and sparkling narrative pace to explore theories of ape ancestry and racial origins in the Victorian period. Darwin’s part in making the modern world will never be the same again!" —Janet Browne, Aramont Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University, and author of Charles Darwin: Voyaging Darwin the Abolitionist (Bruce Gellerman interviews James Moore, author of Darwin's Sacred Cause |
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National African American History Month 2009 A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America |
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Some African-American Firsts & Inventions / Ebony's Fifty Influential Figures in African-American History African Retentions & Black Contributions / Celebrating Black History 365 |
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Robert J. Norrell. Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington Illustrated. 508 pp. The Belknap Press / Harvard University Press. To the extent that Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) is remembered at all today, he is usually misremembered, which is a travesty...His unwillingness to practice protest politics, however, has earned him the scorn of many modern-day critics, who dismiss him as too meek in his dealings with whites...In Up From History, a compelling biography, Robert J. Norrell restores the Wizard of Tuskegee to his rightful place in the black pantheon...Many criticisms of Washington in more recent decades have echoed those of his contemporary black nemesis, W.E.B. Du Bois…Much has been made of this rivalry, but the relevant point is that the two men differed mainly in emphasis, not goals...Putting their differences into proper perspective is yet another way that Up From History serves as a useful corrective. —Jason L. Riley (Wall Street Journal) |
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The City of Mumbai and the Buddhist Cave at Ajanta By Runoko Rashidi 27 November 2008 |
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An Open Letter to President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan From Educators of African Ancestry |
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Philip Dray. Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen. Houghton Mifflin Company 2008 -- Philip Foner Review In this grand and compelling new history of Reconstruction, Pulitzer Prize finalist Philip Dray shines a light on a little known group of men: the nation's first black members of Congress. These men played a critical role in pushing for much-needed reforms in the wake of a traumatic civil war, including public education for all children, equal rights, and protection from Klan violence. But they have been either neglected or maligned by most historians -- their "glorious failure" chalked up to corruption and "ill-preparedness." In this beautifully written, magnificently researched book, Dray overturns that thinking. He draws on archival documents, newspaper coverage, and congressional records to show that men like P.B.S. Pinchback of Louisiana (who started out as a riverboat gambler), South Carolina's Robert Smalls (who hijacked a Confederate steamer and delivered it to Union troops), and Robert Brown Elliott (who bested the former vice president of the Confederacy in a stormy debate on the House floor) were eloquent, creative, and often quite effective -- they were simply overwhelmed by the brutal forces of reaction. Covering the fraught period between the Emancipation Proclamation and Jim Crow, Dray reclaims the reputations of men who, though flawed, led a valiant struggle for social justice.—Publisher's note |
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Colonial and Early National Financial History A Memo on a Selective Supplemental Bibliography |
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Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972 (1995) By Adam Fairclough Hailed as one of the best treatments of the civil rights movement, Race and Democracy is also one of the most comprehensive and detailed studies of the movement at the state level. This far-reaching and dramatic narrative ranges in time from the founding of the New Orleans branch of the NAACP in 1915 to the beginning of Edwin Edwards's first term as governor in 1972. In his new preface Adam Fairclough brings the narrative up to date, demonstrating the persistence of racial inequalities and the continuing importance of race as a factor in politics. When Hurricane Katrina exposed the race issue in a new context, Fairclough argues, political leaders mishandled the disaster. A deep-seated culture of corruption, he concludes, compromises the ability of public officials to tackle intransigent problems of urban poverty and inadequate schools. |
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The Beautiful Struggle ( Acklyn Lynch) Why are 1 in 9 young Black men in prison? A Brief for Whitey (Buchanan) Response to Barack Obama Speech on Race . |
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In
More Than Just Race, the Harvard sociologist William
Julius Wilson recaps his own important research over the past 20
years as well as some of the best urban sociology of his peers to
make a convincing case that both institutional and systemic
impediments and cultural deficiencies keep poor blacks from escaping
poverty and the ghetto. |
But she spoke forcefully on the subject, citing personal and family experience to illustrate "a paradox and contradiction in this country," which "we still haven't resolved." On the one hand, she said, race in the U.S. "continues to have effects" on public discussions and "the deepest thoughts that people hold." On the other, "enormous progress" has been made, which allowed her to become the nation's chief diplomat. "America doesn't have an easy time dealing with race," Miss Rice said, adding that members of her family have "endured terrible humiliations." "What I would like understood as a black American is that black Americans loved and had faith in this country even when this country didn't love and have faith in them — and that's our legacy," she said. WashingtonTimes |
