Harambee, brothers and sisters in struggle! With the blessing of another year comes another chance to celebrate our nappy ass roots and search the forgotten annals of black history. For the last few years, we’ve been bringing you the wildly informative and 100% true and accurate* series Know Your History, wherein we tell you the Read More
The first and second installments of a four-part series of mock commercials part of Pierre Bennu’s larger series of paintings and films “deconstructing and re-envisioning images of people of color in commercial and pop culture.” Had me chortling in all sort of inappropriateness here at the college library cafe. Check Bennu’s exittheapple.com for more thought/art-provoking Read More
Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem were an interracial rock n’ roll band that broke racial barriers, headed by Dr. Teeth who was born of a black mother and green father. Originally, the band was known for its edgy, raunchy lyrics; banned in the UK, their 1960 debut album, Fur in Your Teeth, featured such Read More
Dee Rees‘s Pariah and Goran Olsson‘s The Black Power Mixtape deal with the Black experience in America, but very differently — after all, we are not a monolith. The first, is about a young black lesbian coming to terms with her sexuality in the heart of Brooklyn. Movie treatment of queer issues are usually reserved Read More
When people think of slave revolts in United States history, the Nat Turner rebellion is usually what comes to mind. On August 21, 1831, Turner led a group of slaves in a rebellion that resulted in the deaths of almost 60 white men, women, and children. While I don’t remember ever going into much depth Read More
Before Monday, I can’t say that I knew much – if anything – about Jeffrey Lord. I was probably better off, considering his online column posted yesterday morning at The American Spectator about Shirley Sherrod was breathtaking in its ignorance and shamelessness. Lord essentially called Sherrod a liar for using the word “lynch” to describe Read More
In my more militant youth, I used to argue that May 19 should have been a national holiday. And if it couldn’t be one, then at the least I could sacrifice a day of school or work to commemorate Malcolm X’s birthday. In retrospect, that was stupid (maybe immature is the better word) because if Read More
Roosevelt Franklin was a member of the cast of Sesame Street in the early 1970s. The revolutionary character was believed to be African-American based on the way he spoke and his propensity to sing/dance/rhyme/scat in normal conversation. He was the founder of Roosevelt Franklin Elementary school, wherein he taught his pupils — also believed to be Read More
Born in 1928, Lamar David Little worked as a welder in Fort Wayne, IN. A fan of tasty snacks, he, like many black people both past and present, was a fan of eating the nutty kernels inside of sunflower seeds. Being a man of diverse taste, however, he soon tired of the lack of flavor Read More
Shamefully enough, I had no clue who Percy Sutton was or why he was important until I stumbled across his obituary on page 3A of my local newspaper. And though I’m usually wary of venturing into hyperbole, the Rev. Al Sharpton is not too far off in summing up the incredibly interesting and distinctive life Read More
