ChickenBones: A Journal

for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes

   

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Walt had always said / that certain kinds of people didn't believe / in the secret flowering of the ghetto

 

 

 

New Day Poem

 

                            for Walter H. Lively

By Melvin E. Brown

Walt's thumbs were green

& his fingers were thick vines;

that's why he was a vital & leafy part

of the lives of East Baltimore's poor.

 

He was always flinging blossoms into their windows

& teaching them how to be full of thorns

in their poverty, whenever they needed to.

 

Whenever politicians & bureaucrats came around,

the whole neighborhood would hide all the things

that Walt could do -- so that those things

would continue to grow. (Walt had always said

that certain kinds of people didn't believe

in the secret flowering of the ghetto.)

 

The neighborhood knew that Walt was

a part of their thriving, & they knew that

he was trying to change the nature of their lives

because his green thumbs & thick fingers

were always clinging to the walls

of some condemned building

that they called home.

 

I knew it too.

But the reason I loved him

was because, sometimes,

when I stood behind his blooming

I could see the seasons transforming.

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Melvin E. Brown was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, Brown received his M.A. in 1977 to 1981. He was the editor of Chicory Magazine, a publication of the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

He has also been a faculty member at Sojourner Douglass College. His first volume of poetry In the First Place was published in 1974. Most recently, his poetry appeared in In Search of Color Everywhere: A Collection of African American Poetry.

Blue Notes & Blessing Songs
 (Liberation House, 1995)

Reviews

Melvin follows the tradition: griot, storyteller, musician. His poems are straight, clear thinking. In the words of Etheridge Knight, he too "sees through stone." Celebrate this new good book.Lucille Clifton, Pulitzer Prize Nominee, author of The Book of Light

 

Ooh, baby, baby--Melvin E. Brown, at times, writes the way Smokey Robinson once sang. Brown's latest volume is a book of remembrances. It's a collection of poems "coated" with the blues and filled with a special kind of love.E. Ethelbert Miller, Director, African American Resource Center, Howard University

 

It ain't just poetry to me. I hear the codes for honest living, the quest to become a better human being. I hear the love of friendship and memory, and the love of memorable friendships. I feel the caring, the hurting, the loving, the healing, the hoping. It's the heart-to-heart that's really got a hold on me. Unh, unh, it ain't just poetry to me.Peter J. Harris, author of Hand Me My Griot Clothes: The Autobiography of Junior Baby

 

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 The Corner / The Corner—DeAndre and Prop Joe 

The Corner—The Real Fran, DeAndre, Tyreeka and Blue!

The last ten minutes from the HBO series The Corner, where Charles S. Dutton, the director talks to the real life characters, the story was based on.

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Take This Hammer

KQED's film unit follows poet and activist James Baldwin in the spring of 1963, as he's driven around San Francisco to meet with members of the local African-American community. He is escorted by Youth For Service's Executive Director Orville Luster and intent on discovering: "The real situation of negroes in the city, as opposed to the image San Francisco would like to present." He declares: "There is no moral distance ... between the facts of life in San Francisco and the facts of life in Birmingham. Someone's got to tell it like it is. And that's where it's at." Includes frank exchanges with local people on the street, meetings with community leaders and extended point-of-view sequences shot from a moving vehicle, featuring the Bayview and Western Addition neighborhoods. Baldwin reflects on the racial inequality that African-Americans are forced to confront and at one point tries to lift the morale of a young man by expressing his conviction that: "There will be a negro president of this country but it will not be the country that we are sitting in now." The TV Archive would like to thank Darryl Cox for championing the merits of this film and for his determination that it be preserved and remastered for posterity.

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Straight Outta Hunters Point  / Malcolm X Birthday (1970)

KQED News report from May 19th 1970 on the Hunters Point community of San Francisco's celebrations and remembrance for what would have been the 45th birthday of political and human rights activist Malcolm X. Features scenes of local residents describing the personal impact that Malcom X had on their lives and people enjoying live music. Ends with views of public speakers addressing crowds outside the Federal Courthouse in downtown San Francisco, including the Reverend Cecil Williams who explains that: "We are talking about the liberation of the people! And that's what we want at this particular time."

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Marcus Garvey "Africa For The Africans"  /  Look For Me in The Whirlwind 

 Marcus Mosiah Garvey  / Marucs Garvey Speech

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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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Negro Digest / Black World

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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

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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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updated 23 June 2010

 

 

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