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Jesse Helms, White Racist –What really sets Jesse Helms apart is that he is the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country -- a title that one hopes will now be permanently retired. A few editorials and columns came close to saying that. But the squeamishness of much of the press in characterizing Helms for what he is suggests an unwillingness to confront the reality of race in our national life. . . What is unique about Helms—and from my viewpoint, unforgivable -- is his willingness to pick at the scab of the great wound of American history, the legacy of slavery and segregation, and to inflame racial resentment against African Americans. Many of the accounts of Helms's retirement linked him with another prospective retiree, Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Both these Senate veterans switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party when the Democrats began pressing for civil rights legislation in the 1960s. But there is a great difference between them. Thurmond, who holds the record for the longest anti-civil rights filibuster, accepted change. For three decades he has treated African Americans and black institutions as respectfully as he treats all his other constituents. To the best of my knowledge, Helms has never done what the late George Wallace did well before his death -- recant and apologize for his use of racial issues. And that use was blatant. WashingtonPost |
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Obama Reasons with Black Protestor Thirty-one year-old Diop Olugbulu of the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement
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Mutabaruka: Reggae Sunsplash-1982 / it no good(to stay in a white man country too long /dispel the lie / Spirituality / Blacks In Amerika |
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Radical Abolitionists and The Transformation of Race By John Stauffer |
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Al Sharpton vs Tavis Smiley pt1 Barack Obama & the Black Agenda: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 / No You Can't (Featuring John Boehner) |
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Send contributions to: ChickenBones: A Journal / 2005 Arabian Drive / Finksburg, MD 21048-- I became aware of Rudy Lewis’ labor of love a few short months ago during a visit to Kalamu ya Salaam’s e-drum listserv. As soon as I saw the title of the journal I knew it was about Black folks, and the power of the written word. A quick click took me into a journal that’s long on creativity, highlighting well-known, little known, and a little known writers, and commitment to the empowerment of Black folks. I contacted Rudy to ask if he’d consider publishing some of my work. His response was immediate, and a couple of days after I’d forwarded some poems to him—they were part of ChickenBones. What I didn’t know was that this journal has been surviving for the last five years with very little outside financial support. . . If we want journals like this to “thrive” we need to support them with more than our website hits, praise, and submissions for publication consideration. —Peace,
Mary E. Weems (January 2007)
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Thought of Today—Power that works for righteousness—Finally, there is, somewhere in the Universe a "Power that works for righteousness," and that leads men to do justice to one another. To this power, working upon the hearts and consciences of men, the Negro can always appeal. He has the right upon his side, and in the end the right will prevail. The Negro will, in time, attain to full manhood and citizenship throughout the United States. No better guaranty of this is needed than a comparison of his present with his past. Toward this he must do his part, as lies within his power and his opportunity. But it will be, after all, largely a white man's conflict, fought out in the forum of the public conscience. The Negro, though eager enough when opportunity offered, had comparatively little to do with the abolition of slavery, which was a vastly more formidable task than will be the enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment. —Charles W. Chestnutt |
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Drusilla Dunjee-Houston's Wonderful Ethiopians of the Cushite Empire, Book II Origin of Civilization from the Cushites. Edited by Peggy Brooks-Bertram Review by Larry Obadele Williams |
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Obituary of Joe Walker Muhammad Speaks International Correspondent |
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Banished: How Whites Drove Blacks Out of Town in America Film Review by Kam Williams Uncrowned Queens Instrumental in Righting an 86-Year-Old Injustice
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Dizzy Gillespie, Arturo Sandoval,"Night in Tunisia" / gang starr— jazz thing /ALICE COLTRANE—Something About John Coltrane |
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Funkadelic: Mothership Connection / Not Just Knee Deep / Maggot Brain / Cosmic Slop Live 1973 / One Nation Under A Groove, Part 1 |
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Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment By Patricia Hill Collins In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, originally published in 1990, Patricia Hill Collins set out to explore the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals and writers, both within the academy and without. Here Collins provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. Drawing from fiction, poetry, music and oral history, the result is a superbly crafted and revolutionary book that provided the first synthetic overview of Black feminist thought and its canon. |
