|
Death of
the Black Church
Or, the
Liberation of Black Female Religious
Conversation with Latorial and
Jeannette
Latorial: I like this conversation
Jeanette and Rudy. Jeanette, as a girl who’s been in church
all of my life, I can certainly agree with you there. The
problem is . . . people on the outside think that many people on
the inside and in the pews have "made it" and need to
be reaching back to pull other brothers and sisters up. But the
truth is as you have already stated it. Often times, we're just
people looking the part and standing tall in middle class
America, and more often than not, we're just as broken inside
mentally, emotionally and spiritually as those who economically
and otherwise need our help.
I just think that our history has damaged us
to the core in many instances. It's not an excuse, but the
abuse left stains for black men and women that only God can
erase. We've gotten so caught up in materialism and jobs
and making it, that we've neglected the whole: "each one
reach one" motto.
Many churches are doing the work of God for
the poor and needy, and unfortunately, others are not.
Keep dialoguing. It's falling on hearing ears even when
you think it's not.
Jeannette:
Latorial, thank you so much for the feedback. I sincerely
appreciate it and your perspective. I have been in and out of
the church (building) all of my life too. Now I find God
in all kinds of places, colors and faces, and religious
expressions different from my Baptist and Christian upbringing.
What I have really learned about God has to do with love,
intimacy and trust which were all my personal issues (because I
was incredibly angry with Him/Her.) God is love. Intimacy
and trust with God are possible. I have only recently learned
this and I am no spring chicken.
When God gave me the idea to make the purple
ribbons, it was a moment of deep intimacy and I had no idea how
I would finance it or even what ribbon cost. It didn't matter.
Trust was not an issue...and I was right. He has provided. The
purple ribbons are not my project. They are God's project and I
have no full idea of what He has in mind. (I think I have an
inking, but no full knowledge.) I cannot fathom, but I trust God
and the process. In Revolutionary
Suicide, Newton says
"revolution is not an action, but a process."
I, YOU, WE are engaged in a process with
these ribbons and it will be thrilling to see/feel how it
evolves.
Latorial, you are so right. The churches are
filled with aching, hurting people who have been abused (intergenerationally
going back to the times of enslavement which fits into social
work family systems theory just fine, the way I understand it)
and are still abusing themselves individually and each other.
Our people are bone-weary and bleeding.
Turning our pain back on ourselves (implosion) is an alternative
to explosion. If our men explode on the job, they get
fired, shot or lynched. So, who then will feed the children?
I've heard brothers testimonies in church
about how/what they must endure in the work
place. These church folks are also one step away from not having
enough gas to get out of town and maxed out charge cards. They
don't have the energy or inclination to hold conversations with
the drug dealers on the corner.
I know for sure that many teen age drug
dealers would welcome conversation from the folks coming out of
church (and ignoring them) but everyone is too weary to
talk to them...rushing home to take care of their own problems.
These young men know their lives are doomed, that they are
oppressed and many are thirsty for an alternative, which
according to the Christian church should be Jesus. Jesus was not
too tired, busy or concerned with how to pay for his sandals to
walk through neighborhoods.
Though I am a harsh critic of what I see in
the black baptist church, I understand all of the pain that
keeps folk "accepting oppression" as Rap Brown (?)
stated. I did not come to this understanding until more recently
when I began to develop more intimacies with people in the
church.
Then I learned how badly they are hurting and
yes, some churches are doing a good job, at least trying to
embrace and put their arms about poor folks in concrete loving
ways that will make a difference in their lives, like learning
how to read, or teaching parenting/budgeting skills.
My frustrations are in part related to the
fact that I am impatient, have not found such a church and in
general need a lot of emotional space so I can think. In the
past it has taken a while for me to "fit in" to most
Baptist churches (except the one I grew up in Newport News which
I seldom frequent.) However as I claim/prove(?) who I am,
an artist, this may change. I find that we (folks of color) tend
to love "artists," if they are known. I would imagine
that the people in Maya Angelou's church adore her. I really
don't know.
