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Books by Kalamu ya
Salaam
The Magic of JuJu: An Appreciation of the Black Arts
Movement /
360:
A Revolution of Black Poets
Everywhere Is Someplace Else: A Literary Anthology
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From A Bend in the River: 100 New Orleans Poets
Our Music Is No Accident /
What Is Life: Reclaiming the Black Blues Self
My Story My Song (CD)
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Hurricane Katrina at
Southern University
Dear Colleagues,
I know many of you are concerned about us
here and I just want you to know that we are safe. The
University is open, since yesterday, for administrators and
staff but the students will not return until Tuesday , Sept. 6.
In my neighborhood we had some wind damage
but not any flooding. Several homes had down trees and one tree
split a home in half on my street but no damage to my house.
We were without electricity for 3 days but it came back on
yesterday. This is so minor compared to what others are
experiencing. We have several hundreds of the evacuees housed
here on campus; some arrived with just what they had on when
they were rescued. Realizing this, I had my staff on
yesterday to go back home and get whatever they had at home
(t-shirts, blankets, pillows, shoes, underclothes, socks, baby
bottles, coloring books, water, etc) for those in the shelter
here on campus.
The Library ended up taking 3 cars and a van
of items for those housed here on campus. I had a couple
of OCLC t-shirts and I included one of them for the evacuees.
They were so grateful for everything as one lady told me she had
had the same clothes on for three days, no shoes, and no shower
during this time. I know this is not much but every little
helps. There are about 100,000 people from New Orleans and
the surrounding areas now in Baton.Rouge with all shelters full
and the traffic is a nightmare, long lines at the gas stations
but we are coping and trying to help as much as we can.
Southern University will be allowing any
student from the New Orleans colleges and universities to enroll
here for the rest of the semester. Of course the Library
will extend all rights and privileges to these students as we do
our own students. Ms. Adrienne Webber, Xavier
University who was in the HBCU Leadership
Institute I stopped by yesterday and said she is available for
work for short term (6 months or so) or a permanent job if there
is anything available. Just thought I would pass this on.
Again, thanks for your concerns. Do
keep all of South Louisiana and especially New Orleans close to
your heart and in your prayers.
Take care and take time.
Emma Bradford
Perry
Dean of Libraries
Southern
University
Baton Rouge, LA 70813
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Black
Colleges and Universities Suffer
Immensely
from Hurricane Katrina
Many HBCU students may have to lose an
entire semester or more.
Long Beach, CA (BlackNews.com)
– Historically-Black colleges and universities are constantly
faced with challenges that can include state funding issues,
inadequate housing, poor student-teacher ratios, and even
violence. However, the most recent challenge is none other than
Hurricane Katrina.
The deadly natural disaster has affected
several HBCUs in the gulf coast area including Dillard
University, Xavier University and Southern University in New
Orleans, and Tougaloo College in Mississippi. Campuses are
damaged, students are stranded, and the school year may not
start this year at all.
Fortunately, several organizations are
stepping up to the plate to
offer some relief. One of these is The
United Negro College Fund ,
which has initiated a special
online relief fund that people can donate to.
Dr. Michael Lomax of the UNCF, comments,
"We need longtime supporters and new friends as well to
help us raise the funds our schools will need to begin the long
and costly rebuilding process."
In addition, the National
Association of Equal Opportunity In Higher Education
has launched a program seeking to coordinate with other
universities to provide alternatives for students enrolled at
affected HBCUs.
Many wonder though, whether this will be
enough to avoid having Black students lose an entire semester or
more.
HBCUconnect.com,
the largest online destination for HBCU students and alumni,
plans to encourage their thousands of members to do what they
can to help. William Moss comments, "We are creating a
dedicated section
on the web site that will feature exclusive news, forums, and
advice on how to help these HBCUs. We also plan to setup an
online fund that people can donate to."
Many say that the key to helping these HBCUs
is to donate money and tocreate an awareness about the
situation. Likely, Tom Joyner, Oprah Winfrey, and other
celebrity graduates of Black colleges, will launch initiatives
of their own.
Dante Lee, CEO of BlackNews.com,
comments, "Anyone who has media power should urge their
audience to help. Every graduate of an HBCU, including myself,
must take action."
In addition to Black colleges, many black
businesses and black families have been destroyed. To help
these, interested ones can donate to Red
Cross or can
volunteer by contacting USA
Freedom Corps.
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Other Ideas for Relief Efforts
1. Use our e-mail networks to ask for
help of some kind from our friends.
2. Make donations through our neighborhoods,
churches, and other organizations. The Red Cross will get
a LOT of money; I prefer the smaller groups that have fewer
administrative costs. Here are some that were listed in
the Post recently: America's Second Harvest, Catholic Charities
USA, Church World Service, United Methodist Comm. on Relief.
I'm going to check out a web site that was recommended:
Giving.com It gives info on various organizations.
3. Think of ways that we can actually
DO something tangible: have a bake sale, hold a flea
market, give a party, etc.
4. Involve children and teenagers so
they can feel a part of the effort
5. Discuss ways of saving resources: turn off
the lights, use the air conditioner sparingly, use the car only
for essential errands and then do them all at once, walk to the
grocery, post office, and drugstore, etc.
6. Share ideas with friends. (One
woman on t. v. offered to take in a refugee family. Now
that was something!) A friend who lives in Lafayette, LA
has gotten her church involved; they're feeding people
& finding homes for them.
7. Some people want to send water,
diapers, & toiletries, but these goods present logistics
problems; it's better to send a monetary donation. As one
newscaster commented, "This is our country's tsunami,"
and another person called New Orleans the modern-day Pompeii.
Please get back to me--or to each other--with comments,
suggestions, questions, whatever. By the way, does anyone
know what has happened to the colleges—Xavier,
Dillard, and Southern—and
their students?
Peace,
Miriam posted 1 September 2005*
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music website >
http://www.kalamu.com/bol/
writing website >
http://wordup.posterous.com/
daily blog >
http://kalamu.posterous.com
twitter >
http://twitter.com/neogriot
facebook >
http://www.facebook.com/kalamu.salaam
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Men
We Love, Men We Hate /
Ways of
Laughing (Kalamu ya Salaam)
Marcus Rediker
is professor of maritime history at the University of
Pittsburgh and the author of
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (1987),
The Many-Headed Hydra (2000), and
Villains of All Nations (2005), books that
explore seafaring, piracy, and the origins of
globalization. In The Slave Ship, Rediker
combines exhaustive research with an astute and highly
readable synthesis of the material, balancing
documentary snapshots with an ear for gripping
narrative. Critics compare the impact of Rediker’s
history, unique for its ship-deck perspective, to
similarly compelling fictional accounts of slavery in
Toni Morrison’s
Beloved and Charles Johnson’s
Middle Passage. Even scholars who have written
on the subject defer to Rediker’s vast knowledge of the
subject. Bottom line:
The Slave Ship is sure to become a
classic of its subject.— Bookmarks
Magazine
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The State of African Education
(April 200)
Attack On Africans Writing Their Own History Part 1 of 7
Dr Asa
Hilliard III speaks on the assault of academia on Africans writing and
accounting for their own history.
Dr Hilliard is A teacher,
psychologist, and historian.
Part 2 of 7
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Part
3 of 7 /
Part 4 of 7
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Part 5 of 7 /
Part 6 of 7 /
Part 7 of 7
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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
West Africa Before the Colonial Era: A
History to 1850
African Slave Trade: Precolonial History,
1450-1850
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John Henrik Clarke—A Great and Mighty Walk
The Katrina Papers a Journal of Trauma and Recovery
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 20 April 2010
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