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Alberto O. Cappas. An Educational Pledge -- A positive journey for our youth. For Schools: Teachers, Parents, & Students: "One cannot keep hope alive if no plan of action is in place" Check out our Pledge T-Shirt at www.aneducationalpledge.com / Cappas@aol.com |
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Martin R Delany: A Documentary Reader (Levine) Martin Robinson Delany and Edward Wilmot Blyden Race Men and Pioneer Black Nationalists By Runoko Rashidi The Black Presence in the Bible: A Selected Bibliography / Global News: Politics—Literature & the Arts |
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Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past by Ray Raphael / Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect / The Myth of the Negro Past
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The Works of William Sanders Scarborough Black Classicist and Race Leader Edited by Michele Valerie Ronnick |
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Clarence J. Munford: N'COBRA Atlantic Slave Traffic Race and Reparations (book review) Benefits of Whiteness Boukman and His Comrades |
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Egypt Tombs Suggest Pyramids Not Built by Slaves / Cleopatra’s mother 'was African' / |
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Writings by Rose Ure Mezu Chinua Achebe: The Man and His Works (2006) / An Africana Blueprint for Living / Igbo Marriage (photos and commentary) / Chinua Achebe The Man and His Works |
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Black History Month 2009 We went into slavery a piece of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery without a language; we came out speaking the proud Anglo-Saxon tongue. We went into slavery with slave chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands. Progress, progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star.—Booker Taliaferro Washington After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, — a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.—W. E. B. Du Bois God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and Eternity our measurement.—Marcus Garvey You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression ....If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. And if we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to Earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie, love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.—M. L. King <-------artist Chuck Siler / Celebrating Black History 365 |
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Black History (audio) by Gil Scott-Heron / Gil Scott-Heron & His Music / Army desertion rate highest since 1980 |
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By Theodore
Theodore Allen begins Volume 1 by reviewing the many histories of American racism written in the 20th century. Dividing the arguments into the psycho-cultural school and the socio-economic school of thought, he teases out the strengths and flaws of their scholarship. Allen then posits racial oppression as a deliberate ruling-class decision (constantly undergoing renewal) to prevent property-less European Americans from allying themselves with enslaved and free African Americans by offering the European Americans privileges based on white skin. His solution is to study "racism" rather than "race" because studies of race always devolve onto discussions of the body--onto those who are perceived to possess race--and thus avoids the real issue. . . . It is a strong, well researched, tightly argued work. He proves that the "white race" can be "gotten on a technicality" because it was and is indeed an invented rather than a natural category. Amazon Reviewer |
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The Exhilarating Generosity of Asa Hilliard By Peggy Brooks-Bertram
Asa G. Hilliard III Obituary If I Ain't African (Glenis Redmond) |
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Racial Integration Has Run Its Course—The plain fact is that a great many white Americans, including many with otherwise liberal views on race, do not want their offspring attending schools with more than a token number of black and Latino children. Whatever their status, they do not wish to be burdened by efforts to correct the results of racial discrimination that they do not believe they caused. Their opposition may not be as violent or as vast as it was during the early years after the Brown decision, but it is widespread, deeply felt, and if history is any indication not likely to change any time soon. Derrick Bell. Desegregations Demise. The Chronicle of Higher Education No Tears for Brown v Board of Education—[Mr. Marshall's] response was that seating black children next to white children in school had never been the point. It had been necessary only because all-white school boards were generously financing schools for white children while leaving black students in overcrowded, decrepit buildings with hand-me-down books and underpaid teachers. He had wanted black children to have the right to attend white schools as a point of leverage over the biased spending patterns of the segregationists who ran schools — both in the 17 states where racially separate schools were required by law and in other states where they were a matter of culture.— Juan Williams Education & History |
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Virginia & the Board of Trade
—The
ruling class took special pains to be sure that the
people they ruled were propagandized in the moral
and legal ethos of white-supremacism. Provisions
were included for that purpose in the 1705 "Act
concerning Servants and Slaves" and in the Act of
1723 "directing the trial of Slaves . . . and for
the better government of Negroes, Mulattos, and
Indians, bond or free." For
