Herb Boyd is an American journalist, educator, author, and activist. His articles appear regularly in the New York Amsterdam News. He teaches black studies at the City College of New York and the College of New Rochelle.
Seven years ago the Institute of the Black World 21st Century launched its first Annual Marcus Garvey Commemorative Meeting and Pan-African Unity Dialogue (PAUD). Last Saturday morning at Local 1199 SEIU more than fifty invitees assembled to pay tribute to what would have been Garvey’s 127th birthday and also to continue the IBW’s mission to bring together individuals representing various Black world diaspora communities for the purpose of dialogue and coordinated actions.
Legendary jazz pianist and composer Cecil Taylor was swindled out of $500,000 by a man who befriended him last year.
A replay on reparations is gathering a bit of traction nowadays thanks to the recent cover story in The Atlantic magazine by Ta-Nehisi Coates and a summary of a reparations conference at Chicago State University…
On the very day his friends and comrades were celebrating the birthday of Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik El Shabazz), Elombe Brath was joining his fellow revolutionary on the other side of our struggle.
I was still reeling from the news that one of Detroit’s most remarkable freedom fighters, General Baker had joined the ancestors when in rapid succession like a machine gun of sorrow word came that the author Sam Greenlee had expired…
Amiri Baraka, like his name, was a blessed prince, and he loomed like a colossus over the Black arts movement, excelling in practically every literary expression—as a poet, playwright, novelist, historian, journalist, and essayist.
At the close of his autobiography, Yusef A. Lateef, the renowned musician, composer, and Grammy-winning recording artist wrote, “My life has been a series of ‘warm receptions,’…
By Herb Boyd
Special to IBW
Bird watchers, not those ornithologists armed with binoculars looking for the latest rare specimen on wing, but jazz lovers eagerly awaiting the arrival of Stanley Crouch’s study of Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, the wingless immortal, can now exhale.
By Herb Boyd
Special to IBW
There is a lot of merit to the rumor and rave that “12 Years a Slave” is the best film ever made on the long, dark night of bondage, but as Les McCann once sang “Compared to What?”
Like many Americans my sleep was troubled last night, troubled by the ghosts of past injustices, a feeling given fresh currency by a late-hour not guilty verdict from Sanford, Florida that freed George Zimmerman in the shooting death of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin.
“Farther On Up the Road” is classic Bobby Blue Bland, but this song was initially recorded before his tenor voice gave way to that distinctive growl or “squall,” as…
Spending a morning with Congressman Charles Rangel is to be in touch with a diversity of the Harlem community from a breakfast at Sylvia’s where he was one of several…
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