The funny thing about so-called “black leadership” is that much of our perception of black public figures is controlled and managed by predominantly white media. Therefore, it is no coincidence that nearly every prominent black person who speaks firmly for the rights of African Americans has been typecast as either a buffoon, a crook or a greedy, selfish liar.
The last time I saw James Baldwin was at a memorial colloquium on Hoyt Fuller at Cornell University in 1984 at which we were both presenting. He was talking, as…
When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took the podium on August 28, 1963, the Department of Justice was watching. Fearing that someone might hijack the microphone to make inflammatory statements, the Kennedy DOJ came up with a plan to silence the speaker, just in case.
Traveling along the streets and alleyways of inner-city American neighborhoods, I find commercial signs, graffiti, folk altars and murals that announce why the residents remember their dead, who is worthy of admiration, whom they pray to and the proud achievements of their ancestors.
In less than a week, the 50th anniversary celebration of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom will take place on the same site as it did in 1963. The event, coordinated by the National Action Network and The King Center in coalition with an array of organizations, will seek to commemorate and rekindle the original gathering’s aims.
Next weekend, we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for J…
Every time I hear the voice of Russell Simmons, I hear a cool, clean, clear meditative voice, especially on Twitter where he drops his yoga knowledge in a reflective way. I guess he wasn’t folding his legs and saying a centered “Om” when he decided to ridicule an African woman. How did his voice distort […]
It was for Marcus Garvey at an early age an uplifting vision of African liberation imagined, mapped out and foreseen as the dawning of a new light and life on…