consciousness-raising purposes (to prevent "pretense
of ignorance"), the laws mandated that parish clerks
or churchwardens, once each spring and fall at the
close of Sunday service, should read ("publish")
these laws in full to the congregants. Sheriffs were
ordered to have the same done at the courthouse door
at the June or July term of court. . . . The general
public was regularly and systematically subjected to
official white supremacist agitation. It was to be
drummed into the minds of the people that, for the
first time, no free African-American was to dare to
lift his or her hand against a "Christian, not being
a negro, mulatto or Indian"; that African-American
freeholders were no longer to be allowed to vote;
that the provision of a previous enactment [1691]
was being reinforced against the mating of English
and Negroes as producing "abominable mixture" and
"spurious" issue; that, as provided in the 1723 law
for preventing freedom plots by African-American
bond-laborers, "any white person . . . found in
company with any [illegally congregated] slaves" was
to be be fined (along with free African Americans or
Indians so offending) with a fine of fifteen
shillings, or to "receive, on his, her, or their
bare backs, for every such offense, twenty lashes
well laid on."
—
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Louisiana Case Looks a Lot Like Duke Lacrosse Frame-Up By Kam Williams Nooses and a legal lynching in Jena, Louisiana YouTube - The Jena Six |
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Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Interviewed by Kam Williams |
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School Security Guards Beat Teen over Cake Spill: Palmdale—It all started with a piece of birthday cake, but it ended up with a high school girl being beaten and expelled. The incident, which occurred last week at Knight High School in Palmdale, was caught on a cell phone camera. Michael Brownlee was live in Palmdale with what the girl and her mother plan to do now— Clearly, Injustice is not just in Jena—Cynthia McKinney Leading the Negro into Modernity |
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The First African-American Newspaper By Jacqueline Bacon Book Review by Kam Williams |
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James Edward Jackson Jr.—born in Richmond, Va., on 29 November 1914, the son of James and Clara Kersey Jackson—died 1 September 2007 in Brooklyn. His father was a pharmacist. The family lived in Jackson Ward, a segregated section for Richmond blacks. In 1931 (at 16), Jackson entered Virginia Union University. He graduated three years later with a degree in chemistry. In 1937 (at 22), Jackson received a degree in pharmacy from Howard University. But in his last year at Howard, he helped start the Southern Negro Youth Congress, which organized strikes by tobacco workers, mostly black women, who were paid $5 a week. A union representing 5,000 tobacco workers soon gained recognition. . . . Jackson joined the Communist Party in 1947. He held important positions in the Party and was one of 21 Communist Party members who were indicted in 1951, at the height of the McCarthy era, for, among other things, teaching classes on violent revolution. The case was front-page news around the country. In 1952 Jackson became the Southern secretary for the Party and a staunch advocate of civil rights. NYTimes |
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Visit Our Store (Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
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Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past By Ray Raphael |
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Supreme Court Halts Racial Integration—“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” he said. His side of the debate, the chief justice said, was “more faithful to the heritage of Brown,” the landmark 1954 decision that declared school segregation unconstitutional. “When it comes to using race to assign children to schools, history will be heard,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. . . . While Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined his opinion on the schools case in full, the fifth member of the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, did not. . . . Justice Kennedy said achieving racial diversity, “avoiding racial isolation” and addressing “the problem of de facto resegregation in schooling” were “compelling interests” that a school district could constitutionally pursue as long as it did so through programs that were sufficiently “narrowly tailored.” . . . “It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much,” Justice Breyer said. . . . “This is a decision that the court and the nation will come to regret.” . . . Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg signed Justice Breyer’s opinion. Justice Stevens wrote a dissenting opinion of his own, as pointed as it was brief. Linda Greenhouse. Justices Limit the Use of Race in School Plans for Integration. NYTimes |
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The Works of James McCune Smith Black Intellectual and Abolitionist By John Stauffer |
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Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past by Ray Raphael / Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect / The Myth of the Negro Past |
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On
Cecil Brown's
Dude,
Where's My Black Studies Department -- Thus Africans and Caribbean
Negroes were in many cases less radical, even though much of the
African American radical tradition comes from immigrants, such
as Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, Kwame Toure, Malcolm X and
Farrakhan. As Amina Baraka informed me, "We're all West
Indians." And this is true because kidnapped Africans were
brought to the Caribbean for "the breaking in," then
transferred to North America and elsewhere.