Yes Rudy, psychologically, our people are
imploding, that is, turning all of our pain/abuse back onto
ourselves. I don't think this has much to do with thinking with
integrity and dignity. Integrity has to do with honesty and the
honest truth for many is "I can just barely hold it
together, so let me try and act a little dignified up in here
(church) for a few hours."
The alternative to implosion is explosion and
that would bring out the SWAT teams or some such governmental
force, would it not?
Rudy: Topics like church and religion
make me uneasy, and especially when one talks about individual
beliefs and faith and how well they have been absorbed and
lived. It gives me
no pleasure at all in taking up the subject of how blacks
actually live out their religion and how the “Black Church”
actually operates in our lives. Of course, as black women, you
probably are much more familiar with those intimate matters than
I. I say that only because it is primarily black women who make
the numbers in the “Black Church.” I am like most black men
at odds with and outside the “Black Church.”
But the role of the black church in
liberation struggle is a necessary topic. It needs more poignant
reflective thought than it has been given in the last several
decades. In my humble view the so-called black church is
probably one of the most reactionary, perverse institutions
within the black community, and have become more so since the
deaths of Martin and Malcolm. There was hope when it retained
its congregational, community, agrarian oriented aspects. As it
manifests itself in urban centers in the South, North,
elsewhere, they are harbors for sycophants, demagogues, and
scoundrels—now educated and trained in the best seminaries,
thereafter loaded down with well-honed dogma.
They are more akin to ceos and censors than
the poor prophet from Nazareth. So I am not surprised that the
emotional ills derived from racial oppression are not getting
healed and served there. These male religious leaders
(primarily) are aligned with the status quo.
Their primary message is the “gospel of
success.” Pyramid schemes thrive in these institutions. Let me
remind you: institutions by nature are conservative. That for
which they were created becomes secondary. Much of the energy
and resources are spent on preserving the institution rather
than the service it symbolically represents. That means the
preachers and their clique gained more than any from church
activity.
From my view black church authorities are the
primary purveyors of the worst in black thought when it comes to
moral, social, and political views. Du Bois didn’t trust them.
I have not trusted them since I was baptized. Most of them did
not support King and the Civil Rights movement. That was why
King had to create SCLC. The Black Baptist Convention and its
leaders were a hotbed of reactionary acts and conservatism. But
all these authorities received benefits from it. Most of them
did not support the Black Consciousness Movement. But they all
received benefits from those sacrifices.
The black church is dead and it has been dead
for sometime. It was stillborn but it has been propped up as if
it were a real living being. That’s the great deceit. This
Great Lie has been propagated too long about the vitality and
creativity of the Black Church. That notion only serves the
interest of the preachers and their handlers. These fellows have
to be brought down a peg or two, or even further. They are
excellent functionaries. But as far as the social, moral, and
political their voices are in reality very small and rather
insignificant in that they are ventriloquists, rather than
prophets of the Lord, liberators of the poor and the powerless.
Religion and church are sustained and
fostered by the interrelated activities of the people on a daily
basis. It is not in ritual. It is not in romanticization of
institutions. It is not in glorifying he who created the largest
edifice. It is not in whether your church is on radio or TV. It
is not in the cut and quality of cloth you wear to church. It is
not in how well the preacher speaks. Religion and church are not
in any of these superficialities.
What is called the Black Church today is a
collar and a chain around our necks. In the last several decades
we have experienced atrophy in the development of black religion
in America. That has resulted from an excess of black
theologians and doctors of divinities. It is they who have
driven a stake in its development, and purely for reasons of
self aggrandizement and self promotion. They want the people
totally dependent on them.
We must not only wake up, we must grow up.
Each of us much be experts in our own religion. We must realize
that real religion is a growing, living thing. Individuals
acting as community create and sustain religion, not
institutions. In this new world, we must be open to thoughts and
ideas of all religions and philosophies of life, as we are in
our literature, in our music, in our art. We must liberate
religion and church from the priests. And in this, women have a
great role to play.
That black women do not run the Black Church
today is an extraordinary absurdity and sign of the
oppressiveness of the Black Church and black religion. Black
women need to free themselves from the church as it is now
organized and find religious rapprochement with the men in their
lives. This process will go a long way to reviving the spirits
and women now in the Black Church.
