By Gloria J. Browne-Marshall
Trayvon Martin, 17, was visiting his father, in Sanford, Florida, from Miami. Over fifty years ago, Emmett Till, 14, was visiting his grand-father in Money, Mississippi, from Chicago. Emmett Till was abducted in the night, by Whites, tortured and killed. It was 1955. Much has changed. Too much remains the same.
Trayvon Martin is the latest young Black man left begging for his life.
Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West deserve high props for their summer poverty tour. They started on an Indian reservation, hit the inner city, and looked at poverty, in all of its manifestations. While many dismissed their high-profile tour as a political ploy, I am absolutely convinced of their sincerity. In addition, these two men […]
To talk of Harriet Tubman is to speak of one of those special persons who serve as sacred sources and cultural anchors of our expansive self-understanding and whose lives are the precious and heavy metal and material out of which history and hope are hammered. In this month of remembrance and special honor of our foremothers, Black History Month II—Women Focus, let us pay rightful hommage to her on March 10, her Day of Remembrance set aside by our shared home state of Maryland.
When I went to Bennett College for Women in 2007, I declared that I was “on fire” for the institution. I still am. And I also yield to the biblical verse that says for everything there is a season, a time for everything unto heaven. I had a season to build four buildings in four […]
On April 27th at the Schomburg Center in New York family, longtime allies/friends and the community will gather to share in the celebration of my 70th Birthday. Personally, I’m not much on birthday celebrations, so the event will be a benefit to support the work of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW), the organization which I have devoted my energies building for the past decade. I view IBW as a signature/legacy initiative – the culmination of nearly a half century of advocacy and organizing on the frontlines of the Black Freedom Struggle.
As we mark this year’s Black History Month II: Women Focus, we will again pay rightful homage to the pioneers, heroines, and way-makers who made ways out of no- way, who opened up ways for so many others, breaking down barriers, crossing boundaries, creating and increasing opportunities for women and girls, and others marginalized and excluded, and making great sacrifices and strides in the service of women, our people and humankind.
For someone who made history as his state’s first African-American to serve in Congress and developed an international reputation for his work in support of Africa, Donald Payne was a pretty unassuming man.
No matter what we think, say or write about the movie Red Tails, about its message, meaning, worthiness or weight, the discussion is ultimately and unavoidably about us, about how we perceive and understand ourselves, what we accept as real and rightful representations of us, and how we read and relate to the historical and current lived experience and initiatives of our lives in the context of both oppression and “constrained freedom.”
Franklin Graham and the hate behind the southern evangelical Christian brand.
As we marked this National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, we could not avoid noticing that the issue of HIV/AIDS has become less urgent on the country’s agenda, that one of the once most vocal and active racial groups now has sufficient government monies, medicines and means to move on to advocate for other things, while real and potential Black victims are left to fend for themselves and make do or die on the remaining meager resources. For this is the way power and race work in this country and the world, in spite of self-deluding post-racial prattle and misconceptions about negotiation instead of struggle, and transactional trade without the power of an engaged people.
I still have not gone to see the movie, The Help. I read the book and that was enough for me. I read a book where a white women fully engaged herself in cultural appropriation, putting 21st century voices into 1960s throats. Which black women, in 1960, would have said that black men left their […]
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