And we must ask ourselves would we rather have a radical
immigrant African in black studies or a reactionary Negro only
because he is a Negro. |
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Radicalism in the South Since Reconstruction Edited by Chris Green, Rachel Rubin, and James Smethurst |
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Days of US Slavery Closer Than We Think Al Sharpton Learns His Forebears Were Thurmonds’ Slaves Sharpton's great-grandfather was a slave who was owned by relatives of Senator Strom Thurmond,
the longtime arch-segregationist who ran for
president as a Dixiecrat in 1948
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Educating Our Children / The African World / Inside the Caribbean / Baltimore Page / Support ChickenBones |
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The Problem of Evil: Slavery, Freedom, And the Ambiguities of American Reform . Edited by Steven Mintz and John Stauffer A collective effort to present a new kind of moral history, this volume seeks to show how the study of the past can illuminate profound ethical and philosophical issues. More specifically, the contributors address a variety of questions raised by the history of American slavery. How did freedom-personal, civic, and political-become one of the most cherished values in the Western world? How has the language of slavery been applied to other instances of exploitation and depersonalization? To what extent is America's high homicide rate a legacy of slavery? Did the abolitionist movement's tendency to view slavery as a product of sin, rather than as a structural and economic problem, accelerate or impede emancipation? . . . . They also offer fresh perspectives on key individuals, from Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass to Harriet Jacobs and John Brown, and shed new light on the differences between female and male critiques of slavery, the defense of slavery by the South's intellectual elite, and Catholic attitudes toward slavery and abolition. |
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Robin Kadison Berson. Marching to a Different Drummer: Unrecognized Heroes of American History Marching Reviews / Anna Julia Cooper / Tunis George Campbell / Elizabeth Freeman / Lucy Craft Laney / Rev. Wesley J. Gaines / Special Order 15 American Women's History See Also the bibliographies of these files Bolden, Tony. The Book of African-American Women: 150 Crusaders, Creators, and Uplifters. Adams Media Corporation, 1996. Kazickas, Jurate, and Lynn Sherr. Susan B. Anthony Slept Here. A Guide to American Women's Landmarks. Random House, 1994 Nevergold, Barbara A. Seals and Peggy Brooks-Bertram. Uncrowned Queens: African American Community Builders. Uncrowned Queens, 2002. Weatherford, Doris. American Women's History. Prentice Hall General Reference, 1994 |
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Major Scholar of Blacks in Antiquity author of Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience |
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Virginia & the Board of Trade
—The
ruling class took special pains to be sure that the
people they ruled were propagandized in the moral
and legal ethos of white-supremacism. Provisions
were included for that purpose in the 1705 "Act
concerning Servants and Slaves" and in the Act of
1723 "directing the trial of Slaves . . . and for
the better government of Negroes, Mulattos, and
Indians, bond or free." For
consciousness-raising purposes (to prevent "pretense
of ignorance"), the laws mandated that parish clerks
or churchwardens, once each spring and fall at the
close of Sunday service, should read ("publish")
these laws in full to the congregants. Sheriffs were
ordered to have the same done at the courthouse door
at the June or July term of court. . . . The general
public was regularly and systematically subjected to
official white supremacist agitation. It was to be
drummed into the minds of the people that, for the
first time, no free African-American was to dare to
lift his or her hand against a "Christian, not being
a negro, mulatto or Indian"; that African-American
freeholders were no longer to be allowed to vote;
that the provision of a previous enactment [1691]
was being reinforced against the mating of English
and Negroes as producing "abominable mixture" and
"spurious" issue; that, as provided in the 1723 law
for preventing freedom plots by African-American
bond-laborers, "any white person . . . found in
company with any [illegally congregated] slaves" was
to be be fined (along with free African Americans or
Indians so offending) with a fine of fifteen
shillings, or to "receive, on his, her, or their
bare backs, for every such offense, twenty lashes
well laid on."