There are many steps between
"implosion" and "explosion." We do not have
to confine ourselves to negatives. There are many little steps
one can take.
Jeannette: Rudy, your insights never
cease to amaze me. "The black church is dead and has been
for sometime." I'd never thought of it in terms of being
totally "dead." I suppose I've been thinking
that it's in the process of dying. I think you are right.
What exists now seems at best a sad shadow of the past...and for
all the reasons you state.
Increasingly though, I see more black women
assuming roles of preacher/priests. I don't know if this will
bring new life in any overall sense.
I agree that Black Women need to free
themselves from the church as it is organized now and find
religious rapprochement with the men in their lives. This is
ideal. However it raises other issues. I suspect, though I
could be wrong, that many black women are "bound" to
the church because there are no men in their lives...
Yes, you are right, there are many small steps
between implosion and explosion, just as there are between
suicide and homicide. We do not have to think in negatives. Part
II. Martin, Malcolm, & Televangelists
Latorial: Jeanette,
don't get me wrong. The black church in the sense of how the
whole US knew it years ago is gone, and I think it should if it
means embracing sound doctrines for perilous times.
To be honest, all that's
happened to the black church is that it has become more
liberated, more educated and more spiritual. In a sense, a long
time ago, all we had was the mold that white folks set for us.
We became Baptists because they were baptists. We became
methodists or episcopals because that's what we saw.
I'm glad that we have
learned how to move beyond denomination and see the real picture
of salvation and accountability. Of the two churches that
I came up in back home, they both have been liberated in a
sense, one for the better and the other for the worse. I
still think that it all boils down to leadership.
We cannot move forward
without the traditions on which we were founded. But we
also cannot move forward and progress as real Christians if we
don't adopt new ways to carry out the word of God.
I am comfortable in just
about any church, and I really don't care what the name or
denomination is. My soul mission in seeking a church home
for my family is that it has a leader with true salvation,
revelation and a heart for bringing everyone else closer to God.
Different churches have to adopt different things to make that
work. You have to keep in mind the locations and
environments that a lot of pastors are confronted with.
For the first time in my
life I joined a nondenominational church because it was where
God wanted me to be at that time in my life. Does it mean
I've turned my back on my baptist roots. No. I am who I
am, and all of my history makes me stronger and makes me great.
I liked the fact that this
new church I had joined would not allow members to serve on
ministries or auxiliaries if they drank or smoke. Not that those
are the only two sins in the world, but this church had a sense
of accountability, from the pastor on down. I liked the
fact that if you shunned your leadership, you were removed from
leadership. We talk about preachers all of the time,
and in today's church, many of the ministry servants and leaders
go on to become pastors. How can you become a great leader
if you cannot follow. That's a great piece of advice for
us all in any arena.
In my daily living, I
strive hard to be all that I can in every environment: my
home, my community, church and the workplace. I honestly
don't think there's going to be a black church in heaven, and
while we needed one in America, I think that the day should come
when we don't need a "black" church per se.
We've come a long way. We
have a long way to go, but I think that those of us who find the
means to worship beyond the color line and love beyond the color
line . . . I think that's wonderful. I will be the first
to admit, that although I've been in nondenominational churches
of mixed races like TD Jakes' or Creflo Dollars or Rev. Price or
Eddic Long . . . those churches are still quite black. The
majority of the membership is black, over 80-90% in just about
every case. It's still a black church promoting black
awareness, black history and black empowerment. Others
have joined in, and that's the beauty of it. So, in that
sense do I say that the black church is disappearing, and in
this sense, we have not lost a thing.
I have thought of becoming
a minister often. Who knows? One day it may happen.
My life is truly a ministry in many ways.
My mother-in-law is an
ordained preacher, and she faces many challenges as a woman, but
yes, like Harriett Tubman, we get up even when our own men knock
us down. It's a God calling, not a worldly calling.