— |
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Sussex County: A Tale of Three Centuries Public Education in Sussex County in Black and White The Official History of Jerusalem Baptist Church |
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Lynched Mau Mau Leader Dedan Kimathi Honored with Statue in Nairobi -- His Remains Have Yet To Be Found |
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Milton Allimadi: The Hearts of Darkness / Inventing Africa: New York Times / Times Concocted 'Darkest Africa' |
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Uncle Jeff and His Contempos / Teflon Sense of History / Race in US Politics Syllabus / Banneker and Jefferson / Thomas Jefferson's Negro Family The Propaganda of History / Virginia Expresses Profound Regret The 10 Biggest Myths About Black History by Lerone Bennett Jr. The Third Door: The Autobiography of an American Negro Woman (1955) A. Philip Randolph, Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement (1996) |
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Historical Fiction by Eugene Walton |
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Igbos in Virginia Enslaved Igbo and the Foundation of Afro-Virginia Slave Culture and Society A review by Gloria Chuku Igbo Ideograms In Virginia Cemeteries By Rachel Malcolm-Woods |
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Atlanta Exposition Address By Booker T. Washington On 18 September 1895, 111 years ago, Booker T. Washington, a Negro spokesman supported by both Northern and Southern white leaders, spoke before a predominantly white audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. For Houston Baker, this ten-minute speech inaugurated "Afro-American modernism." --Houston A. Baker, Jr., Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance (1987), pp. 8-9; 15. |
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The Black Experience in America is Unique / The Fact of Blackness (1952) By Frantz Fanon / Election Day Returns |
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The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells Edited by Miriam DeCosta-Willis Foreword by Mary Helen Washington. Afterword by Dorothy Sterling |
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Abell
Report on Under-Funding Baltimore Education Demand for
Career Education Especially High
On the Need to Refurbish Career and Technology Education (CTE) Programs / Conversations with Rodney, Jonathan, Miriam, Tiger, Kam |
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A Dream Deferred: A Mournful, Contrarian Dissection Of the Failed Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education A Review by Debra J. Dickerson May/June 2004 Issue Charles J. Ogletree Jr. All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education Norton, 2005 Derrick Bell. Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform. Oxford University Press, 2005 |
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Clines Reflects on Clemente, Stargell, and the Team of Color by Danny Torres |
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By Alexandria C. Lynch, MS III"Anarcha's Story" exposes the Nazi-like experimentation on African-American female Christian slaves by Dr. James Marion Sims (1813-1883) of South Carolina, the so-called "Father & Founder of of Modern Gynecology. His purported medical advances are still hailed despite his utter butchery and murder of the oppressed (black) and poor (Irish) women of America. Here is a measured and passionate account.
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The Fourth World and the Marxists Letters from Young Activists Lessons from France Paris Is Burning "The Pyres of Autumn" Responses to Jean Baudrillard Geraldine Robinson remembers The Family of Cow Tom :The Connection of Africans & the Civilized Tribes |
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Jonathan
Scott files: Heroic Minds:
All the Great Ones Have Been Anti-Imperialist
The Niggerization of Palestine
The Staying Power of Rap
Remembering to Not Forget |
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Rudolph Lewis: Remembering My Adult Education Students The Learning Place Northwest (1990-1993) Poems Learning to be Black Heroes of the Hood Thoughts from the Hood On the Future |
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The Venezuelan Revolution 100 Questions-100 Answers By Chesa Boudin, Gabriel Gonzalez, and Wilmer Rumbos Book Reviewed by Amin Sharif |
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Rodney D. Foxworth, Jr. School Daze A Naïve Political Treatise A Report on a Gathering at Red Emma's Statistics on the Inequities |
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Portrait of a Liberation Scholar / The Global Perspective of John Henrik Clarke PanAfrican Nationalism in the Americas / John Henrik Clarke—A Great and Mighty Walk Transitional Writings on Africa / Black Arts and Black Power Figures |
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Dr. John G. Jackson - Life and Times: Part 1 /Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9 |
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Sussex County: A Tale of Three Centuries / Public Education in Sussex County in Black and White / The Official History of Jerusalem Baptist Church |
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"The Most Dangerous Black Professor in America" Along the Color Line -- February 2006 By Manning Marable Blacks in Higher Education Manning Marable, Black Liberation in Conservative America. South End Press, 1997 |
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The Black Experience in America is Unique / The Fact of Blackness (1952) By Frantz Fanon / Lessons from France |
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Zero Tolerance: Resisting the Drive for Punishment What Is the Source of the Dilemma of Black Urban Education? Social Policy? Class Oppression? Race Prejudice? Lack of Personal Responsibility? Responses by Charles, Latorial, Kam, Miriam, Jane, Jeannette, and Rodney |
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Ongoing Struggles in Black Academia -- Dolan Hubbard , "The Color of Our Classroom" Cecil Brown, "What black studies lacks" Floyd Hayes, "Jefferson & Political Philosophy: Notes of Encouragement to Two JHU Students" |
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On Tuesday, March 28, the Center for Africana Studies presented a talk by Dr. Joy Williamson, assistant professor of education at Stanford U. She will discuss the Black Student movement at the U of IL in the 1960s and 1970s. Her book, Black Power on Campus: The University of Illinois, 1965-1975, is must reading. The symposium took place in the Greenhouse, room 110. Perhaps we can learn how to revive and resurrect Black students, and even Black communities. http://ed.stanford.edu/suse/contents/joy_a_williamson.html |
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Atlanta Constitution on Race Problem Origin of Segregation Intermarriage a No-No Who Wants Integration The Problem of Integration The Racial Problem |
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The Meritocracy Myth A Dollars and Sense interview with Lani Guinier Responses to Race as a Decoy for Class by Rodney D. Foxworth, Jr. and Rudolph Lewis |
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Recalls Bogalusa's Deacons for Defense & Justice By Jonathan Tilove |
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Worship of white supremacy, fundamentalism, and capitalism -- It isn't very likely that Americans will get smarter anytime soon. Politicians know that appealing to their worst instincts is usually a winning formula. The corporate run media is not only unhelpful in enlightening the public but is in fact complicit in keeping them in the dark. The New York Times is once again leading the charge in helping the Bush administration push bogus information. This time around Iran is the bogeyman maligned by unnamed sources. It is déjà vu all over again. Belief in American superiority and particularly the superiority of white people, will always win the day and will always keep the nation ignorant. It isn't surprising that politicians evoke the name of Davy Crockett and peddle nonsense about the sun rotating around the earth. After all, leaders can only be a reflection of the people they serve. --Margaret Kimberley, “Freedom Rider: America the Stupid.” |
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Carter G. Woodson, Father of Black History By Lerone Bennett, Jr. |
| Sandra West files: We Are A Dancing People Leslie Garland Bolling Wendy Stand Up with Your Proud Hair! Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance |
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The Black Vanguard & 1970s Repression
The Underlying Concepts of
the Black Manifesto By James Forman, Chairman, United Black Appeal Reparations as a Tactic of Black Liberation -- Or Loosening the Social Controls on Blacks
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Why Facts & Dates Are Not So Important in History: A Discussion about the Nature of History: by Hugh Capel |