Jeannette:
Dear Latorial, Thanks for sharing your perceptions and
experiences. At this point (and age) in my life I don't
necessarily feel the need for a church "leader." I may
enjoy a minister's interpretation of scripture, but I will
challenge it if I do not agree. This has often been the case in
the last 20 years (without difficulty because the black male
ministers I challenged were professors of theology, open to and
not threatened by debate.)
My dream (after dialoguing
with Rudy) was about the need for “fellowship." In
addition to listening to another person's interpretation of
scripture, what the "organized body of believers"
gives me is a sense of extended family. This is peculiar to my
life and circumstances. So going to the church building to be
with others meets a basic need that doesn't have a lot to do
with God, except that it gives one the opportunity to deal with
interpersonal relationshipswhich may sometimes be difficult. (Do
I really want to turn the other cheek or just smack that
person?)
For me,
"closeness" to God may come sitting in silence with or
without the Quakers, by a stream listening to water running over
rocks, on a mountain singing to or with the wind or in
conversation with a borderline psychotic who is homeless.
I don't think God necessarily has anything to do with the
"church." We
go to church out of habit, tradition and personal need.
I think each person has to
come to know God for herself. Thus far, I have concluded that
God mainly holds me accountable for love of my fellow
earthlings.
God's essence becomes
manifest in the world when I relate lovingly to those who differ
from me, that is in terms of religion, race, creed, color,
class, socio-economic status, sexual preference, handicapping
conditions, age, etc., etc. I may be a reflection of God
if I choose. God is love. Oppression transgresses love.
Oppression is sin.
Latorial: Jeanette,
I think that in the end, we'll all have something right and
something wrong when it comes to God. Over the years, we've been
lost to form, fashion and interpretation, and it's sad.
We're so busy trying to put God in a jar in this world, and I
don't think anyone really understands that He cannot be
contained. He's bigger than any of us can ever imagine.
He transcends time, denomination, race and gender.
Finally, he transcends
literal interpretation. His Word is spiritual. We
often read the scripture that GOD is able to do
"abundantly and exceedingly" more than we
could ever imagine, yet we continue to imagine Him doing
simple things in life like blessing us with "things."
That's not God! God is not simple. Life is. We
think it's complicated, but really it's not. It can be reduced
to good and evil, love and hate.
Yet we keep trying to
reduce it to black and white. We've been living in the
wrong dimension. God can't be contained in 4 walls, but I
do believe that where 2 or 3 are gathered in His name, He'll
show up in a mighty wind. But He can also show up in each
of us individually where ever we are . . . in our minds, bodies
and souls. All we have to do is let Him in.
Jeannette: Latorial,
Where two or three are gathered...these dialogues, with Rudy as
moderator, are a Mighty, Mighty Wind. God is in the midst of us.
Amen
Rudy:
We have been talking pass one another. I see the death of
the black church as a tragedy. You think that the old black
church of the spirituals has been supplanted by a church that is
rather new and marvelous—with such ilk as TD Jakes' or Creflo
Dollars or Rev. Price or Eddie Long. They have spawned a whole
new generation of scoundrels, demagogues, and sycophants. It is
such as these who propagate today’s gospel of success. These
are the televangelists who place exaggerated emphasis
on what they call “salvation,” which in actuality is an
exaggerated concern for individual welfare at the expense of
community.
My sense of black religious
history is at great odds with yours. True black religion existed
for the slave generations, those who left us the so-called
“sorrow songs,” which included “I’m a Soldier
in the Army of the Lord.” In that dynamic era, church was the
same as community, and was primarily congregational in worship,
when all worshipers stood equal before the Lord. As soon as the
first nail was hammered to build the first black church, black
religion was in its death throes. As nearest as I can reckon the
date of the death of the black church is the year 1870, when the
former slaves began to build the first buildings for
denominational worship and began to be led by seminary trained
preachers.
Since those days the
perversion of the black church has only worsened. As preachers
and pastors have become more seminary-trained they have
“resurrected” only gaudy shadows of that which was
murdered over a century ago when the armies of the Lord
liberated his people. Black Christian leaders continually lead
black congregants back into the slavery of Egypt and the status
quo of American politics, which is racist at its core.
Today, we celebrate the
birth of Martin Luther King when so little or no sense of what
Martin King achieved religiously and theologically. We have not
studied his work. As soon as he was in the ground, the dead
ghostly black church was again brought out of the closet, to
continue the spiritual ventriloquism of yesteryear. King's
religious and theological significance is that he tried to
revive that religion which was handed down by our Christian
slave ancestors, but which was soon abandoned when the Negro was
declared free and free to organize religiously.
King knew clearly the
distinction between “salvation” and “liberation.”
King strove to bring forth
again that religion of liberation. There was too much minutiae
of doctrine and dogma, in which people were devalued and set
beyond salvation because they were outside of the church
smoking, shooting crap, listening to blues and drinking. For
he understood the church had lost its relevance. Martin's
appeal was to those who didn’t have the right clothes,
the right shoes and hats, and the right manners to satisfy those
better donned, better shod, and exceedingly sophisticated and
much more skilled in concealing their sinning and shiftiness.
Today, of these we have an abundance.
In order to liberate the black church, King
searched and studied the best in modern philosophy and non-christian
religions, like Hinduism and Buddhism. Black religion was thus
re-infused with a social and theological vitality lost in 1870
and what emerged was a new
sense of us as a people with a social mission and vision. This
renewed religious vitality was cut off at the knees with
King’s death, and also that of Malcolm’s. Black religion,
that of the church and the mosque, lapsed back into its previous
moribund state.
The black church cannot be liberated, unless
it returns to its former democratic community-oriented
congregational structure. This liberation can only be
accomplished by an excellent liberal arts education, one
informed by scientific study, and by a study and sympathy for
other religious traditions including those of the Amerindians,
Asians, and Africans. Its liberation cannot be achieved until
the seminary handed down doctrines and dogmas that divide us are
perceived as not worthy of our struggle and mission as a people.
Leaders cannot accomplish this for us. In the 21st century this
is what we must do for ourselves for the salvation of us all,
and especially of the poor.
created 17 October 2005
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Pragmatism and
the Challenges of Post-Soul Politics—John Dewey once
said that every generation has to accomplish democracy
for itself, because social justice is something that
cannot be handed down from one person to another: it has
to be worked out in terms of the needs, problems, and
conditions of the present moment and its distinct
challenges. Black politics have grown increasingly
stagnant and even ineffectual because of their basis in
the sufferings and indignities of the past instead of
the real-life obstacles of the present moment. Poor
health, alarming rates of imprisonment, drugs, and the
advanced concentration of poverty in our nation’s cities
warrant a form of political engagement that steps out of
the shadows of the black freedom struggles of the 1960s
and rises to the complexities of the 21st century with
more innovative thinking, a greater emphasis on
responsibility and personal accountability, and a fuller
embrace of education and participatory democracy.—
Eddie Glaude, Jr./
NewRacialStudies
* *
* * *
Other Responses by
Edward J. Blum (“Sympathy, Frustration and
Reform”),
Ronald B. Neal (“RIP: The Myth of the
Black Church”),
William D. Hart (“The Afterlife of the
Black Church”),
Jonathan L. Walton ("The Black Church
Ain’t Dead! (But Maybe It Should Be?)"),
Anthea Butler ("Saying It’s Dead Doesn’t
Kill It"),
and
Josef Sorett (“'This
is the Air I Breathe': Unpacking Post-Black Church
Proclamations").
*
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Is the Black
Church Dead?—Debate Flares Among African-American
Christians—By David Gibson—The Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., whose birthday the nation
commemorates on Monday, was a product of the black
church, and the black church has arguably done as
much as any Christian community to inspire the soul
and culture of modern American society. It has
supplied the prophetic language that has driven the
nation's ongoing reconciliation with the original
sin of slavery, and it helped form the character of
Barack Obama, the nation's first African-American
president and an orator with the delivery of a black
preacher.
 |
Yet New Birth Missionary Baptist—with
25,000 members who generously bankroll
high-living pastors and high-tech
services—is also emblematic of what many
in the African-American community see as
a profound crisis in black Christianity,
or even the "death" of the black church.