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2/4/1913 -10/24/2005 ~A civilized society distinguishes itself by how fairly it treats its constituents~ -mb |
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MAAT: Our New Social Policy by Ata Omom / The Family of Cow Tom / BBC Radio |
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Thomas Jefferson and His Negro Family
By Wilson J. Moses The Eternal Linkage of Literature and Society Dwight David Eisenhower |
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Creative Conflict in African-American Thought Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey Wilson Jeremiah Moses: Teflon Sense of History & Collective Sin A Letter from Wilson Moses Afrotopia Teflon Sense of History |
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Insurgents -- Martin Luther King at AFL-CIO / LeRoi Jones: Black Man as Victim / LeRoi Jones: Pursued by the Furies / Introduction to Denmark Vesey Confession of John Enslow / Confession of Bacchus Hammet / Commentators on Nathaniel Turner of Southampton / 1831 Confessions / NT TimeLine |
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A Transformative Research and Action Agenda for the New Century Edited by Joyce E. King |
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White Privilege Shapes the U.S. / Myths of Low-Wage Workers / Ujamaa / New Deal / Raw Deal / Stalling the Dream by Meizhu Lui |
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Grace Boggs on Reorganizing Urban Schools
The Dropout Challenge Give Detroit Schools a Fresh Start Read Also: Going Beyond Black and White
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Rudolph Lewis: Quality Education for Black & Brown Undermined by Class Oppression & Public Intellectuals |
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First Holocaust in the Western World By Hans Koning |
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Black Insurgents -- Martin Luther King at AFL-CIO / LeRoi Jones: Black Man as Victim / LeRoi Jones: Pursued by the Furies / Introduction to Denmark Vesey The Confession of John Enslow The Confession of Bacchus Hammet / Commentators on Nathaniel Turner / 1831 Confessions / NT TimeLine |
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Ama A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade By Manu Herbstein |
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Should whites wear shackles and chains to reverse history? By Alicia M. Waller
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The Autobiography of William Sanders Scarborough An American Journey from Slavery to Scholarship Edited with an Introduction by Michelle Valerie Ronnick Foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Books N Review |
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DuBois Speaks to Africa Delivered to the All-African Congress in 1958 Du Bois' Letter to Yolande 1958 Steve Biko Speaks on Black Consciousness |
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in Negro Education in the District of Columbia (Excerpts) By E. Delorus Preston, Jr. An Archival Search for Sterling Brown Maria Syphax Case Table (Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3) |
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Two Scholars Discuss Afrocentrism as A Racial Ideology: History & Ethics Wilson Jeremiah Moses & Cane Hope Felder |
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The
picture [left] would have appeared shocking to a viewer in the Civil War
era, when it was taken, because it shows a little black boy with a
little white girl on his arm. This is a posture suggestive of
"traditional courtship roles," and it violates taboos
concerning what we would today call, "interracial dating."
But look closely at the caption! They are both
"emancipated slave children!" They are both legally black.
So it is okay for her to take his arm. Whoever distributed
this photo was certainly aware that he/she was making several points,
not the least of which was that "white" girls could be
designated "black" slaves under American law. --Wilson J. Moses
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Up from Slavery A Documentary History of Negro Education (Table) Compiled by Rudolph Lewis |
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Fraternal Lodges Developing & Expanding the Village in Rural Southern Virginia by Stuart W. Doyle
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the Connection of Africans & the Civilized Tribes |
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Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey (2008) Thurgood Marshall became a living icon of civil rights when he argued Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court in 1954. Six years later, he was at a crossroads. A rising generation of activists were making sit-ins and demonstrations rather than lawsuits the hallmark of the civil rights movement. What role, he wondered, could he now play? When in 1960 Kenyan independence leaders asked him to help write their constitution, Marshall threw himself into their cause. Here was a new arena in which law might serve as the tool with which to forge a just society. In Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey (2008)Mary Dudziak recounts with poignancy and power the untold story of Marshall's journey to Africa |
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Egalitarian Slaveowners A Sexual Defense of Andy Jackson Conversations with Ben, Wilson, Louis, John, Joyce, Anita, Miriam |
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Home Educating Our Children First 25 Second 25 Third 25 And More