One objection is that this prominent
Georgia megachurch preaches a money-centered
"prosperity
gospel" that traditional
African-American clergy consider a
betrayal of their faith's legacy of
sacrifice and social justice. This focus
on personal financial gain represents a
kind of cultural conservatism that is
spreading among black churches, critics
say, and signals a concern for the
success of each individual congregation
rather than the national community.
In addition, New Birth's charismatic
leader, Bishop Eddie Long, is under
intense scrutiny for allegations that he
used his position as a spiritual
counselor to coerce at least four men
into sexual relationships while they
were teens, giving them cars and cash in
return.
|
Long and his representatives
have denied the charges, saying only that
Long—who said he takes pride in being called "Daddy"
by the congregants—was just serving as a mentor to
the teenagers and did not engage in sex with them.
Long, who is 57 and married (and an opponent of gay
rights) freely admits that he is "not perfect." But
he is also not about to step aside from his pulpit,
and, more importantly, his congregation has rallied
to his side.
"Of course we support him," a congregant who gave
his name only as Roger said after a nearly
three-hour service of rollicking music and praise
for Long, and insistent appeals for donations—appeals
that were repeatedly answered as thousands streamed
up to the pulpit to lay wads of cash in a growing
pile on the stage.— PoliticsDaily
* * * * *
 |
Jeannette Drake, a licensed clinical
social worker, specializes in Dream and Expressive work in
group settings. She has conducted individual and group
sessions with adults, adolescents and children in schools,
colleges, hospitals, prisons, churches, shelters, and art
galleries as case worker, counselor, psychotherapist, teacher,
tutor, and writer.
Her writings have been published in Honey
Hush! An Anthology of African American Writer's Humor, Callaloo:
A Journal of African American Arts & Letters, The
Southern Review, New Virginia Review, The Book
of Hope & The World Healing Books, The Sun: A
Magazine of Ideas, Richmond Free Press, Coloring
Book: An Eclectic Anthology of Fiction and Poetry by
Multicultural Writers, DisabilityWorld, a
bilingual international web-zine and other journals and
magazines. |
She has performed as a gospel soloist,
acted in James Baldwin's The Amen Corner and leads a
monthly book discussion and creative writing group at her
church. Her visual art has been exhibited at
Richmond City Hall, the Carillon at Byrd Park and the Richmond
Public Library (July 1-August 3, 2005). A graduate of Hampton University and
Virginia Commonwealth University, she lives in Richmond.
May 2005
Journey Within: A Healing
Playbook
By Jeannette Drake
Journey Within: A Healing Playbook
is a fun tool for anyone interested in personal growth,
learning how to be more creative or gaining a deeper insight
into The Divine. Section One includes 13 original color
abstracts that invite the viewer to intentionally go on a
playful, inner journey. An optional guide of play instructions
is included.
In Section Two the author's
spiritual autobiography provides an inspirational explanation
for each drawing.
This Book Is for Someone
You Love!
* * *
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 |
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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|
The Persistence of the Color Line
Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency
By Randall Kennedy
Among the best things about
The Persistence of the Color Line
is watching Mr. Kennedy hash through the
positions about Mr. Obama staked out by
black commentators on the left and
right, from Stanley Crouch and Cornel
West to Juan Williams and Tavis Smiley.
He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr.
Smiley consistently “voiced skepticism
regarding whether blacks should back
Obama” . . .
The
finest chapter in
The Persistence of the Color Line
is so resonant, and so personal, it
could nearly be the basis for a book of
its own. That chapter is titled
“Reverend Wright and My Father:
Reflections on Blacks and Patriotism.”
Recalling some of the criticisms of
America’s past made by Mr. Obama’s
former pastor, Mr. Kennedy writes with
feeling about his own father, who put
each of his three of his children
through Princeton but who “never forgave
American society for its racist
mistreatment of him and those whom he
most loved.” His father distrusted
the police, who had frequently called
him “boy,” and rejected patriotism. Mr.
Kennedy’s father “relished Muhammad
Ali’s quip that the Vietcong had never
called him ‘nigger.’ ” The author places
his father, and Mr. Wright, in
sympathetic historical light. |
 |
* *
* * *
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)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 9 April 2010
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